loon pond

In which Dame Groan is the only reptile left standing, groaning away as Our Henry waits in the wings ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 21:35:00 +0000

The pond likes to think of each Thursday at the lizard Oz as a miniature Xmas eve.

A few mice scuttle about, but it's a day that must be spent in anxious anticipation.

Only one sleep and Our Henry will come down the chimney to fill Xmas stockings with an abundance of philosophical, theological and historical goodies.

Until that moment, there's nothing to be done but wait with baited breath (preferably of the snail killer kind), and give minimal, modest attention to the scuttling mice.

Luckily that doesn't mean giving some squeakers in the house any space.

The pond personally supervised the placement of petulant Peta's contribution to the latest reptile jihad in the intermittent archive.

"Commentary by Peta Credlin
I’m booing on the inside because it’s my country too
By making welcomes and acknowledgments of country mandatory, the goodwill towards fellow Australians who weren’t always extended a fair go is evaporating fast.

She's booing on the inside?

Why not just do what other reptiles do, boo on the outside, boo night and day, and make the desire to join white Xian nationalists and neo-Nazis in their booing explicit?

What's even more insulting is the way the reptiles started with a snap of an indigenous veteran, with the clear implication that he needs a good booing too:

The levels and depths of racism, fear and loathing in the reptiles knows no bounds, but the pond doesn't have to go along with it ...

It's a measure of how mindless and moronic these jihads have become that none of the reptiles seemed interested in the perils of Pauline and Gina ...

Similarly the pond doesn't have to spend time with Jack (who also refused to fly with Pauline), especially as his approach involved asking an extremely silly question ...

Elon v Altman: This is how it sounds when rich nerds cry
The Musk and Altman feud: a legal stoush to determine the future of humanity or a power grab by some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the world?
By Jack the Insider
Columnist

With full disrespect, if you must head off to the intermittent archive, why not make the journey for Matteo Wong in The Atlantic:

The Richest Grudge Match in History (*intermittent archive link)
Sam Altman and Elon Musk Sure Dislike Each Other
The trial between the CEOs makes the AI boom seem sordid and small.

Or follow along with the testimony in such rags as the both siderest NY Times ...

Live updates: Elon Musk, Testifying at OpenAI Trial, Accuses Executives of Stealing a ‘Charity’ (*intermittent archive link)
Elon Musk, who split from OpenAI years after cofounding it as a nonprofit in 2015, said it was putting commercial interests over the public’s. A company lawyer said Mr. Musk had sued because he did not get his way.

There's a lot more fun to be found outside the lizard Oz when watching two criminals take to court to diss each other... (at least until Our Henry comes down the chimney with his bag of magical goodies).

The pond also decided that Saul wasn't up to snuff ...

Here’s why the Snowy 2.0 dream went south
Snowy 2.0 stands as a warning sign against more government control over our energy market. That journey is already going poorly and is likely to get worse.
By Saul Kavonic

Still taking potshots at Malware?

Never mind, the pond woke to news of a positive kind: Australia’s battery boom has doubled in a year – and is rewiring the energy grid (*intermittent archive link)

Even better, New study suggests majority of regional Australians back renewable energy transition.

Saul was on hand simply to play the grinch ...

...This is a cautionary tale for other government initiatives seeking greater control over energy investment. The federal Capacity Investment Scheme, Hydrogen HeadStart program, ever expanding Australian Energy Market Operator powers and the State Electricity Commission of Victoria are already showing similar issues to those that led Snowy 2.0 astray. Future government plans for additional fuel security in response to the global fuel crisis risk the same pitfalls unless designed carefully.
There is a role for direct government support of energy investment, but mostly in carefully circumscribed situations involving clear national security or national interest considerations – and even then it must be applied transparently and sparingly.
Snowy 2.0 remains a stark reminder that greater government control over energy can make things worse for both consumers and taxpayers, not better.
Saul Kavonic is head of energy research at MST Marquee.

As previously noted, Saul has form and knows on which side his private sector consultancies are buttered by government ..

Saul has previously worked in the energy sector in commercial, research and government policy roles. He has worked in commercial and strategy roles at Woodside Energy, Australias largest oil and gas company, and was the principal analyst in Australasia for Wood Mackenzie, the worlds leading energy consultancy.

And for some reason the pond rarely pays attention to the squeaking of Geoff, as he chambered yet another predictable round ...

PM progresses Shorten manifesto, as inflation roars
Anthony Albanese prepares to embrace Bill Shorten’s failed 2019 housing tax reforms as Australia faces soaring inflation and a looming recession.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

Somewhere along the way it went wrong for Geoff, and towards the end of his piece, he had to pay attention to the men surrounding the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, and it wasn't all inflation roaring like a lion, it was a few pollies squeaking like mice ...

...Chalmers, who has lost the confidence from last year when the RBA was cutting rates and inflation was falling, hasn’t faced much opposition since the 2022 election.
Angus Taylor struggled to take a fully formed and competitive economic policy manifesto to last year’s election. Ted O’Brien, the architect of Peter Dutton’s failed nuclear energy policy, failed to land a blow and resorted to calling Chalmers the “Candy Man” and whistling tunes from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Now there is Tim Wilson, the self-described “modern Liberal” who helped Scott Morrison attack Shorten’s tax policies and last year reclaimed the Melbourne seat of Goldstein from Climate 200-backed teal independent Zoe Daniel.
Wilson, who doesn’t lack self-confidence, hasn’t enjoyed a great start against Chalmers.
After a bizarre rendition of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire in the House of Representatives, Chalmers described Wilson as the “opposition’s karaoke clown”.
After making a bad mistake in citing the Coalition’s new $800m fuel supply policy as costing “around $80bn”, Wilson on Wednesday responded to criticism from Chalmers by releasing a musical playlist for the Treasurer. The list, more university politics than federal politics, hijacked lyrics from John Farnham, Carly Simon, Michael Jackson and others to mock Chalmers for failing to “take the pressure down”, being “so vain” and a “smooth criminal”, and making “money too tight (to mention)”.
Australians struggling to pay their bills and keep businesses open deserve an opposition Treasury spokesman who is focused on policy not playlists.

Oh dear, freedumb boy strikes again ...

...but what's this talk of Jimbo not facing much opposition?

How dare Geoff suggest that?

Dame Groan has provided consistent, stiff, rigorous opposition and she was at it again ...

The header: Treasurer faces inflation crisis ahead of budget as rate rise threatens households; A stark disconnect emerges between Treasury’s rosy budget claims and the harsh reality of approaching trillion-dollar debt alongside persistent inflationary pressures hitting households.

The caption for the snap, which surely is the best the reptiles have ever displayed of this surly, sulky, insupportably snarky rogue: Treasurer Jim Chalmers addresses the media during a news conference relating to the release of key inflation data. Picture: Liam Kidston/NewsWire

Dame Groan could only manage three minutes of "we'll all be rooned, the end is nigh" this day, and she managed with great skill to downplay the clear and present danger, a danger that looks like being around for months - the decision by King Donald and the mad mullahs to mutually blockade the strait of Hormuz and thereby hold the world to ransom while they face off and pose down.

Paying attention to that would entirely defeat Dame Groan's primary T-800 purpose.

Destroy Jimbo.

And so she spends her time bleating about the feds by following the most simpleton path to hand:

When grinning Jim, our Treasurer, tells us that the budget is in better nick and he has managed to reduce government debt, informed people know these statements to be falsehoods.
Any cursory look at the budget papers will confirm the facts that the fiscal position is deteriorating, particularly when off-budget spending is considered, and government debt is fast approaching one trillion dollars for the first time.
Mums and dads are too busy and hard-pressed to investigate these tall tales. But what is clear to them, part of their “lived experience” to use an overused term, is that prices are rising and that the monthly outlay on the mortgage has been going up this year.
The quarterly CPI figures for March this year point to annual headline inflation of 4.6 per cent, driven mainly by higher fuel prices. But higher fuel prices quickly flow into other prices.
Higher prices are only too obvious at the supermarket and meeting regular bills.
To be sure, the trimmed mean of the CPI, which excludes irregular and volatile items, was 3.3 per cent, but still well above the target of the Reserve Bank of 2.5 per cent. The trimmed mean has been 3 or above since July of last year.

And what of that crisis in the strait, and news of Hormuz that you can use? Dame Groan has got it covered:

This timing is important, because it’s clear that our inflationary woes truly pre-dated the conflict in the Middle East. The proof of this pudding was the fact that the cash rate has been adjusted upwards twice this year. The cash rate is currently 4.1 per cent.

Roll that one around on the tongue, and see how easily you can dismiss news Dame Groan can't uze ...

...it’s clear that our inflationary woes truly pre-dated the conflict in the Middle East

And not content with that Dame Groan hammered the point home ...

Had excessive inflation only emerged recently, after the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed, then the bank could afford to look through any headline inflation figures. Indeed, this would be regarded as best practice. It will likely be the strategy adopted by most central banks around the world.

It was all the odder then that the reptiles rolled out the Ughmann to complain about the way that the cost of fuel was fuelling inflation pressures...and something had to be done about the news no one can us

Sky News Political Contributor Chris Uhlmann says the government must find ways to “bring down” the cost of fuel in Australia to ease inflation pressures. Mr Uhlmann said 91 per cent of “all the energy consumed” in Australia every year is coal, oil, and gas. “41 per cent of that we now know is liquid fuels.”

Never mind that stunning illustration, feel Dame Groan's ongoing wrath ...

The situation here is different and the bank will be particularly concerned that high headline rates of inflation will lead to higher inflationary expectations. Once there are widespread expectations that inflation will exceed the target figure – and potentially by a wide margin – the bank begins to be really worried.
Of course, cranking up the cash rate, which feeds into higher mortgage and borrowing costs, will inevitably feed into slower economic growth. At this stage, consumer spending appears to be holding up reasonably well, but this may well be the lull before the storm.
The Monetary Policy Board will meet next week to consider what to do about the cash rate. The market expects another increase of 25 basis points, although the fact that the trimmed mean was essentially unchanged, even if the figure is too high, may weigh on the members’ thinking. Recall that last time, there was split decision.
Stagflation – rising unemployment accompanied by above-target inflation – is something everyone wants to avoid.
The following week is, of course the federal budget, Jim’s fifth. If he really understood the predicament, he would slash the growth of government spending to ease the inflationary pressures. His constant unconvincing denial that government spending has contributed to the inflation problem points to a likely failure to act in a sensible fashion, with possibly more cost-of-living measures.
Much will be made of the highly tentative plan to radically reduce spending on the NDIS, and these figures – assumptions, really – will be fed into the four years of the budget’s forward estimates.
They will make the fiscal position look better from its poor base – the NDIS has been the fastest growing item in the budget apart from interest payments – but whether the lower rates of spending growth ever come to pass is an unanswered question. Mind you, good job for trying, Mark Butler.
The political strategy of the budget will be to draw attention away from the bottom-line figures, particularly the headline cash balance, and to focus on some adjustments to various tax arrangements on capital.
They will be seriously oversold and entail high compliance costs, but many mums and dads (and younger folk) might get the impression that the government is doing something about housing, in particular.
For Albanese and Chalmers, this outcome itself would be regarded as a success even if there are lot of complaints. Let’s face it, most of these affected don’t vote Labor. It could also set up a tricky wedge for the Coalition.
While policy is definitely not a strong suit of the Albanese government, they are really good at politics.

Here's a thought - if King Donald doesn't manage to sort out the strait, Dame Groan will be able to chortle about the way we've all been 'rooned, without ever mentioning the reason why.

As if to celebrate the King, the reptiles went full meme in the news section ...

Oh sheesh ... do they have to pander to him?

So this is what full dementia, sundowner style looks like?

Well, in that spirit ...

Look away reptiles, shield your eyes from what Faux Noise has foisted on the world.

L'État, c'est moi.

Le roi est mort, vive le roi!

Roll on Friday and the arrival of magical Santa Henry down the chimney ...

In which the bromancer sorts out everything in his usual way, sundry reptiles are sent to the intermittent archive, and talk of Anglo-Celtic values wraps up the show ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 28 Apr 2026 21:28:00 +0000

The pond wondered whether the bromancer would ever get back to his theme of a war with China by Xmas, but thanks to the inspiration of that other Jimbo, one time member of the IPA and still a treasured author, he's made a nostalgic trip back to future ...

The header: New defence chief and Trump envoy pick expose deep flaws in national security; A hardline Trump ally becomes US ambassador while Australia’s defence chief lacks military experience – raising questions about readiness as China eyes Taiwan by 2027.

The caption for the orange emperor and his minion: Dave Brat with Donald Trump in 2015 in Washington. Picture: Getty Images

As might be expected, the bromancer was fully on board with a Trumpian tea party ratbag as a way of furthering a deep and warm relationship with the disunited States ...

An ambassadorial appointment, a Mandarin coronation and a strong speech from opposition – three important developments for our national security.
Former Republican congressman David Brat is a good pick to be US ambassador in Canberra. He’s a good choice because Donald Trump chose him.
Brat was a hardline conservative congressman. He rode the Tea Party, the forerunner of the MAGA movement, to a primary victory over the highly regarded Republican incumbent, Eric Cantor, who was then the majority leader in the House of Representatives.
Cantor was pretty conservative himself, Brat much more so.
In the Trump era, Brat has expressed some opinions many Australians would disagree with, such as that Ukraine should concede major territory to Russia, that there was a vast intelligence agency conspiracy against Republicans, and massive voter fraud against Trump.
But guess what? That doesn’t matter a fig. There are only two qualities that count in a US ambassador in Canberra – commitment to the US-Australia relationship, and clout with the president.
Of the two, the second is the more important. Some of the most effective ambassadors the US has sent to Australia have been non-diplomats who were close to the presidents who appointed them. Tom Schieffer was a former business partner and close friend of George W. Bush. Years before, Mel Sembler was a close friend of George H.W. Bush. Schieffer and Sembler were among the best ambassadors.
Australian governments, other Australians too, could get their concerns considered seriously in the White House through the work of these dedicated, influential men.
The bad sign is it took Trump so long to appoint anybody at all. There is, of course, much administrative chaos and delay in the Trump administration. But the fact it took 15 months since Trump’s election to get around to making the Canberra appointment is a sign no one of consequence in the Trump firmament particularly wanted the job, and it certainly didn’t figure as any kind of priority for Trump himself.

Actually the bad sign is that with a stooge and a sycophant on location and paying attention, King Donald might attempt to do more than the odd whine and bleat, and then who knows what carnage might be wrought.

Then came the bromancer on a disastrous appointment, because (a) she's a woman, and (b) she's not the bromancer, Meghan Quinn has been appointed Secretary of the Department of Defence.

See how quickly the bromancer can elide from celebrating King Donald's emissary to sneering lips and quivering disdain...

The second big appointment for Australia was Meghan Quinn, the Secretary of the Industry Department, as the new Secretary of the Defence Department.
Quinn is a distinguished public servant and deserves congratulations and goodwill on her appointment. She also deserves to be judged entirely on results.
However, Quinn’s is the type of appointment which has not been effective in Defence in the past. It’s many decades since a career Defence insider has been appointed Secretary of the Defence Department. Given how poorly Defence has performed for a long time, that might seem fair enough. In fact, it’s been part of the problem.

At this point, the reptiles flung in an AV distraction which sort of did a little undercutting of the bromancer's euphoria about the new ambassador, with him apparently being no better than Junior's old squeeze ... Former acting US ambassador to Australia James Carouso spoke on the newly appointed Australian Ambassador to the United States, former Republican congressman David Brat. “I don't think anyone can expect the type of appointments we have in the administration,” Mr Carouso told Sky News Australia. “We have a former girlfriend of one of Trump's sons as the ambassador to Greece, we have an orthopedic surgeon as the ambassador to Singapore. “This particular ambassador, I think, has more background in government, having been the congressman for two terms, with a background in economics.”

The bromancer proceeded to carry a torch for the disgraced Pezzullo, as so many reptiles do these days ... what with the lizard Oz one of the main locations for his rehabilitation tour ...

If someone goes to Defence without a deep background in defence it takes months and months just to get across all the information, much less to work out how all the defence tribes interact, where the bodies are buried, how the distinctive Defence culture militates against speed, effectiveness and accountability.
There’s a strong case, if you really want to break the mould, for appointing someone from the top of private industry who is accustomed to bringing big, complex projects to completion and actually getting things done.
The Morrison government totally squibbed its one opportunity to make meaningful change at Defence when it declined to appoint Mike Pezzullo as the head of the department. There was a feeling that such an appointment would have led to a lot of distress in senior defence circles. Good. That’s just what was needed.
When you appoint a senior mandarin without much direct defence experience you can easily end up with the worst of both worlds, you get a mastery of bureaucratic process, broad concepts, eloquent position papers, government bureaucracy gobbledygook. Every strategic challenge is lovingly described, every problem deeply admired from all angles, and nothing actually happens, or at least not on a timescale relevant to the country’s needs.

If Pezzullo's the answer, forget the ethical questions ... and now for a little fear and anxiety, Military personnel attend the ceremony as Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomes Uruguayan President Yamanda Orsi at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in February. Picture: Getty Images

That's the cue for the bromancer to jump the shark and nuke the Chairman Xi fridge ...

China’s Xi Jinping has told his military to be ready to take Taiwan by force, should its government decide to do so, by 2027. The British Spectator noted this week that in 1930 Britain spent 2.5 per cent of its GDP on defence (well above our level now of 2 per cent), but by 1938 it was 7 per cent.
Australia has not remotely responded to the security challenges we face with the requisite urgency. Nothing in Quinn’s background suggests this will change. She worked on the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper which was a fatuous document with little predictive or policy value at all.
A dose of something closer to realism came in the first National Press Club speech delivered by Senator James Paterson, the opposition’s defence spokesman. He rightly demanded much greater openness from the Albanese government on basic defence information, rightly lambasted its failure to deliver expenditure or capability, stressed the centrality of the US alliance while acknowledging the difficulties posed by the Trump administration, and rightly called out the strategic danger of China.

Jimbo's the answer to getting ready for a bit of biff and a stoush by 2027? His profound insight?

Why it was a pitch for buying up big on the B-21 Raider stealth bomber.

This might have gone down well with the Sky News mob (still no rebranding?), but sounded completely clueless and desperate, what with the first of these planes to be delivered to the US air force in 2027.

What are the odds that the Yanks will immediately make them available to us as submarine substitutes, a kind of AUKUS pacifier?

Even the bromancer couldn't hack it, and he's still desperate to take on Chairman Xi.

When you've lost the bromancer, you're in trouble ...

His one mistake was to go down the road of proposing the acquisition of a fleet of B21 strategic bombers. When we’ve made such a pitiful investment in small, swarming drones, and when our defence budget can’t remotely keep even the feeble kit we have in proper working order, the last thing Australia needs is another giant, wildly expensive, technologically complex platform to cost endless billions of dollars and take forever to come online.
Dysfunctional defence culture, persistent and seemingly ineradicable, rears its head in the most unexpected places.

Grim times when even the bromancer can't be made to swallow Jimbo's massive stupidity ...

The lizard Oz editorialist chimed in on the matter of the ambassador for the disunited states, hoping against hope ...

AUKUS is in desperate need of a confidence booster?

Brat for sedulously promoting? Brat for demanding workload?

Likely he'll have a hard time explaining how to play the game ...

And so to what the pond won't be covering this day.

The pond won't be encouraging Dame Slap in her familiar bout of black bashing. The intermittent archive is a safe home for that sort of thing ...

COMMENTARY by Janet Albrechtsen
Welcome to country: is it time to take a vote?
A divisive response to welcome to country ceremonies raises deeper questions about meaning, timing and whether Australians ever truly agreed.

There's going to be a lot more of this bigotry emanating from the reptiles as they discover new ways to divide the country, but damned if the pond will help them in their mission.

The pond did at least have a couple of 'toons handy that evoked the Dame Slap spirit ...

The pond was also disinclined to feature a standard bit of Albo bashing, as Geoff chambered a far too familiar round:

Who’s fairest of all? Albanese holds the mirror up to history
Anthony Albanese has revealed his government will return to Labor’s political basics in next month’s budget, echoing the same big-spending, anti-business themes from his maiden speech delivered 30 years ago.
By Geoff Chambers

Political editor

The pond did however think that a teaser trailer was worth it, if only because it featured a novel new form of pictorial attack.

What better way to diminish comrade Albo and make him feel tired, weary and aged than by starting off with a snap showing him in his vulgar youff days?

It was too cruel, it was deliberately unkind in the reptile way ...

That's about as low a blow as the reptiles have ever managed in their war on comrade Albo, but anyone wanting more of the faux outrage must resort to the intermittent archive, while praying its still working.

Another item that was sent to the archive was this angle on the dire straits the world is in thanks to King Donald embarking on a jihad ...

West pays a price for Iran’s global cartel economy
Rather than relying on conventional statecraft, the Islamic Republic regime combines geopolitical positioning with financial resilience to extract economic consequences from disruption
By Sara Rafiee

At the end of her piece, Sara came up with a splendid proposal ...

...Western enforcement systems are designed for linear transactions. Tehran’s networks are layered, transnational and structured to pass formal compliance checks. What is required is a shift to intelligence-led enforcement: forensic accounting, network analysis, digital asset tracing and blockchain expertise, cross-border data integration and co-ordinated action across financial regulators, law enforcement and intelligence agencies. That means strengthening anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing frameworks to trace ownership, identify networks and disrupt financial flows at scale.
The West has exposure and agency. As a network of rules-based financial systems integrated into global markets, it is directly affected and capable of driving enforcement.
The Islamic Republic is sustained not by ideology alone but by access to capital, markets and financial infrastructure. Remove that access and the system weakens. Leave it intact and the cost is externalised through fuel prices, inflation and balance sheets.
The choice is clear: remain reactive and be at the mercy of the regime and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and give in to their demands for ransom and extortion or act proactively to dismantle the financial architecture that sustains them once and for all.
The question is not whether the West pays but whether it chooses to stop.

So not just a complete blockade but also even more extreme sanctions, so that 90 odd million people can be made to suffer, while the regime skates along over their suffering.

If they chose not to stage a revolution, well let them starve, stuff 'em, serve 'em right.

It seemed an odd strategy given how Sara chose to describe herself ...

Sara Rafiee is a human rights advocate. The views expressed are her own.

Must be human rights advocacy of the King Donald kind ...

And so to a final offering ...

The header: Stop chasing nostalgia, start defending principles; Australia’s conservative movement often reaches for ‘good old days’ instead of asking: what made those days so good in the first place?

The caption: Demonstrators gather in Canberra to protest the impacts of immigration and cost-of-living pressures. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

Immediately the pond's ears were on high onion muncher alert.

Was this tosser going to diss "Anglo-Celtic values", thereby undermining the entire edifice of the lizard Oz and the hive mind?

Last weekend’s March for Australia rally in Canberra drew scores of people from across the country, united by a deep frustration at what mass immigration is doing to their daily lives.
Housing is out of reach, rents are soaring, grocery prices are crippling and infrastructure is buckling under the weight of demand. These are legitimate concerns and Australians are right to be angry that government policy has left them worse off in their own country.
But alongside those concerns a familiar strain of rhetoric resurfaced. Once again, the language of “Anglo-Celtic values” and questions about who really belongs in Australia found its way into the debate.
Worse still, many on the right turned a blind eye or echoed their rhetoric, as if the way to channel public anger is to pine for a cultural purity frozen in the past. That isn’t just lazy, it’s destructive. Cultures evolve.
The things we prize about being Australian – our irreverence, our egalitarianism, our suspicion of authority – may have sprung from Anglo-Celtic origins, but over time they became distinctly Australian, shaped across the past century by the millions of migrants who made this country their home.
My own family has been here since 1946 – 80 years and five generations strong. At what point do families such as mine count as Australian? To keep insisting that the character of this country is Anglo-Celtic alone is to write millions of patriotic Australians out of the national story.
Even the so-called Anglo-Celtic values were never purely Anglo-Celtic. They were the product of centuries of evolution – first forged in ancient Greece, refined through Rome, filtered through Christianity, revived in the Enlightenment and finally embedded in British institutions.

He was, he was, and the pond was outraged on behalf of the lizard Oz.

How did this miscreant get into the mix? Where was Our Henry to box his ears and teach him a lesson?

The principles we talk about today – rule of law, liberty, civic equality – trace back to Athens as much as to Westminster. To pretend they belong exclusively to one culture is to misunderstand their nature: they were always meant to be inherited, adapted and lived by anyone who chooses to uphold them.
Worse, it’s politically self-defeating. You cannot build a broad conservative movement while telling half the nation they don’t belong. America, for all its flaws, actually gets this right.
The US came from Anglo-Celtic stock, too, but you won’t hear conservative Americans demanding the return of “English values” when things go awry.

Steady, steady, in fact in the early days, there was more than a fair sprinkling of Dutch, German and perfidious French settlers, and even worse by 1790 almost 20% of the population was of African descent, though it took some time to count them as human.

But the pond digresses, do go on ...

They talk about American values. Anyone who embraces the principles of liberty, independence and self-government, honours the country and respects its laws is accepted as American. That inclusiveness is what made America strong.
If conservatives in Australia cannot make the same leap – if they cannot stop confusing ancestry with principle – they will condemn themselves to irrelevance. The future will not belong to those peddling nostalgia. It will belong to those who can articulate a creed called Australian values, open to anyone willing to live by them.
After all, the instinct is already there: when something goes wrong in this country, we don’t say it’s “un-Anglo-Celtic”; we say it’s un-Australian.
Unlike our American cousins, Australia never had the clarifying moment of revolution. We were not born in blood. We inherited institutions rather than forging them in struggle and so we were never forced to chisel our values into stone. In the absence of a creed, we leaned on character – and for a long time, that was enough.
Stoicism, a larrikin irreverence, a practical egalitarianism and a work ethic that prized reward for effort. “She’ll be right” was more than a shrug; it was a philosophy of proportion, resilience and perspective.
But if you never articulate your strengths, you never learn to defend them.

Dammit, if the onion muncher gets to read this sort of heresy there'll be hell to pay ...

Over time, the habits that made this country work have been crowded out by bureaucratic creep, cultural risk-aversion and an ever-expanding politics of grievance. Instead of protecting the ideas that sustained our way of life, too many on the right reached for the easier script: bring back the old days. The result is a movement that sounds like a museum tour.
Nostalgia cannot save a nation. Principles, however, can. If Australia is to succeed in the 21st century, we need to stop chasing the shadows of yesterday and start identifying, clearly and unapologetically, the values that made us strong in the first place.
So which principles? Freedom of speech: not as a slogan but as a social norm that tolerates offence because truth requires friction. Reward for effort: the moral right to keep more of what you’ve built and the expectation that contribution precedes entitlement.
A “fair go” earned rather than allocated. Institutional humility: rules that bind government before they bind citizens. And an unembarrassed larrikin spirit that resists control and laughs at pomposity, including its own.
None of that requires a revolution. It requires articulation, prioritisation and courage. Articulation because we must say plainly what we stand for. Prioritisation because governments stuffed with committees can smother a culture without firing a shot. Courage because defending principles will be noisy, unfashionable and – at times – personally costly. And yes, that means fewer glossy slogans and more stubborn substance.

The pond could almost get on board, but what about Dame Slap's desire to put pesky, difficult, uppity blacks back in their box?

The less we see of them, the more of a fair go there'll be for all the whites slaving away at the lizard Oz?

Whatever, best wrap it up ...

But the purpose of that effort isn’t to look backwards. The point isn’t to sell nostalgia for a different decade or to cosplay as America. It is to recover the foundations of an Australian life that worked, then say them out loud, codify them in policy and live them again.
The debate we need is not about what we used to be. It’s about who we intend to be – and what we’re willing to defend to get there.
Damien Costas is the author of What Happened to the Lucky Country?

And speaking of equal opportunities for all, and rights and all that jazz, let's celebrate the ways of two noble monarchies, with wretched republicanism at last put back in its box ...

Finally those interested in the state of Vlad the sociopath's Russia might be amused to see the way that the country's chief Lord Haw-Haw, the nuking sociopathic Solovyov attempted to retrieve his most recent dismal situation by inviting lips-loaded Victoria Bonya on to his show, all the way from Monaco, the latest in a seemingly endless dance between the pair.

Only on Russian state media:

Vlad the sociopath must be beginning to feel the heat ...

In which the bromancer and ancient Troy tackle the state of the orange emperor's empire ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 Apr 2026 21:53:00 +0000

The pond has long thought that complete shamelessness, chutzpah, and an inclination to a certain kind of insolent cheekiness are prerequisites for the practice of politics, and the thought came again with this yarn near the top of the lizard Oz this morning ...

STOCKPILE PLEDGE
Fuel fracas: ‘fill ’er up to 60 days’, Coalition vows (intermittent archive link)
Coalition vows to double reserves to 60 days
Angus Taylor has pledged an $800m plan to double Australia’s fuel reserves while Foreign Minister Penny Wong embarks on Asian diplomatic mission to secure shipments.
By Ben Packham and Geoff Chambers

This is, of course, the man who not so long ago decided that Australia's fuel reserves were best stored in the United States... from March, 2020: U.S. And Australia Strengthen Fuel Security With New SPR Arrangement

Part of the process is the expectation that - unlike elephants - punters will always forget, or perhaps not have cared in the first place ...

To be fair to Dame Groan, unlike the remarkably stupid and wildly oscillating beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, she's always been consistent.

She's always been a climate science denialist, she's always been a devotee of fossil fuels, of oil and gas, so her piece this day is just business as usual.

The header: Making the case for more refineries at time of crisis; We have been given a warning about our reliance on overseas sources for our liquid fuels and the totally inadequate level of our reserves. It would be negligent to ignore this warning.

The caption for the snap which got Dame Groan wildly excited: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Energy Minister Chris Bowen during a visit to the Ampol Lytton refinery in Brisbane. Picture: NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

You can make the case for the electrostate and renewables and such like as much as you like, but this Dame is not for turning. Never has been, never will be ...

It was quite the turn-up for the books but the photograph of Anthony Albanese and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen standing in front of one of the last two oil refineries was indicative of a change of heart, if not panic, on the government’s part.
It was only a few months ago at the UN Climate Change 30th Conference of the Parties in Brazil that Australia was championing a proposal to phase out fossil fuels. Just this week there is a follow-up conference in Colombia to flesh out the details. Plenty of countries will be attending, but there are some notable absentees including the US, India and China – all the big emitters, in other words.

How she loves to dance on the grave of the planet, how she thrives in the hothouse of carbon dioxide emissions ... Bowen and the PM have been trying to secure an increase in the supply of liquid fuels. Picture: News Wire/Thomas Lisson

This is of course just what her cult followers expect and demand ...

Back at home, Bowen has had to face the reality of a potential shortage of liquid fuels: diesel, petrol, aviation gas. Forget all that stuff about fossil fuels being the enemy.
The Prime Minister and Bowen have been working hard to achieve an increase in the supply of liquid fuels, even if the incremental additions secured thus far are relatively trivial: a few days’ extra supply.
We also are not being told the cost of the fuel carried by these additional tankers heading our way.
While the fuel situation may appear to have improved temporarily with a fall in bowser prices, the government is aware of the dangers that may emerge in the coming months. When the conflict in the Middle East began, there was a record number of oil tankers on the water. These have now mainly reached their destinations.
With the restrictions on passage through the Strait of Hormuz – it previously had handled around 20 per cent of the flow of global fuel supplies – these flows have become severely hampered. It is estimated that only about 10 per cent of the tankers that normally sail through the strait are now doing so.

Token riff raff who take a view apart from the Dame should make ready to be demonised - fires waiting to happen ... Albanese, Bowen and Deputy PM Richard Marles at the Viva Energy refinery after a fire there. Picture: NewsWire / Josie Hayden

Expecting Dame Groan to double down in her denialism? Make that a triple ...

The refineries in Asia are likely to run short of crude oil to be refined in the coming weeks. This will have flow-on effects for Australia since most of our liquid fuels were sourced from Asia. Hence, the government’s desperate attempt to diversify the sources of our supply.
Not surprisingly, Bowen hasn’t been prepared to give up entirely on his dreams of decarbonisation, bragging about the current progress of the rollout of renewable energy.
But he realises that electrification is not a short-term solution, and only a partial one at that. He also reluctantly has come to acknowledge the critical role gas must play in the electricity system.
Many voters must be scratching their heads, wondering how we got to where we are. How did eight refineries become two? How could it be that we produced enough oil for our needs a quarter of century ago and now produce less than 20 per cent? On what basis was the minimum fuel reserves recommended by the International Energy Agency of 90 days rejected?
There are a variety of reasons for the closure of the refineries, foremost among them that they couldn’t return a consistent profit. Our refineries are old; some were constructed partly based on the need to shore up national security; they are at the end of the line. They are also sub-scale, judged by the modern refineries constructed more recently in other parts of the world.
The new fuel standards imposed on them – sulphur content, for instance – would require substantial capital investment by the refineries that simply could not be justified. Add that the amount of local crude oil has been dropping and bizarre industrial relations arrangements, and closure of all the refineries was all but guaranteed.
Had it not been for the actions of the Coalition government, the refineries in Geelong and Brisbane also would have closed.

Here the reptiles slipped in Sky Noise down under (what, still no rebrand?), with the pond's only note to wonder why caps were deployed to describe a "Cane Farmer".

A new trend, inspired by Kind Donald's truthing ways?

Cane Farmer Owen Menkens says farmers are “worried about the future” with the fuel crisis impacting Australia. Mr Menkens told Sky News Australia that there are “inflationary pressures” also adding to stress for farmers. “And then there’s the fear of not being able to get fuel and fertiliser, which is really probably the scariest bit of it all.”

You can't expect Sky Noise or the reptiles of Oz to get agitated about what's actually caused, and is continuing to cause the crisis.

It provides too much in the way of cudgels with which to thump comrade Albo.

A prevert might succumb to the temptation to wish ill on Dame Groan's descendants as the planet heats up and expires, but that's to consign everybody else to the same fate.

Instead it's best just to politely nod and plough through the denialism to the bitter end of her new drill, baby, drill program, incidentally putting her at one with King Donald's desire to ruin the planet..

The Labor government has committed to continuing this support and has relaxed the fuel standards in the meantime. (Bowen had proudly brought forward the new sulphur standard but has been forced to reverse this decision.)
Bowen has now declared there is no need for another refinery, although he has not ruled out extensions to the remaining ones.
This is surely a premature stance to take, given the number of moving parts that will be needed to accommodate a policy that grows our domestic liquid fuel reliance. This must include facilitation of the exploration and exploitation of oil, onshore and offshore.
Much is being made of the potential of the Taroom Trough, which is part of the Bowen-Surat hydrocarbon basin in southwest Queensland.
While it’s unclear just how much oil there is, it’s surely the time when risks must be taken to restart our oil program.
There are other prospective areas including in the North West Shelf, the Beetaloo Basin and the Great Australian Bight. Recall that 50 years ago some experts were telling anyone who would listen that there was no exploitable oil or gas left in the North Sea. They were wrong.
On the face of it, the government seems flexible in using existing programs to facilitate the resurgence of a local oil industry. However, some legislative impediments such as the veto on funding pipelines in some programs will need to be removed.
One viable option is the construction of a new refinery at Gladstone, which would be close to several large-scale industrial operations.
There is a suitable port and there are other reasons this would make sense. Should the Taroom Trough work out, for instance, this refinery could be used to convert the crude.
It also should be possible to use imported heavy crude to produce diesel, which is critical to many Queensland economic activities, including agriculture, mining and metal processing.
To be sure, the cost of a new refinery is substantial – about $10bn to $12bn – and many components would need to be shipped in modular form from Asia. It would require the services of a major global engineering group when there is already heavy demand.
We are not the only country waking up to the weakness in their liquid fuel position and considering options such as new refineries. We need to get in the queue soon lest this option vanish into the distant future.
The real danger is the government will revert to type should the Middle East conflict be resolved in the near term and the strait reopened for traffic.
As unlikely as this scenario is, there are still powerful anti-fossil fuel influences on the government likely to re-emerge from the wings of the political stage.
We have been given a warning about our reliance on overseas sources for our liquid fuels and the totally inadequate level of our reserves. It would be negligent to ignore this warning.

Speaking of King Donald ...

Those 'toons are by way of introducing the bromancer, out and about this day, and picking up on the assassination attempt.

Yesterday the pond did its level best to ignore the Lynch mob, but the pond can never ignore the bromancer in all his glory ...

The header: In an age of narcissism and violence we need true physical courage more than ever; While we celebrate Anzac heroes, a Washington shooting incident exposes our contradictory attitudes toward the warriors who keep us safe from everyday violence.

The caption for the snap of the carry on: US Secret Service agents surround President Donald Trump after a shooting incident outside the ballroom during the White House Correspondents Dinner. Picture: AP

On the upside, the bromancer can't scribble one of those "I was there and was completely unnerved" yarns that have been littering the ether in recent times.

With due regard for the correspondents who might have actually reported from war zones, the rest of the bunch might actually write more useful pieces if they did a little cross dressing, and went as schoolgirls into current war zones in Ukraine, Lebanon, Gaza, or Iran - or any American school, where the chances of actually getting taken out by gun violence are pretty high.

On the downside, the bromancer felt the need to begin with an Orwell quote, yet another example of the mangling of Orwell ...

“Those who abjure violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.”
– George Orwell, Notes on Nationalism, 1945

If only the bromancer had bothered to check, what with those notes being freely available online ...

Context always provides a slightly different resonance, and the pond wishes it could spend more time with Orwell and far less with the bromancer, but that's not the pond's mission ...

In the scene at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Washington Hilton hotel, when a gunman fired shots in the foyer on the floor above the event, one figure stuck out to me.
One Secret Service agent leapt to the front of the stage, directly in front of where Donald Trump was sitting. He was a big fellow and in those seconds he had just one job – to take a bullet fired at Trump. He had a protective vest. But his actions required incredible personal courage. Presidential bodyguards have been shot before, shielding presidents.
(I played an extremely unheroic version of this role myself once. In 1997 I spent a few days trailing Philippines president Fidel Ramos around his country. At a giant national day rally in a big stadium I was part of the president’s party but respectfully sat a metre or so away from him. Move up next to the president, his staff instructed. Later they explained this was so no gunman would be able to get a clear shot at the president. Yikes.)

Oh sheesh, TMI, as the reptiles celebrated with action men, Agents stand ready to fire at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner as Donald Trump, along with other government officials, were evacuated from the Washington Hilton. Picture: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

It won't be too long before the bromancer will get tired of the valourising and then he'll turn to the philosophising, and at that point bromancer cultists will reap their rewards ...

The Secret Service agent’s action underscores a feature we seldom speak of, and that is the central role and necessity of physical courage in the face of violence for our society to function at all, and for peaceful citizens to continue to enjoy peace.
This Anzac Day, we remembered and celebrated that physical courage of tens of thousands of young Australians sent to war. I was surprised and delighted at my Catholic parish last Sunday that the Ode of Remembrance was recited, with its haunting tribute to young lives sacrificed: “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old.” The congregation sang the national anthem as pictures were projected of Diggers going over a ridge and of a navy warship. This occurred after mass so didn’t interfere with any liturgical rite. It was a marvellous recognition of the debt we owe to the courage of soldiers. Importantly, it signified, too, Christian acceptance of the moral virtue of the profession of arms, its necessity and its heroism.
Like the Americans, we exhibit confused paradox in our attitude to violence and courage. Some neighbourhoods are saturated in crime violence. There is something like an epidemic of domestic violence. We don’t have so many guns as the US, but there’s an undercurrent of political intolerance and borderline violence, especially directed by demonstrators against the police.

The pond has absolutely no idea why the bromancer should have been surprised by the recitation of that ode in a Catholic church.

Back in the day, the pond recalls that galumphing marches up and down St. Nicholas's church aisle by school cadets was standard routine for Anzac day, with sprigs of rosemary at the ready...and as for an "undercurrent of political intolerance", apparently the bromancer has yet to catch up with the seething hatred and fear and loathing emanating from News Corps 'assorted jihads, though the reptiles decided to run a few snaps to illustrate the point... Victorian police blasted the anti-war protesters in 2024 who rioted in Melbourne by hurling acid and horse manure at police; Pro-Palestinian and free speech protesters march in Brisbane this month. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Back in the day, it used to be accepted that political protests were permissible and actually an expression of the democratic process, unless you happened to be taking a view of apartheid in Joh's streets ... or perhaps a view of US wars, when the police might be invited to run the b*st*rds over (*google bot safe).

Speaking of the undercurrent of intolerance, how long before the bromancer's own hoppy toads hop into view?

More so even than soldiers, our police are required every day to live out personal, physical courage. Every time a police officer visits a scene of domestic dispute, for example, they run the risk of confronting a violent person, high on ice or something else, armed with a gun or a knife. But if the police don’t go through the front door, the victim has no hope at all.
Courage is essential in many walks of life. Doctors and nurses display courage by exposing themselves to infectious diseases. Firefighters too. Sometimes society needs soldiers or police or even just good citizens in terrible circumstances to lawfully confront violence with violence.
The narcissism of contemporary politics is a social disorder, a mental affliction, which we suffer greatly just now.
It’s the absurd self-indulgence of any of us thinking our particular political views and causes are of such transcendent importance that they justify violence outside the law. This has for many decades been a conscious tactic of the left in Western societies.

And here you have it ...

Thus there are endless calls for “direct action” from campaigners allegedly trying to help the environment, particular racial groups, various gender and sexual preference identities and much else.

You can almost smell the resolute denialism, mingled with a whiff of transphobia and black bashing saturating the air.

So making a political protest? Not in the bromancer's street ...

The direct action call is both corrupt and corrupting.

What's corrupt and corrupting is the notion that ordinary people can't mount political campaigns to make their point known to the wider community.

Inevitably the bromancer went on to confuse such notions with wild-eyed anarchy and lawlessness...

It’s an assertion that I don’t need to abide by the rules that should bind other people. It’s most often directed at police. This has theoretical support among many elements even of mainstream left opinion.
A recent New York Times podcast was titled The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I? The podcast, obviously without justifying murder, accused assassinated healthcare fund chief executive Brian Thompson of practising murderous violence, structural violence as the left often call it, against those failed by the US health system.
The podcasters, though all affluent themselves, approved of theft from supermarkets and the like because the rich are too rich.

Oh dear, been there before, and with bonus Jewish stereotypes ...

At this point the reptiles flung in a snap of the suspect for the moment, a singularly inept and delusional wannabe assassin... Cole Allen, the suspected gunman at the WHCD dinner,

And then the bromancer revealed he really can't let King Donald go ...

For the use of force to be morally justified, the circumstances must be immediately causing great risk and the force must be authorised by law and morality. It’s the tremendous arrogance of individuals, or demonstrators demanding direct action, that believes they don’t have to abide by the rules because their cause is so transcendently important.
Thus the alleged shooter at the White House press corps dinner, Cole Allen, wrote in an almost sickly banal manifesto: “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.” This involves a wild mischaracterisation of alleged crimes by the Trump administration and a supreme arrogance in deciding an individual’s own political judgment is adequate to justify mass murder, as was apparently intended.

Um, actually on the balance of probabilities, a civil court decided that King Donald had committed a form of rape, and depending on your view of what hasn't been explored in the Epstein files, might have been found in an awkward - certainly uncomfortable - position with an underage girl, and could arguably - as an organiser of a coup designed to unseat the US government and ensure his continuing reign - be adjudged to have been a traitor, but the pond will leave others to argue the point.

Instead the pond will end with the bromancer deciding to be insufferably Xian ...

Trump’s exaggerated rhetoric, and the MAGA movement’s generally, creates the same exaggerated hostility and tendency to violence on the right. Right-wing violence is also growing. Both sides of politics are guilty. These trends culminate in suicide terrorists. Suicide is not the same as heroic indifference to danger. Intentional suicide for political ends (without judging those who tragically succumb to despair) comes from a hatred of life. Heroic actions indifferent to danger emerge from the deepest love of life.
Christianity is theologically unique in positing personal physical courage – Christ enduring crucifixion – as manifest in God himself. Anzac Day aside, we too often spurn traditional heroes and courageous warriors.
Yet, in our ignorance and confusion, we need them more than ever.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

About that crucifixion.

How much courage is needed when you're actually supposed to be god, and so you're enduring a little short term pain before heading off to an eternity of godly bliss?

Never mind ...

And so to ancient Troy, providing a slightly different angle on King Donald's Amerika...

The header: America at 250 rewriting its own history in the age of Donald Trump; From renaming the Kennedy Center to removing slavery exhibits at George Washington’s house, Donald Trump has turned America’s birthday year into a presidential vanity project.

The caption for the orange clown: President Donald Trump gestures after speaking at a reception celebrating Women's History Month in the East Room of the White House. Picture: AP

Ancient Troy sounded decidedly gloomy ...

This year marks the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence, agreed by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia in July 1776. The semiquincentennial, however, comes amid deep divisions in the US, its animating goals and ambitions being revisited and reconsidered, and its global leadership in retreat.
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump underscores the polarisation. There is no justification for it; there is no place for violence in democracy. Sadly, though, America was born in violent struggle and its politics has always been marred by it. Four presidents have been assassinated and many more, in office or out, have survived attempts on their lives.
I recently returned from two weeks in the US, travelling through the original colonies that banded together to fight a bloody revolution for independence from Britain and rise to become a 20th-century giant with immense economic, military and cultural power, authority and influence.

In particular, he didn't seem to have much time for the king, currently consorting with another king ... ‘Character matters and Trump … is an embarrassment to most Americans.’ Picture: Getty

Fair dibs ...

Ancient Troy clearly spent too much time talking to punters in the field ...

It remains extraordinary that a small group of people such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Samuel and John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison could emerge at such a time and place to inspire a people to rise up and win their freedom from a powerful empire.
How that remarkable story is remembered and retold is under challenge in the US, along with the ideals and aspirations of the founders and the revolutionary generation about how they should be governed and led, during the second Trump presidency.
Everywhere I went, from Boston to New York, Philadelphia to Richmond and Washington DC, Americans went out of their way to apologise for the divisions in their country and the actions of their President.
These comments came from people on subways or in bars, at museums and galleries, memorials and battlefields.
Character matters and Trump, though long a bully and braggart, repulsive and outrageous, is an embarrassment to most Americans. He is profoundly unpopular.

Profoundly unpopular? That's a rare acknowledgement from a reptile, though if the world continues in dire straits, it might get even more profound than profound ... Tankers and cargo ships anchored off the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas, which sits on the Strait of Hormuz. Picture: ISNA / AFP

Ancient Troy didn't hold back ...

The Iran war has been a disaster and could plunge the world into recession. Trump’s MAGA movement is splintering and one-time allies are openly criticising him and apologising for having supported him.
What struck me most was the visceral reaction of everyday Americans to Trump’s treatment of longstanding allies and friendly nations, namely Canada and Denmark’s Greenland, with threats of invasion, but also his treatment of Ukraine and NATO countries, and other nations that have endured punitive tariffs, nasty social media posts and Oval Office reprimands.
It is one thing for Trump to treat people with contempt in his own country, to corruptly enrich himself, shatter norms and conventions of presidential behaviour, flout laws and ignore congress and courts, pardon or commute sentences of Capitol rioters and those who assaulted police, and attempt to overturn an election.
It is another thing entirely to humiliate and intimidate nations that Americans like and respect.
Australia has been a steadfast friend and ally, alongside disastrous wars in Vietnam and Iraq, and hosts a growing US military presence. Why treat us so appallingly?
Trump’s self-aggrandisement also troubles Americans. Presidential faces and names are carved in marble and stone mountains, appear on notes and coins, and designate roads, bridges and schools. These usually come long after a president has exited the White House. But Trump, with his unchecked ego and vanity, is seeking to remake the US in his image. This personal glorification of a president in office is without precedent. It is what you usually see in a dictatorship, authoritarian regime or military junta.

It's all too little and too late, and too irrelevant, what with the lizard Oz not a big mover and shaker in the United States, and Faux Noise still determined to note the slightest deviance from the MAGA bandwagon ...‘Ugh!’ Fox News Host Groans After Being Told Jimmy Kimmel’s Ratings Are Up Amidst Widow-Gate

Most concerning in this semiquincentennial year is Trump’s attempt to whitewash and rewrite history.

Ancient Troy kept brooding in a way that suggested he might want to join the Graudian ...

A huge banner of Trump’s face drapes over the departments of Justice, Agriculture and Labour. The US Institute of Peace was renamed for him. And he renamed the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts so his name prefaces the former president. His signature will appear on dollar bills and his face on new coins. His face also will be on tickets to national park sites.
There are plans for Trump-class battleships and several government programs already bear his name such as the $US5m ($6.98m) Trump Gold Card visa.
Trump tore up the White House rose garden, demolished the East Wing to build an oversized ballroom and decorated the walls with garish gold filigree as if it were Trump Tower. The adjacent 1888 Eisenhower Executive Office Building is to be painted white.
Most concerning in this semiquincentennial year is Trump’s attempt to whitewash and rewrite history. Philadelphia has become an early battleground for Trump’s MAGA-style assault on the past.
Near Independence Hall is the site of the President’s House. Washington lived at the site as president with his slaves (1790-97). Trump’s executive order Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History requires anything at a federal site that “inappropriately disparage(s) Americans past or living” to be removed. In January, the factual text-and-image boards that chronicled slavery at the President’s House were removed.

Next came a snap of a suffering victim... Kim Sajet, former director of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, was fired by Donald Trump who claimed she was ‘highly partisan’. Picture: Getty

And that was about that ...

Dozens of monuments, parks and museums also have had content removed.
As a result, the President’s House site, next to the Liberty Bell, has been activated as a place of protest. Americans are turning up in their thousands to add their voice and words of dissent.

Steady on, the cluck-clucking and tut-tutting bromancer explained exactly what that sort of behaviour means.

You can't just go adding voices and words of dissent willy-nilly in public. Please bromancer, remind ancient Troy ...

The direct action call is both corrupt and corrupting.

QED. America is both corrupt and corrupting.

The pond simply had to put ancient Troy in his place as he wallowed in pity ...

The site remains largely stripped but a legal challenge by the City of Philadelphia has prevented Trump’s version of history adorning the walls.
Slavery is at the heart of the American story. It is the original sin. Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were slave owners. Yet they adopted Jefferson’s wording that “all men are created equal”. It took a civil war to end slavery and another century before civil rights were enshrined in law.
Ahead of the 250th anniversary, it is a pity the US is so fractured and violence – shootings, terrorist attacks and attempted assassinations – is part of everyday life. At a bar in Philadelphia, a man sought to reassure me: “We are much better than our political leaders and we don’t all hate each other.”
That faith in America will be sorely tested this year.

They don't all hate each other?

Can't say that for uncle Leon and scamming Sam ... (and that New Yorker profile mentioned by Wired can be found as ...

Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?
New interviews and closely guarded documents shed light on the persistent doubts about the head of OpenAI (*intermittent archive link)

The pond went there because John Oliver had another go at AI on the weekend, written up at the Graudian as

John Oliver on AI chatbots: ‘Behind that machine is a corporation trying to extract a monthly fee from you’

The Last Week Tonight host dug into the many issues with AI chatbots released on the public without proper safety guardrails, from sycophancy to sexualizing children

And it provided a nice segue to a closing toon ...

Tough times for King Chuck, Sir Keir, and Maggie Thatcher's legacy, but perhaps the bromancer will sort it out ...(please, no Falkland Island street protests) ...

Or perhaps this is more to Dame Groan's taste ...

In which Killer of the IPA and Major Mitchell get the holyday Monday nod, with commendations for some reptile triers (and they can be very trying)...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 22:07:00 +0000

Knock the pond down again.

Just after John Birmingham had his EV rant and linked to The Drive, a certain Lisa Visentin did it again in the Nine rags with ‘Made in China’ EVs are taking over the streets, but just how safe is your data? (*intermittent archive link)

Lisa rabbited on endlessly about the dangers of the perfidious Chinese, but what of Uncle Leon getting all your data? How weird and deviant is that, but only deemed worthy of a sideways mention.

And what of all the data collection by German and Indian and American manufacturers? What, if you own a reasonably modern gas guzzler, will happen to all the data stored in your OBD port? Like in your Merc?

Not to worry, it's just standard rant suffused with paranoid fear of the Chinese.

Well Chairman Xi is welcome to the pond's data, though the pond suspects that a weekly trip to do groceries might result in extreme ennui for him.

As for celebrities and "important people", take note of whatever your vehicle is doing, be it EV or gas guzzler, because all forms of modern cars collects data and your friendly local mechanic can download it and tip off your local Daily Terror reporter.

And so to the reptiles this holiday Monday (it's a holiday here and tough luck if you don't get seasonal benefits).

The Lynch mob was out and about scribbling ...

Latest assassination attempt reveals power of Trump’s luck
It turns out luck is an important ingredient of presidential success – the luck of staying alive perhaps chief among them.
By Timothy Lynch
Contributor

The pond supposes it should pay some attention to the latest attempt to whack the King, but "Luck" is a funny way to describe the singular incompetence of the wannabe assassin, matched only by the singular incompetence of the security team surrounding King Donald.

The pond doesn't want to spend a long time defaming the University of Melbourne, and so offers only this closing gobbet (spoiler alert) as part of the ongoing evidence...

...Having spent my career in the social sciences, I’m struck by how resistant the field has been to this insight. We tend to privilege grand, monocausal explanations. For much of the past century and a half, Marxian economic determinism cast a long shadow over the humanities.
More recently, class has given way to analytical frameworks that foreground race and gender as primary engines of historical change. What unites these approaches is a shared discomfort with chance: an impulse to impose coherence and necessity where accident and unpredictability so often rule.
An academic lifetime can pass in the patient work of making the evidence line up with one’s favoured structure. Trump’s failed assassins force us to appreciate the man’s sheer good fortune unrelated to any underlying structural factors. It turns out luck (what the great theorist of executive power, Niccolo Machiavelli, called “fortuna”) is an important ingredient of presidential success – the luck of staying alive perhaps chief among them.
The 46 men who have been president of the United States are among the most studied in history. And yet it is less what political scientists call structure and more fate that controls the destiny of this select group of men. It is often blind chance and good luck which explains why we have such contrasting presidencies to assess.
It is uncomfortable to admit that “crazy people” and “whack jobs” can change history. But Trump is living proof of this claim.

Talk about a whack job ...

Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne

It's hard to know where to begin with that sort of mystical nonsense - the answer apparently lies in the soil - so the pond didn't bother...

Additionally the pond decided not to participate in the latest round of lizard Oz black bashing ...

If welcomes to country were used sparingly, they’d acquire broader support
Indigenous Australians have served with distinction, but on Anzac Day that service is part of the same story, not a separate one.
By Louise Clegg

Thank the long absent lord the intermittent archive is up and running this day, so the pond need only do a teaser trailer with the closer ...

...In Goulburn, where I live, our local RSL committee has always taken a wise approach, consistent with what occurs in many country towns. The Anzac Day service proceeds without a welcome to country or an Indigenous flag. No statement is made about it. No point is proved. No one from our Indigenous community has ever complained about its absence. It is simply understood that, on this day, many people come for a particular kind of remembrance, and that nothing should be introduced that risks unsettling that shared purpose.
Anzac Day does not require augmentation. It is not an occasion to layer on another strand of our national story.
Indigenous Australians have served this country with distinction, and their sacrifice forms part of the Anzac story. But on Anzac Day that service is part of the same story, not a separate one. The losses are equal. The grief is equal. The remembrance is shared.
It is a blessing that governments bear no responsibility for Anzac Day. But those in the RSL responsible for designing services in our major cities would be wise to follow the commonsense approach of their country counterparts.

Well played Louise. You didn't actually applaud the booers, the neo-Nazis and the white supremacists, but you provided fine arguments for them and incidentally, for some peculiar reason, bolstered the bigoted beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way in his bigotry ... as he heads down the road of becoming an extreme right warrior at one with Pauline ...

The pond also avoided the latest example of the latest reptile jihad ... an endless fascination with Lattouf ...

Lattouf’s latest career move appears to be no joke
Post ABC saga, Antoinette Lattouf’s career takes a funny direction
After attempting to reduce Ita Buttrose’s immense publishing legacy to an ABC saga, the controversial figure seems to be giving up journalism for another pursuit.
By Steve Jackson

There's something awesomely sick (and fully sickening) in the way the reptiles keep up their jihads long after everybody else has stopped caring, or tries to muster up the slightest interest.

The pond will note for the record the bog standard offering by simpleton Simon ...

Labor’s overall tax take is headed in one direction
Chalmers is promising tax reform, but all the so-called reforms floated appear to amount to the overall tax take going in one direction.
By Simon Benson

Contrary to the reptiles, the pond doesn't mind the rich being asked to shoulder a little of society's burdens, but does admire the way that the supine lickspittle reptiles of Oz serve their rich masters.

That noted, for bashing Jimbo or offering economic advice,the pond will rarely stray beyond Dame Groan or Killer of the IPA, and his Killernomics was on parade this day ...

The header: Move over, Gough. PM’s spending addiction won’t age well; After almost four years of the Albanese government, it’s time to declare it worse than Gough Whitlam’s.

The caption: Anthony Albanese leaves the Museum of Australian Democracy in Canberra after delivering his speech, 50 years since Gough Whitlam's shock dismissal. Picture: Martin Ollman

The pond has noted this tendency before - the way that the reptiles love to romp in ancient times, presumably because anyone under seventy doesn't qualify as part of the demographic.

The pond supposes that a 50 year anniversary should cut some sort of mustard, but the dismissal took place on the 11th November, which is a long way from the 27th April.

Couldn't have Killer saved his rant to then?

Well no, Gough's not really the point. He's just a sock puppet from ancient times that Killer can use as a clumsy cudgel to give comrade Albo a pounding, though the pond has a few bob (verifiable shillings) on Kalshi betting that it has absolutely diddly squat meaning for vulgar youff ...

After almost four years of the Albanese government, it’s time to declare it worse than Gough Whitlam’s. The polarising former Labor leader led a chaotic, short-lived government in the early 1970s that ended spectacularly, but this government’s legacy will ultimately be worse, both culturally and economically.
Nations can deteriorate for reasons beyond their control; invading foreign armies or, less dramatically, a severe slump in demand for their exports. We’ve endured none of that yet living standards have been slipping by more than any other developed nation, largely through deliberate policy choices, including massive immigration levels and destruction of a once reliable cheap energy grid.
For all the talk of social cohesion, the national mood and sense of collective purpose is weaker than ever, amid extreme crackdowns on free speech that Whitlam would have thought unthinkable. GDP per capita, a common proxy for living standards, has steadily fallen in roughly two-thirds of the last 15 quarters – the longest sustained decline ever.
Even on the government’s own biased measures (which exclude the price of buying a home, interest rates and taxes), real wages (after inflation) are down more than 6 per cent since 2020.
At least Gough, who also had the redeeming quality of eloquence and erudition, occasionally displayed some economic sense. His government cut tariffs by 25 per cent across the board in 1973, helping open Australia up to the world.
The Albanese government’s contributions have been a roll call of recklessness, spending billions to buy university student votes, $300 electricity bill handouts, supercharging doctors’ incomes with $8.5bn of “incentives”, and bailing out steelworks and smelters its own emissions policies had made unviable. Meanwhile the NDIS, the centrepiece of the government’s so-called “care economy”, remains a policy disaster of epic proportions, and threatens to corrupt the entire nation.

For some reason the reptiles were determined to undermine Killer's work by reminding the geriatric demographic that he wasn't actually scribbling on the actual anniversary ...

Gough Whitlam addresses the crowds from the steps of Parliament House after his dismissal by Sir John Kerr, November 11, 1975. Picture: National Archives

And here we are on the 27th April, and the pond reckons this "we'll all be rooned" routine is up there with Dame Groan's always reliable output ...

Quite aside from a fiscal cost near the defence budget, the share of Australians who claim to be disabled has shot up from 17.7 per cent to 21.4 per cent in only a few years on ABS figures.
At the same time, Anthony Albanese is seeking to make childcare universal and publicly funded, adding a whole vast new layer of bureaucracy and cost at a time relentless bracket creep struggles to keep up with federal spending growth above 8 per cent a year.
Gough lifted federal spending from around 18 per cent to 24 per cent of GDP, where it roughly was when Labor won the 2022 election.
Canberra’s footprint will be almost 27 per cent by June, the biggest ever outside the Covid pandemic years, and only the naive would believe federal spending growth will collapse from 8.2 per cent this financial year to 3.1 per cent next, as the latest budget update predicts.
Whitlam famously expanded the commonwealth bureaucracy, lifting public service numbers by more than 20 per cent in just three years. Yet the Albanese government added roughly 40,000 federal public servants in his first few years, a larger increase in raw numbers, albeit from a far higher base. With a third term quite possible, Albanese could easily beat Whitlam on these measures too.

How weird does it get? Well to make sure that comrade Albo goes under the hammer, Killer of the IPA has to indulge in rampant reptile heresy ...

Gough ran a more fiscally honest administration, running budget surpluses every year of his administration.

Is Killer suggesting the Dismissal was wrong?!

Stunning stuff ... and the pond almost thought of referring Killer to the reptile Inquisition for the misrepresentation of reptile history:

Federal public debt recently burst through $1 trillion, and Jim Chalmers has pencilled in $35bn federal deficits in each of the next four years as the soaring tax take fails to keep pace with spending.
Whitlam was honest about his intentions whereas Australia under Albanese is becoming a command economy by stealth.
Gough had the 1973 oil price shock to deal with too, in which oil prices almost quadrupled overnight, pushing up inflation in our then highly oil-dependent economy to almost 18 per cent.
Even before the latest Middle East war broke out, Australia’s inflation rate was almost 4 per cent, the highest in the OECD outside Turkey, and rising.

The pond supposes that these days it wouldn't be a proper reptile piece without the Bolter and the Canavan caravan joining in the parade ...

Nationals Senator Matt Canavan comments on Anthony Albanese’s reigniting the dismissal of Gough Whitlam 50 years later. “We’ve always known that the reason Anthony Albanese is in politics is to fight Tories,” Mr Canavan told Sky News host Andrew Bolt. “Perhaps it would be better, though, if Anthony Albanese’s purpose was to lift the standards of all Australians.”

Killer followed up that visitation by a final gobbet of despair ...

Whitlam didn’t enjoy the extraordinary global demand for Australia’s resources Canberra still does, providing a deluge of company tax revenue that helps paper over the economy’s otherwise structural weakness.
No wonder the nation’s productivity growth over the past five years has averaged -0.4 per cent, the worst period on record, dragged down by an ever-larger non-market sector, according to the Productivity Commission. Around four-fifths of all new jobs are in the government or de facto government sector, something unthinkable in Gough’s day.
Whitlam made university education free when academic standards were still high and very few people attended. His government full dismantled the remnants of the White Australia policy but he didn’t seek to flood the nation with millions of workers from developing countries in a way that would obviously undermine native-born Australians’ quality of life and incomes.
Look no further than speculation leading up to the May budget for hard evidence of the weakness and cluelessness of the current government, despite having a huge parliamentary majority. Reducing spending growth of the NDIS from above 10 per cent to near 5 per cent sometime over the next few years is supposed to be a highlight.
Some minor changes to the capital gains tax regime are also planned – in the only budget far enough out from the next election where the government could actually make difficult decisions that would upset its voter base. Voters increasingly take the same dim view: Labor was thrashed at the 1975 election yet still managed to pull just over 40 per cent of the primary vote; 50 years later the party will be lucky to win 30 per cent at the next election.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Well played Killer, though the pond did wonder if the country, seemingly having survived Gough, might also survive time with comrade Albo.

After all, we survived the onion muncher and Malware, so anything is possible ...

And after that burst of Killernomics and in the absence of the Caterist, the pond turned to the Major for a standard serve of Monday bigotry and bile.

Before beginning, the pond should note this delicious splash in Crikey (sorry, it's behind a paywall)

Just the header will do, and in a perverse way, it sets a tone for the Major's musings ...

The header: Let’s stop tiptoeing around Islamic intolerance and immigration; Australia needs to adopt a mature focus on the cultural integration of migrants, and the media must shed its naivety about multiculturalism.

The caption: Accused Bondi gunman Naveed Akram studied under ISIS-linked radical preacher Wissam Haddad in Sydney’s Bankstown Picture: Matrix News for the Daily Mail

The notion that the Major would ever tiptoe when he can perform like a bigoted bull in a China shop is a whimsical one.

The aim here is to bolster the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn's way in his attempt to start up a kind of war King Donald style down under.

It's part of an ongoing paranoid campaign, jihad if you will ...

Former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott was a speaker at the event. His speech had the title, "Mass migration across the Anglosphere must cease". (ABC here)

How naked can it get? Even more than that serve of white Xian nationalism?

As ugly as the way that King Donald has divided America and incidentally contributed to the ruination of many businesses that rely on migrant labour ...

Enough already with the introductions, time to get with the Major, chomping on his bigoted oats ...

Journalists are often quick to channel discussions about immigration into questions of political motivation.
ABC Insiders host David Speers was keen on April 19 to move the discussion on when both The Australian Financial Review’s Jennifer Hewett and news.com.au’s Samantha Maiden mentioned public concern about immigration.
Speers and his panel, which also included journalist Osman Faruqi, were discussing a speech by Opposition Leader Angus Taylor on April 14. Taylor flagged a new values test and other measures to vet potential immigrants.
Speers framed Taylor’s speech as a strategy for the May 9 Farrer by-election designed to boost the Coalition’s prospects against a surging One Nation.
Pakistan-born Faruqi, son of Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi and a one-time adviser to former Senator Lee Rhiannon, was sure the pivot would not work.
Hewett thought many Australians, including those not backing One Nation, were concerned immigration was too high. She said the Coalition was sending a coded message about values because it did not want to mention Muslim immigrants and thought Taylor was being careful not to offend Chinese and Indian migrants by not outlining specific cuts to the program.
Maiden said many social democrat governments were having similar discussions about migration, and referenced Denmark.
Hewett said more than 31 per cent of Australians today were born overseas, double the numbers in the UK and US.
Speers, Maiden and Faruqi seemed to agree Taylor’s approach “may not be racist enough” to appeal to One Nation voters but too racist for others.

Oh be fair, he's working hard to become a modern day Pauline, giving her preferences and doing all the things that racists do, and just to make sure we know this is a tribute to his ways, the reptiles slipped in a hagiographic snap of the bigot in chief, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has flagged a new values test. Picture: John Gass

Black people, brown people? He, and Louise and the Major have got it all covered ...

Taylor was motivated by One Nation’s poll surge. But Australia has been tiptoeing around the edges of wider issues about integration and multiculturalism since the September 2001 terror attacks in the US and the Bali bombings a year later.
This newspaper editorialised many times back then that democracies needed to be careful about allowing intolerant groups into nations built on the idea of tolerance: how much intolerance can a social democracy tolerate before its very nature is undermined?
That’s the question the Danes addressed in 2018 when they decided all Muslim immigrant children were to learn Danish, read Danish stories and taught the meaning of Christmas and Easter.
Denmark was rocked by Islamic intolerance in 2005 when a Danish newspaper published 12 cartoonists’ images of Mohammed. Nearly 200 people were killed in riots around the world and Danish embassies were targeted.
The English literary set got its Muslim tolerance wake-up much earlier, in 1989, when Iran’s first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against writer Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses.
France in 2010 banned the wearing of Muslim full-face veils in public. The January 2015 Charlie Hebdo murders of 17 people, again over cartoons Muslims considered disrespectful to Islam, forced France tore-examine its attitude to one of Europe’s largest Muslim populations. France has seven million Muslim immigrants, about nine per cent of its population.
The controversial 2015 novel Submission, by French writer Michel Houellebecq, was a hit in France and Germany. It centres on the fictional 2022 election of a Muslim government in France and was branded “Islamophobic”.
The issue was turbocharged again by the 2017 publication of conservative UK journalist Douglas Murray’s examination of Islam’s expanding European footprint, The Strange Death of Europe.
In Australia it was crickets, for the most part.
But weekly demonstrations for more than two years supporting Palestine (in effect Hamas) and Iran, and the massacre of 15 people at Bondi on December 14, are changing that.
It was different after the Bali bombing and again in 2013-15 when some Muslim Australians went to Syria to fight for ISIS.
The ABC and left media between 2001 and 2015 largely ignored investigating domestic Muslim extremism, but it was covered extensively in The Australian by the likes of Cameron Stewart, Paul Maley, Martin Chulov and Sally Neighbour.
The ABC criticised The Australian in 2014 for publishing a page one photo of Sydney terrorist Khaled Sharrouf in Syria with his son carrying a severed head.

The pond wasn't surprised that the Major would revert to sensationalist glory days, so the least the pond could do was downsize the image ... The front page of The Australian on Monday, August 11, 2014

As tacky as it ever was ... but don't expect the Major or the reptiles to show a snap of some schoolgirl graveyards ...

There's no end to the atrocities to fuel the rage on both sides.

The Major carried on ...

Again, the newspaper was criticised when it hired an Arabic-speaking Druze journalist to attend mosques in Sydney and Melbourne.

At this point the pond must interrupt to note the way that logarithms can play funny tricks, in a way that makes you doubt your sanity.

For some reason an actual Tucker Carlson monologue turned up on the pond's feed. The pond only watched the monologue bit of Tucker responds to Israel's Attacks on Jesus Christ ...and only includes the link here because it's certain to offend the Major ...(strong warning, it's the first time the pond ever saw a Carlson monologue. Do you really need to soil yourself? Do you really need to encourage the criminal behaviour of the pond's logarithms?)

Now the Bondi massacre has forced the wider media to look at extremist hate preachers.
Journalists need to look at the role of the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates that are taking a long view of the demographic challenges Islam presents the West.
The Jerusalem Post on December 18 published a piece under the headline ‘Europe is sleepwalking into the Muslim Brotherhood’s long game’ by veteran British diplomat Edmund Fitton-Brown and security and counter-terrorism expert Eran M. Teboul.
The article opens with a 2007 quote from the late Brotherhood intellectual Yusuf al-Qaradawi: “Islam will conquer Europe without resorting to the sword or fighting. It will do this through da’wah and ideology.”
Those, and a much higher birthrate than their host nations.
Da’wah is “education, charity and social aid, meant to bring others closer to Islam”.
In Australia, alleged Bondi shooter Naveed Akram studied under ISIS-linked radical preacher Wissam Haddad at the Al Madina Dawah Centre in Sydney’s Bankstown.

As expected, it didn't take long for the Major to drift off into Australian Daily Zionist News speak ...

Islamic preacher Wissam Haddad has faced court over alleged anti-Semitic speeches. Picture: Jane Dempster

The Jerusalem Post is a fine complement to the Australian Daily Zionist News ...

The Jerusalem Post points out the Brotherhood has been banned in Egypt and most Gulf countries for 30 years, but is thriving in Europe.
“The basic freedoms and rights given by European democracies are an enabler. Freedom of speech enables endless … protests against Israel.
“Freedom of religion is exploited to allow hate preaching. Freedom of the press allows … ubiquitous penetration by Al Jazeera.
“Freedom of association is exploited by charities and political action groups, whilst the right to privacy offers a firewall for activities hostile to the host nation.”
It’s not just Europe.
Islamists are murdering Christians in Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan. Readers who follow MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) will be aware of rising activism by Muslim hate preachers in the US.
Dearborn, Michigan, is 55 per cent Muslim.
Its Muslim mayor last September demanded a Christian minister on the city’s council leave Dearborn after criticising the renaming of an intersection after a prominent Hezbollah supporter.
Christianity was not long ago the dominant religion in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt (Coptic), Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya. Sudan and Somalia were Christian and animist.

At this point, having had his fun, the Major slipped in an obligatory billy goat butt, in the form of a "none":

None of this means most Muslims here are not good Australians. Nor at only three per cent of the population is Islam likely to become our dominant religion.

But as soon as you get that sort of butt, as sure as hell you're going to get another butt ...

But we do need a mature focus on integration and less naivety about multiculturalism.

But that means diddly squat, a faux attempt at meaningless piety, with "mature" and "naivety" flung about as a way to soften the rampant bigotry.

Cue a final snap ...Dr Jamal Rifi has worked to stop young Sydney Muslims joining ISIS in Syria. Picture: John Feder

One thing's certain.

Each time the pond reads the lizards of Oz, it gets dangerously radicalised and this sort of closing puffery does nothing to help ...

This newspaper in 2015 made Lebanese-born doctor Jamal Rifi – a campaigner against the Muslim Votes Matter group at last year’s federal election – its Australian of the Year. Rifi had worked to stop young Sydney Muslims joining ISIS in Syria.
Sky News Australia chief executive Paul Whittaker, then editor of The Daily Telegraph, awarded Rifi the newspaper’s Pride of Australia Fair Go Medal the previous year.
It was a time when newspapers had the resources to cover the ethnic tribes of our biggest cities.

The pond has nothing against Jamal Rifi, except perhaps that he's sailed too close to the reptile sun.

But isn't he one of those pesky, difficult furriners the beefy boofhead and the lizards of Oz keep warning us about?

And speaking of privacy of data, as Lisa did at the start of the show, here's some juice for her next piece ...

And so to end with a little bit of light holyday fun ... (speaking of strange logarithms) ...

In which the Angelic one sets the pace for prattling Polonius, the disgraced Pelluzzo and the lizard Oz editorialist...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 22:00:00 +0000

Knock the pond down with a feather and pleased, do it gently.

The pond had to do a double take, and then save this lizard Oz piece for the meditative Sunday outing ...

Amidst all the war mongering and carry on that came with yesterday's Australian Daily Zionist News, the Angelic one turned up with this ...

Two Anzac brothers’ horror: gassed, amputated, traumatised
A family’s sixth-generation Australian story reveals the devastating truth about what happened when young men ignored warnings about a ‘foreign war’.
By Angela Shanahan

It's there in the intermittent archive.

The pond didn't need to relive the "great" war narrative through the lives the Angelic one describes.

There are millions of such stories, and this is the time of year the pond gets triggered and is reminded of a deeply unhappy grandfather who served as a machine gunner in the battle of the Somme.

He returned home a shell of a man, tormented by nightmares, and the pond doesn't need to be reminded of his alcohol-fuelled rages.

But the Angelic one's wrap up to her piece commanded the pond's attention ...

...After the war both brothers felt fortunate to get out of the army alive. Neither was interested in Anzac Day and, like most returned soldiers, would not speak outside the family about something they regarded as unspeakable. Instead they both carried on in their careers. Fred had a family and drove a specially altered Buick car. Ernest stayed in the family tailoring business, always immaculately dressed, and spent many long afternoons at the races with handy visits to us in Randwick.
When I hear very young people today parroting jingoistic claptrap they have overheard about the original Anzacs “fighting for Australia”, I always think about those two, who fortunately survived to realise the error of joining in 1915. I also think about them when I hear failed politicians, commentators and other armchair warriors wanting “boots on the ground” for yet another failed enterprise on the other side of the world – just as futile as that war that was supposed to end all wars.

Say what?

The pond was beguiled and entranced by the Angelic one's talk of jingoistic claptrap - of the kind that litters the lizard Oz - followed by talk of commentators and armchair warriors wanting boots on the ground for yet another failed enterprise.

It's as if she'd read the bromancer and the dog botherer, and decided to take aim at those failed commentators and armchair warriors, and by extension the whole of the useless rag.

Who knew that the pond and the Angelic one could share a moment?

Who knew she'd preemptively dismiss all that claptrap that turns up down below?

It made the pond's day, it lifted the spirits, and it was sorely needed because ... prattling Polonius ... armchair warrior and failed commentator supreme ...

The header: Australian War Memorial becomes a battleground; Critics claim Anzac Day no longer connects with multicultural Australia, but the commemoration remains vital for a nation built on sacrifice and democratic values.

The caption which doesn't identify the rogues who decided to drag a Shetland pony into the affair: Soldiers of the 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR), march through the town of Charters Towers as part of the Anzac Day Parade along with their unit mascot Septimus Quintus.

It didn't take Polonius long to get into war monger mode ...

It’s increasingly fashionable among the left intelligentsia these days to query the point of Anzac Day. Come to think of it, mocking April 25 and what it stands for was around in the 1960s. What’s different now is that a target of the criticism is the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Last Monday, historian Peter Stanley was interviewed by David Marr on ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live program. Stanley maintains that the Australian War Memorial turned itself into a tourist attraction 20 years ago. Presumably it’s a case of “travellers” looking down on mere “tourists”.
It was one of those interviews where Marr essentially agreed with Stanley and Stanley essentially agreed with Marr.
Asked about the challenges to the way in which we will celebrate Anzac Day in the near future, Stanley replied that one of the big differences is the sheer changes in Australian demography. He said the Australia that created Anzac Day was 95 per cent, or thereabouts, Anglo-Celtic.
Stanley’s argument is that, if we are not careful, we will have a society in which a section has, at times, an intense but mostly lukewarm connection to Anzac Day. And another large minority that feels no connection to April 25.
We shall see. It is my experience that crowds at Anzac Day football matches these days are probably more attentive to the remembrance part of the occasion than they were a half-century ago when commercial sport was first played on April 25.

The pond was bemused.

Is Polonius a footy freak, so much so that he's attended matches for half a century and so is in a position to provide a judicious survey and summary of the mood of the punters.

Does he have a team?

It seems so ...

The great Gerard Henderson, the Executive Director of the Sydney Institute is from Melbourne. He loves his AFL, and I couldn’t resist referring to his beloved Essendon Football Club, which, just like the Liberal Party, had once experienced success but now had fallen on hard times and was accused by its critics of ‘lacking an identity’. (Essendon hasn’t won a final in twenty years.) (Here)

So he's a fanatic, and worse, a loser fanatic, and the pond couldn't help but think less of him for it ...as Polonius went on to serve up some standard Australian Daily Zionist News fare ...

Stanley’s experience is of a Canberra-based academic who was the principal historian at the Australian War Memorial between 1980 and 2007. That is, before it (allegedly) became a tourist attraction.
What I have noticed has been different about Anzac Day in the Sydney CBD in recent years is the appearance of large concrete boulders at or near the path of the Anzac Day march.
By April 25, they will have been moved in place to protect the men, women and children who will be participating in or watching the procession. The concrete slabs complement the bollards that have appeared gradually on Australian city streets since the terrorist attack on the US on September 11, 2001.
Sadly, there were no concrete barriers or bollards or adequate NSW Police protection in place on December 14 last year when Australia experienced its worst terrorist attack in history. The shooters were followers of radical Islam who chose to target the Jewish Australian community gathered at Bondi Beach to celebrate the Jewish feast of Hanukkah. As The Australian reported on April 23, Islamic State has urged Muslims to follow the example of the Bondi shooters.
According to Stanley, April 25 should be devoted to commemorating “the people who arrive in this country having experienced war first-hand, not wars that Australians were involved in but wars that they were involved in”. He mentioned Sudanese, Afghans, Congolese and Rwandans. But not, for some reason, the Vietnamese. Maybe because they were/are overwhelmingly anti-communist.

The pond suspects that Polonius will never be able to let go the way the Vietnam war went down.

Cf Appropriate time to debunk myths of Vietnam War; So much misinformation is still propagated about Australia’s most controversial military engagement. Most of it on the ABC.

Inter alia ...

The pond particularly likes that last one ...

Myth: Australians fought and died in Vietnam in vain. As Edwards acknowledges in his official history, the US-led commitment in Vietnam delayed a communist victory by a decade. Former Singapore leader Lee Kuan Yew pointed out that the time delay meant the non-communist nations of Southeast Asia were better able to withstand communist insurgencies in the mid-1970s than if they had taken place earlier.

... (a) because of what happened in Southeast Asian countries of the Cambodian kind after a dinkum Kissingering, and (b) because there's not that much difference between the soft authoritarianism of the government of Singapore and other forms of authoritarian rule.

But the pond digresses ...

This overlooks the fact Australia is what it is today – a tolerant democracy – because others have fought and died for the nation.
As John Terraine pointed out in his book The Great War 1914-18 (Hutchinson, 1965), Australia played a key role in the military victories on the Western Front that led to the defeat of imperial Germany. So did other parts of what was called the British Empire – namely, India, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa – during the course of the conflict.
Left-wing journalist John Pilger always claimed that Australia fought what he termed “other people’s wars”. This overlooked the fact that in 1914-18 Germany was a Pacific power and a German victory would have led to a different Australia than exists today.
At the end of the war, the First Australian Imperial Force was led by Sir John Monash – a Jewish Australian of Prussian background. It is a matter of record that when he marched in the Anzac Day procession, Monash and his comrades did not need the protection of concrete slabs and bollards.

And so there came more cognitive dissonance for the pond, what with "a tolerant democracy" being followed by a mention of Monash, who definitely needed protection from the Melbourne Club's black ball.

In fact Monash ... had declined membership in a prominent Melbourne club because that club had a rule barring Jews and he “would not give the club the opportunity to make distinctions in his case.” (here)

In fact, the Melbourne club continued its bigotry for a long time - witness Thomas Keneally getting agitated about the club in February 1994 (Trove link)

It seems it's not just idle lefties that can claim a history of anti-Semitism - the Melbourne establishment knew how to do it in style.

And now it's time for the final Polonial gobbet ...

The Australian Defence Force also played an important role in the military victories over Nazi Germany in northern Africa, imperial Japan in the Pacific and in assisting South Korea to hold off aggression from communist North Korea. The ADF helped non-communist South Vietnam to hold out against communist North Vietnam for a decade. In the words of former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, this delay helped stabilise Southeast Asia between the mid-1960s and the mid-70s. A smaller ADF force performed well in Afghanistan and Iraq in extremely difficult circumstances.
The point that Stanley overlooks is that, without the survival of a democratic Australia, the refugees who came to this country in recent decades would not be here.
Moreover, Stanley ignores the fact many immigrants who arrived in Australia before and after 1945 and their descendants understand Australia and appreciate the security and high living standards it has provided. There will be many Australians of non-Anglo Celtic background honouring the fallen on April 25.
Despite the prevalence of the alienated left in educational institutions and sections of the media, patriotism in Australia is still alive. As someone who has opposed One Nation since it emerged 30 years ago, it is a regrettable fact that the movement has benefited because, in some sense, Australia is not the nation it once was.
According to a recent study by the Australian Population Research Institute in Melbourne, “there is a large patriotic constituency who are potentially mobilisable around right-leaning causes”. The study calls them “Australian Firsters” who are patriots with a strong sense of belonging to Australia. Their number is estimated at 60 per cent.
The study finds that what it calls “Australia’s surge to the right” occurred following “the sustained pro-Palestine and anti-Israel street protests” in late 2025 and early 2026. Along with the Bondi massacre. The task of the Coalition and Labor is to win back as many of these patriotic Australians as possible. Many will be gathered honouring the fallen on April 25. Including those at the Australian War Memorial where the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier can be found.

As soon as Polonius mentioned that study, the pond had to go and look it up.

Unfortunately there was no direct link to the study (in docx form) but maybe it'll hang around in discoverable form on the site for a while.

This was the pitch for it ...

Australia’s surge to the right: How far can it go?
April 2026
Bob Birrell, Katharine Betts and Ernest Healy
Since November 2025 opinion polls have shown a surge towards One Nation. In the voluminous media commentary, the dominant view is that this surge is due to the cost of living and other household budget issues. A few commentators have suggested that it may reflect Australian’ patriot feelings.
This report shows that much of the surge to the right does come from the concerns of patriots. Previous TAPRI surveys indicate that just over half of Australian voters can be described as patriots. What they have in common is that they share a sense of belongingness to Australia ‘to a great extent’.
This patriotic constituency is opposed to the prevailing neoliberal economic orthodoxy and to its associated progressive views on cultural values. This constituency is especially opposed to high immigration and to policies promoting multiculturalism.
It is these voters who are driving the surge to the right in Australia, as manifested in the rise of One Nation in opinion polls.

It struck the pond as incredibly sloppy, and therefore right in Polonius's turf.

The definition of "patriot" is nebulous and flung around with wild abandon, and it's nakedly political ...

...the neoliberal insistence on free trade has meant that Australian is now dependent on unreliable international supply chains. In the case of petrochemical products and refined petrol and diesel fuels, the loss of productive capacity in Australia has left us highly vulnerable.
Living in Melbourne we are in the front line of casualties. This is because the Victorian Government, since 2014, has built its economic strategy on providing debt-financed infrastructure and services for Melbourne’s surging population. It proclaims, without complaint from progressive media circles, and with bipartisan support from the Liberal Party, that Melbourne is targeting a population of eight million by 2050 – the same level as in London today.
From our perspective, the right surge promises an overdue correction.

Well the authors might think a surge to Pauline and One Nation is the way to go, and to hell with that.

What was that, Angelic one?

...When I hear very young people today parroting jingoistic claptrap they have overheard about the original Anzacs “fighting for Australia”, I always think about those two, who fortunately survived to realise the error of joining in 1915. I also think about them when I hear failed politicians, commentators and other armchair warriors wanting “boots on the ground” for yet another failed enterprise on the other side of the world – just as futile as that war that was supposed to end all wars.

Darn tootin' ...and now for a distraction.

While checking up on ancient Polonial lore, the pond couldn't help but faint with it delight when it discovered by accident Humphrey McQueen's memories of Ming in The Forgotten Fascists, for Arena back in March 2025.

As this came from the time of the impending second world war, it seemed vaguely relevant to the lizard Oz's crusades ...

Oh dear, and so history repeats, wash and rinse and hang out to dry ...

And so to the search for a bonus ...

The pond immediately ruled out the disgraced Pezzullo, still being offered a rehabilitation tour by the reptiles ...

‘Lest we forget’ also means being ready for coming war
Conflict is not just in our past; it is in our future. Will we stand up for what’s worth fighting for?
By Mike Pezzullo

The pond has had an overdose of war mongering, especially from those who will never have to dodge a bullet.

A teaser trailer will suffice, because the disgraced cardigan wearer opened with an image of that fatted beast, as if we should be getting ready for a coming war with that banana republic and its risible, demented, sundowning leadership...

That outing ended with the sort of rhetorical flourish offered by someone who will never have to head into battle and find out what it's like to be shot at ...

...Will we have the fortitude to calculate the odds of war and to prepare accordingly, even as we abhor war? Will we have the moral clarity to calculate the cost of war and the price of peace? Will we be prepared to make the same sacrifices that we rightly honour on Saturday, for the sake of future generations?
Odds are, we may be tested soon enough. If we are to be ready, strategic and moral rearmament will be necessary. Or, in saying “never again”, are we really saying that such sacrifices are always senseless and unnecessary? Are we really saying we would not be prepared to make the same ultimate sacrifice in a just cause?
On Saturday, we need to steel ourselves for the wars of the future as we reflect on those of the past.

The reptiles offered a credit which lacked a crucial word ...

Mike Pezzullo was secretary of the former department of immigration and border protection (2014-17) and the Department of Home Affairs (2017-23).

Can someone help the pond?

Yes, that's the word:

Mike Pezzullo was the disgraced secretary of the former department of immigration and border protection (2014-17) and the Department of Home Affairs (2017-23), a mandarin who brought great shame on mandarins ...

Fixed it, and with a link to go ...

The pond supposes it could have looked at Cameron Stewart ...

Trump faces dwindling options in Iran conflict with no clear path to victory

The US President is scrambling to secure a peace and avoid humiliation. Can he do it?

But it was a long read to arrive at not much ...

The US President’s best hope now is a deal that leads to a meaningful delay in Iran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb as part of a wider agreement that includes an open and free Strait of Hormuz. These are minimalist aims compared with Trump’s once grandiose predictions of a new Iran and a new Middle East. But they appear to be the best-case outcome from a war that continues to confound the expectations of Trump and his team.

A bit like the mad king lashing out in revenge on the Falklands and Maggie Thatcher's legacy.

And so in lieu of a reptile column, the pond turned to the lizard Oz editorialist, source of the heart of darkness, for a summary of this weekend's war mongering ...

Shameless really, not even being allowed to remember and mourn the dead, but instead have the occasion serve as preparations for fresh war mongering ...

Now there was a completely useless war, however it ended - certainly not to the advantage of Afghan women or the Afghanis who helped American forces and now as a reward are facing deportation to the Congo.

As for the presumption of innocence, it's already been established on the balance of probabilities that Ben Roberts-Smith is guilty of war crimes and was intending to scarper to Spain, and that's enough for the pond, but it didn't stop the reptiles from running a very large hagiographic snap ...

Then it was on to the final gobbet ...

Shameless ... completely shameless, and there at the very end, once again supporting a disgraced rogue on his rehabilitation tour ...

...As Michael Pezzullo points out in Inquirer this weekend, it is right that Australians mourn the sacrifice and tragedy of war on Anzac Day, but we should not pretend that total war is an abstract or distant phenomenon. “For Australia’s part,” he writes, “we are not doing nearly enough to prepare for the possibility of a war in the Pacific in the near term. Even if we judge that likelihood to be a 10 per cent chance, we need to be doing more now to get to a war footing. Having placed our bet on the noble cause of peace (‘war has to be avoided at all costs’), we will not be ready in time to defend ourselves if a war were to break out in the Pacific.”

Mr Pezzullo asks: Do we have the fortitude to calculate the odds of war and prepare accordingly? Most Australians will be well accustomed to hearing that we live in the most threatening strategic circumstances since the end of World War II. Yet our neglect of defence and our failure to adapt to a new era of asymmetric warfare suggest both an entrenched attitude of entitlement and a complacency to the stark realities we face.

The legend has never been short of detractors; they have come and gone through the years, but Anzac Day has outlasted them all. The date endures because it proves that courage and dignity ultimately rest with ordinary people. Still, Saturday’s commemoration must do more than merely console; it should also warn. In these dangerous times we must be willing to turn reverence into readiness.

What say you, Angelic one?

Lest we forget?

When I hear very young people today parroting jingoistic claptrap they have overheard about the original Anzacs “fighting for Australia”, I always think about those two, who fortunately survived to realise the error of joining in 1915. I also think about them when I hear failed politicians, commentators and other armchair warriors wanting “boots on the ground” for yet another failed enterprise on the other side of the world – just as futile as that war that was supposed to end all wars.

Amen to that ...

It must have been a bug the pond picked up attending that funeral mass ...

And so to end on lies, all lies, and the tragedy of women caught between mad King Donald and the mad Mullahs ...

Is there any real difference in their love of the killing fields? Trump Administration Wants To Fast-Track Executions With Electrocution, Firing Squads, Lethal Gas

An odd day for the reptiles to revert to being the Australian Daily Zionist News, but the bromancer and the dog botherer show the way ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 21:32:00 +0000

It's been a long time since the pond mentioned John Birmingham, but the pond just has to start off this weekend by noting his substack offering, So, you've decided to write a terrible EV piece.

Birmingham is clearly a member of the EV cult, and knows whereof he writes, and his opening flourish establishes the tone ...

So, something different this week. I got angry, but this time on a Tuesday. Why? Because the ABC’s 7:30 Report decided to cosplay as The Daily Telegraph on the topic of EV’s.
Unsurprisingly there’s a lot of interest in electric vehicles at the moment, so even less surprisingly both old and new media channels are flooding the zone with clickable shit. And some of the worst, most deplorable shit has been at Ninefax and the ABC.

Well yes, but as the pond gave up the 7.30 Report long ago, the pond only finds stuff out when someone turns up in the pond's in box to explain that Ethiopia is more technologically sophisticated than the ABC ...(Much like the venerable Meade's essential service).

And so to the reptiles this day, and what a relief.

Some correspondents have been worried about the bromancer's mental state, but this day he reverted to form, rediscovered his inner Zionist, and scribbled a lengthy five minute piece worthy of the Australian Daily Zionist News.

The header: Israel and Lebanon: two victims of Iran and its proxies; Lebanon is as big a victim of Hezbollah as Israel. Both are attempting to free themselves of its deadly influence, as the Trump-brokered ceasefire indicates.

The caption: Southern Lebanon becomes a frontline in a wider Iran-Israel conflict. Picture: AFP

In this bromancer telling, mad King Donald isn't demented, he's a cheesemaker, and in the eyes of the bromancer, blessed are the cheesemakers... especially as it's all about the persecution of Xians ...

In the hours leading to Donald Trump’s White House declaration of a three-week extension of the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, Hezbollah terrorists launched a volley of rockets into northern Israel, trying to kill the ceasefire.
The Israel-Lebanon equation is a hinge of the Iran conflict, if not of global history.
Trump oversaw negotiations between Israeli and Lebanese officials and promises now to convene a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun. Trump says Iran ending support for Hezbollah is a condition of any long-term peace.
The two nations that will suffer innocent and grievous damage from this conflict are two that by history and culture should be natural partners, Israel and Lebanon.
That’s counterintuitive. Israel seems to be winning. But the evil dynamics of terror and antisemitic hatred, as practised by Iran and its proxies, and amplified by the wretched alliance of the Western left with the Islamists, offer a disturbing prognosis for Israel.

Ah the perfidious left.

Those wretches who dare note what's currently going down in Gaza and the West Bank, and assorted outrages will have to cop a lot of bromancer rage this day ...

Though you might remember reading in Haaretz A Settler Drive to Ethnically Cleanse Palestinians Is Underway in the West Bank. Israel's Security Apparatus Is Complicit, even a peep about this dismal business puts you in league with fundamentalist Islamics and mad Mullahs, and makes you anti-Semitic ...

Meanwhile, Lebanon is effectively subject to colonial occupation, not by Israel but by Iran through Hezbollah.
That’s why a peace treaty between Israel and Lebanon could be destroyed by Iran acting through Hezbollah.
Israel and Lebanon should be brothers. Both host civilisations that are central to the entire Western tradition. Israel is the only Jewish state. Christianity, human rights, everything we like about civilisation proceeds in part from the Jewish heritage. Lebanon has been an essential Christian community since the first century AD. It was crucial in the history of Christianity, and the Maronite and Orthodox Lebanese Christians form, with Egyptian Copts, one of the last sizeable Christian communities in the Middle East.
The effective Middle East purge of Christianity in recent decades, which followed the Middle East purge of most Jews in the years after World War II, has seen millions of Lebanese Christians emigrate, many to Australia, and we’re immensely lucky to have them.
Once, Lebanon was a majority Christian nation; Christians are now a (large) minority. Israel, which practices religious freedom, is one of few Middle East nations where the Christian population is growing.
Official Iranian identity is fuelled by antisemitic conviction and it exaggerates these sentiments in the proxies it sponsors. There was briefly an Israel Lebanon peace treaty in the early 1980s. The Lebanese politician seen as its sponsor, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated and it never came into force. Although Lebanon is historically a nation of magnificent cultural richness, in modern times it has been ravaged by rapacious neighbours, first Syria, now Iran.

Will the bromancer at any point slip in a quiet word about the dismal treatment of Palestinians, settler violence, and the ethnic cleansing that has been a marker for the current far right government of Israel? Don't get too excited ...

For a period in the 70s and 80s, the Palestine Liberation Organisation was headquartered in southern Lebanon. The PLO launched repeated terrorist attacks on Israeli towns and villages, often targeting children and other civilians. To prevent this, the Israelis finally invaded Lebanon and set up a secure zone from the border to the Litani River. They empowered and allied with the South Lebanon Army, which was officially secular but mostly Christian. The SLA was the only Arab military force that ever fought for Israel’s security.
It allied with Israel not only out of self-interest but from a conviction that Israel was the nearest to its own values and civilisational ideals. When Israel abruptly withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, the SLA was betrayed. Thousands of its members settled in Israel, others surrendered to Lebanese forces.
Hezbollah was from the start an extremist Shia Islamist group funded and supported by Iran. It claimed victory in Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, and at the direction of Iran has conducted deadly terrorism against Israel ever since. Hezbollah has no loyalty to Lebanon or consideration for the Lebanese people.
I have spent some time in northern Israel. Once I visited a Jewish retirement home on the Israel-Lebanon border. Looking into a Lebanese valley, I saw many flags flying. None showed the haunting cedar of the flag of Lebanon. All were Hezbollah flags.
After the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran eight weeks ago, it took only a few days for Hezbollah to begin a barrage of rocket, artillery and drone fire into northern Israel. This action had nothing to do with any Lebanese interest. It was entirely at the direction of Iran to mobilise another front in Iran’s endless war against Israel. Hezbollah knew this would force Israeli action.
Veteran Israeli journalist and strategic analyst Ehud Yaari tells me: “Virtually everywhere in Israel north of Haifa people were running into bomb shelters or safe rooms seven, eight, 10 times a day. There was a constant stream of rockets from Hezbollah.”
The Hezbollah attacks have to be seen as part of Iran’s long-run strategy.
The Hamas terror atrocity against Israel in October 2023, among the most sadistic, savage and barbaric actions the world has ever seen, were designed in part to prevent the imminent normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. In that, sadly, they were successful.

Has the bromancer supped deep on the Netanyahu kool aid? You betcha ...

Netanyahu once told me his long-term peace strategy with the Palestinians was an “outside in” approach. Israel would normalise relations with its Arab neighbours first and this would encourage Palestinians to accept a reasonable modus vivendi with Israel.
It’s a central fact that Israel has several times offered the Palestinians a state on almost all of the West Bank, all of Gaza and compensating territory from Israel proper, but the Palestinian leadership never accepted peace with Israel. Iran’s strategy was to use its proxies to prevent Israel from settling into a normal life, prevent peace treaties with Israel’s neighbours, and gradually exhaust Israel’s morale and even its military.
Thus relentless mortar and rocket attacks from Gaza made life difficult for southern Israeli towns; sporadically, something similar could be achieved by terror groups within the West Bank, and Hezbollah could constantly harass northern parts of Israel.
Here is where Western critics of Israel are so wrong and dishonest.

So it's wrong and dishonest to note the ethnic cleansing? Or perhaps the way that fatuous blather about natural alliances muddies the waters?

Bad optics? Israel jails soldiers who smashed Jesus statue in Lebanon
Critics say Israeli attacks on Christian sites challenge claims of a Judeo-Christian shared heritage and mutual respect.

...Christian holidays, specifically those around the time of Easter, have become particular sources of tension, the report noted, with priests and nuns wearing visible Christian clothing in West Jerusalem and occupied East Jerusalem facing the risk of harassment every time they enter public spaces.
“We’ve entered a period of what [Australian genocide studies scholar] Dirk Moses called ‘permanent security’, where anything different, anything that might be a threat, or could even be a threat in the future, has to be destroyed,“ prominent Israeli sociologist Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani told Al Jazeera.
That difference is inherent to the Christian faith.
“It’s not about left or right,” Shenhav-Shahrabani explained. “It even goes to language. In everyday Hebrew, people refer to Jesus as Yeshu, which is a curse word, rather than Yeshua, which is correct.”
“That’s commonplace. That’s how it’s used in everyday media,” he continued. “If that’s where you begin, it doesn’t matter if it’s stupidity or ignorance, it all leads to the same place.”

The pond never thought it would be mentioning Xians, but here we are.

Eventually the bromancer gets around to a minor billy goat butt ...

In isolation, Israel’s actions seem disproportionate. Sometimes I think they have been disproportionate.

But in the way of the bromancer, any minor billy goat butt is immediately followed by a huge butt ...

But you have to see the totality of the threat posed cumulatively by Hamas, terrorist groups in the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Shia militia in Iraq, and previously the Syrian regime, as well as Iran’s previously huge missile stocks, to accurately judge the credible threat to which Israel is responding.
Netanyahu also once told me his reputation as a hawk and a hard man was a strategic asset for Israel. It meant Jerusalem didn’t have to take many actions because Middle East actors feared Netanyahu.
Now the Iranians and their proxies have forced Netanyahu to act decisively.
The non-Shia Lebanese population and many Lebanese Shi’ites, too, hate Hezbollah for embroiling them in endless conflict. In eight weeks Hezbollah has fired thousands of projectiles against Israel. The Lebanese government ordered Hezbollah to stop, ordered the Lebanese Army to disarm Hezbollah and expelled the Iranian ambassador.
What actually happened? Hezbollah refused to stop. The Lebanese Army said it couldn’t disarm them. The Iranian ambassador refused to leave. And Hezbollah has threatened a violent coup against the Lebanese government.
Now Israel plans to establish a security zone once more in southern Lebanon, about 6km to 8km from the Israeli border. This is necessary for anything approaching normal life to resume in northern Israel. To clear this area perhaps 800,000 Lebanese have been displaced, an immense tragedy to be laid wholly at the feet of Hezbollah and Iran.
The useful idiots of the Western left will gleefully portray this, entirely dishonestly, as Israeli “colonialism”, further undermining Israel in the West.
Islamic State is urging its followers to emulate the Bondi massacre of innocent Jews everywhere. Synagogues are attacked in London, as in Australia.
Israel and Lebanon are victims of Iran and of Hezbollah. But don’t expect to hear that much in Western societies which, insanely, are becoming themselves more anti-Israel and more antisemitic.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

And that's how it goes in the Australian Daily Zionist News.

Any consideration of the fate of Gaza and the West Bank and Palestinians is immediately dismissed as anti-Semitic, and is always in support of the mad Mullahs ...

And yet the latest excursion has been a mad folly that has done nothing for Iranian people, nor for the United States, nor for the world, which will soon begin to discover what real shortages look like ...

The lizard Oz had lots more of this sort of blather, including but not limited to ...

Moral collapse on antisemitism finds grotesque expression
The Left’s moral collapse on antisemitism has found its most grotesque expression
If declaring a murdered child beyond the bounds of empathy does not cross the most basic human test, then what does?
By Nick Dyrenfurth

Contributor

Luckily the intermittent archive is currently working, and the pond personally supervised Nick being sent off to that dismal cornfield.

Ditto the pond decided this outing by Dame Slap could be consigned to the wasteland ...

Girlcotted: how Catharine Lumby was cancelled by her own movement
After decades of pioneering activism against sexual violence, one of Australia’s most respected feminists was deplatformed by the very community she helped build.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

At the nub of this yarn were tensions over Gaza and Israel, but this is what stopped the pond dead in its tracks ...

Over a glass of wine a few weeks back, Lumby laughed about our views getting closer and closer. I winked at her, saying that I was pretty certain her views were moving closer to mine. It was a joke, the kind friends – and colleagues – with different views ought to be able to make.
The fundamentalists on the Left don’t joke. They lop off your head.

If Lumby thinks that laughing and winking and joking and sharing plonk with Dame Slap is the way forward, then the long absent lord help her.

Dame Slap lops off heads at a rate and in a way that would make your average lefty go pale with fear, and she has a platform from which she can conduct her jihads.

While noting that Islamophobia is rampant this weekend, the pond also saw that the reptiles had plenty of room for transphobia...

EXCLUSIVE
Top psychiatrist suspended for opposing youth gender treatments
‘Take my treatment as a warning’: Psychiatrist suspended for opposing youth gender treatments
Psychiatrists pleaded with professional body to support outspoken colleague Andrew Amos, only to discover it had suspended him.
By Stephen Rice

The always boiling Rice seems to make transophobia his special EXCLUSIVE work.

Such was the obsessive compulsive nature of the reptiles' transphobia that the lizard Oz editorialist felt the need to join in the jihad, encouraging paranoia and a persecution complex (something many trans people know only too well)...

Psychiatrist’s unjust suspension
Practitioners and authorities around the world are becoming more sceptical about the prescription of puberty blockers and hormones for gender-distressed children and teenagers.
By Editorial

It almost made the pond yearn for a world where normal madness can flourish ...

And so to the dog botherer, also contributing to what - amazingly on Anzac Day - is a rag seemingly more intent on being The Australian Daily Zionist News than in dragging out the two up and the biscuits ...

The header: We’re complacent about risk of extremism at home, but we’re all targets too; We may not want to be at war but Islamist fanatics certainly are at war against us, as Islamic State’s latest call to action declares.

The caption: Chayim Klein, a member of the Jewish community, stands in the damaged area of Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue, holding a Sefer (holy book) that was there during the attack orchestrated by Iran. Picture: Arsineh Houspian

Did the pond mention paranoia and a persecution complex?

The barking mad dog botherer decided that the way to begin was to plunge Australia into war ...

This year we will commemorate Anzac Day under the pretence that we are not at war.

Actually we're not at war, and many other countries decided that they didn't want to have anything to do with a folly, an excursion, that will ensure the world's economy is in a state of chaos for months to come.

But the war mongering dog botherer will have none of that ...

Our government will continue to portray the current conflict in the Middle East as an unnecessary excursion by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and stress that our Wedgetail aircraft deployment to the United Arab Emirates is solely defensive, laughably justified as protection for our expats.
But while thousands gather at North Bondi for one of the nation’s most iconic dawn services, those at the southern reaches of the crowd will stand where bullets ricocheted just five months ago in an act, allegedly, of jihadist war. This is the same Islamist extremist threat being tackled in Iran by the US and Israel, one that is existential for Israel but pivotal for the rest of the world, including Australia.
Just to square the circle: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind the firebombing of Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue 17 months ago, taking the Islamist extremist-inspired antisemitism in this country to an ugly nadir that tragically was surpassed a year later on the bloodied sands of Bondi.

Cue another snap designed to get the hive mind agitated ... The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was behind the firebombing of Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue 17 months ago. Picture: NurPhoto via Getty Images

The dog botherer was determined to see the country at war ...

We do not want to be at war but the Islamist extremists, often inspired and funded by Iran, have fanatical certitude about their war against us.
That much of the population and most of our politicians fail to understand this or choose to ignore it only exacerbates our vulnerability. Time and again we fail to learn the lessons.
For more than two years there were many people in public debate warning about the rising tide of Islamist extremism and antisemitism in the wake of the October 7 atrocities in Israel. Australian Jewish community leaders took their warnings and appeals directly to governments.
Politicians and authorities paid lip service to the problem, tangled themselves in false equivalence about Islamophobia for fear of offending Muslim communities and did not do enough. The Bondi massacre was shocking yet seemed inevitable – we will never know if, without this national indolence, it might have been prevented.
Yet even now, after 15 funerals and untold trauma, our leaders and authorities slink back into complacency. They avert their eyes and wash their hands, yet will express shock and surprise, no doubt, the next time we see an Islamist terrorist attack.

And what of Gaza, and what of the atrocities on both sides? Crickets ... Many locals attending Bondi Beach pay their respects at a makeshift memorial to the victims of December's terror attack. Picture: NewsLocal

There aren't many upsides in having a federal Labor government, but surely one of them is that it avoided getting the country involved in the current folly.

If the liar from the Shire had been in charge, or the mad monk, likely we'd have been off on the crusade, with the Murdoch press clamouring for war, and assorted crusaders of the dog botherer kind demanding that we get involved ...(while staying safe in their Surry Hills bunker) ...

A public forum is booked in a Sydney City Council building next month to discuss “Why it’s right to globalise the intifada”. This phrase is a blatant call for violence against Israel and Jews.
During two waves of intifada in the early 1990s and then from 2000 thousands of innocent Israelis were killed in suicide bombings and other random attacks, and thousands of Palestinians were killed in efforts to quell the violence. Some have dubbed Hamas’s murderous rampage in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, as the third intifada. Anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protesters were at Bondi Beach in September last year chanting for intifada. “Long live the intifada!” they shouted on the sand, punching the air, “Intifada, intifada!”
Three months later, 100m away, dozens of people were gunned down and 15 were killed. There it was, intifada globalised.
The chant to globalise the intifada is now illegal in Queensland and a parliamentary committee has recommended the same for NSW. The phrase could be a breach of the law already as an incitement to violence, but no police authority or prosecutor’s office has been willing to try.
The official complicity is astounding. Imagine how quickly authorities would act if groups were publicly calling for deadly violence against gays, Indigenous communities, Catholics or any other ethnic group or religion.
Jews are expected to accept this. Accept they can never live in peace and security, even in Australia.
Politicians will not even utter the word Islamist extremism (even though it is the central problem and main threat), preferring the catch-all term of antisemitism, lest they put off-side any sensitive members of Muslim communities. Yet Jewish Australians gather at schools and synagogues in suburban Sydney with armed guards, police patrols and cement barricades hastily installed by governments after Bondi.

Once again, any thought of the fate of Palestinians and Gaza is rounded up, and pressed into the crusader cause, Pro Palestine protests continue in Melbourne after the US and Israel attacked Iran. Picture: Josie Hayden

Is it possible to note that bad things are being done on both sides?

Per Haaretz ...

Dozens of Israeli settlers storm West Bank village, clash with residents and torch vehicle
Dozens of Israeli settlers entered the West Bank village of Qusra, south of Nablus, where they threw stones at local residents and later set fire to a construction machine during their withdrawal, according to Palestinian reports on Friday.

Are there any signs of hope?

'Swimming Against the Tide, but Swimming': More Israelis and Palestinians Now Choose to Grieve Together

...More Israelis are also joining, especially to do protective presence work: to act as human shields for Palestinians amid rising settler violence in the West Bank. For many Palestinians, this is a very surprising experience, Salman says. Young people in the West Bank today "haven't seen anything except separation walls, checkpoints and settler violence," which makes it difficult for them to picture an alternative, she says.
"What they know about the other is either like an Israeli soldier with a uniform and a gun, or a violent settler burning their villages and their cars and harming their fields and animals. So when they meet activists, especially on the ground, at protests and [providing a protective presence] at the olive harvest, they see something completely different. They have really interesting conversations, and it's important to learn about the other's narrative, because it's not something we learn at school."

Up against the fundamentalist madness on both sides, it's really just a drop in the ocean of hate, but it's still better than the dog botherer's war mongering ...

This is the protection they get from governments that are too timid to tackle the actual menace. Search all you like for moral equivalence, but you will find no other community in this country forced to live like this. Schoolchildren and congregations behind vehicle-proof barriers while mobs chant “globalise the intifada” at will. This, apparently, is peace for Australians who are Jewish.
Australia should, of course, be supporting the US and Israel in their war against Iran. We rejected a US request for naval assistance to protect shipping three years ago, and while we received no request before this war the government had already made its disdain known.
Anthony Albanese broke with Israel and the US in the UN and recognised a non-existent Palestinian state. In recent days he has been more critical of the US President than he has of the Islamist theocrats who run a murderous, misogynistic, antisemitic and terror-sponsoring regime in Tehran.
“We support very much the declaration that Iran couldn’t be allowed to get a nuclear weapon,” the Prime Minister said on Thursday. “What we have called for is for de-escalation. We’ve been critical and have called out some of the statements that have been made. It’s not appropriate or acceptable to say that you’re going to destroy a civilisation. And so, we’ve done that. We are allies with the United States, but that doesn’t mean that we’re automatically participants in any conflict and we haven’t been.”
He criticises Trump rather than the extremist Iranian leadership and suggests he would like Tehran to give up its nuclear weapons program but has no alternative plan as to how. Astonishingly, Albanese told a podcast that Barack Obama’s Iran deal was successful – this was the sellout that funnelled billions of dollars into Tehran while the mullahs pursued their nuclear weapons and missile programs with impunity.

And there you have it. If the dog botherer and Benji have their way, there never will be a Palestinian state, and the system of apartheid that currently prevails will be in place from the river to the sea ... The 15 innocent lives lost at Bondi should remind us to be vigilant. Picture: Monique Harmer

This is exactly why the middle east is stuffed. A middle aged man baying for blood in the Australian Daily Zionist News isn't going to sort things out, or be of any help ...

Australians would do well to accept that this is our war because we are its targets – as we saw at the Adass Israel Synagogue and at Bondi. Just because we are too weak to join the US and Israel militarily, or even diplomatically, it will not protect us from terrorists.
They target us for who we are. Strong kafirs or weak kafirs, it makes little difference.
Islamic State let it be known this week that the Bondi attack was just one “pebble from a mountain” and it would keep killing until we “grow weary of burying the dead”. And it made clear that any non-Muslim is a legitimate target.
Pretending the war in Iran is Israel’s or America’s alone, or trying to convince people the singular threat at home is for the Jewish community, is not only morally bankrupt but also intellectually feeble and strategically blind.
Defeating Islamist extremism and the main sponsor of global terrorism is an imperative for any person or country that can be targeted. This means it is a fight for all of us.
Four months before the original Anzac landing, two men believed they had a holy duty to take up arms against innocent Australians, attacking a train taking families to a New Year’s Day picnic out of Broken Hill. Children of my generation were taught that Mulla Abdullah and Gool Mahomed were Turks who decided to fight their adopted country because Australia and Turkey were at war in Europe.
In fact, they were fanaticised Muslims from South Asia who accepted the call to jihad against a nation fighting the Ottoman Empire abroad. The pair fired at picnickers killing three men and a 17-year-old girl before they were hunted down and killed.
The unsuspecting people on that train knew Australia was at war but believed they were a long way from any threat.
Many Australians today, including our national leadership, labour under the misapprehension that what is happening in the Middle East is someone else’s war, averting their eyes from a clear and present danger at home.

The clear and present danger at home?

The pond, for its sins, reads the lizard Oz daily and is reminded of what a clear and present danger these reptiles are when it comes to peace, the economy and the sustainability of the planet ...

They're part of a supine mob that now lines up to lie down and be bullied by a sundowner in the grip of dementia ...

And so to end with rants of a more congenial kind ...

In which Our Henry nails the spirit of the season with the help of Thucydides, and sundry other reptiles struggle to match the master's insights...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 21:58:00 +0000

Steady, steady. No pushing or shoving. Please form a line and keep the line moving.

There will be no distractions or deviations. The pond will put on hold celebrations of the big loan to Ukraine. The pond will defer consideration of the desire of the pasty Hastie to kiss the ring of mad King Donald.

The pond will avoid contemplating the journalist murdering, Christ statue bashing, settler killing fields and the ethnic cleansing of the current government of Israel.

Sure the pond would like to spend time with MAGA Navy Boss Spreads Unhinged Theories About Witches and Cannibalism, but the pond has long known that ever since Salem a secret cabal of witches has ruled America. Hillary! Teleporting Waffle Houses!

And the pond pond promises not provide any nuze you can uze on the strait of Hormuz, not even a list of the many goods that you will not be able to uze or which will face price abuze as the mad King holds the world's economy to ransom (Condoms! Plastic storage boxes!).

Instead the pond will plunge straight into the good oil, the drum, that will amuze, straight from the horse's mouth by way of the lizard Oz's best and brightest muze.

You see, it's the season, and Our Henry is right on it ...

The header: Do we, as Australians, merit the sacrifice of those first Anzacs? The Dawn Service’s ritual centre, with its ‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old’ speaks of the living’s relation to the dead.

The caption for the fiery snap: A Dawn Service at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance.

The pond realises some will be disappointed. After that build up, it's just Our Henry, ancient warrior war monger, performing the seasonal ritual and taking five minutes about it?

What about the actual realities of the war currently unfolding? What about some Italians wanting to act as scabs and score a place in the World Cup by subterfuge rather than winning on the field?

Pshaw, the pond says.

This is prime Henry. The pond guarantees there will be time spent in ancient Greece! There will be confirmed sightings of Thucydides!

There will be a full parade by the pompous pedant of a range of portentous references, as solemn as the French Foreign Legion doing a slow march in wobble mode, hands pointed down, beards jutting, axes draped over aprons.

Please, allow Our Henry to gush, and what a sweeting blessing, without a single reptile visual distraction:

At dawn in the high summer of 413BC, when the Peloponnesian War was in its 18th year, two trophies faced each other across the narrow strait at the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf. The day before, a Corinthian fleet had met an Athenian squadron and for the first time had struck the Athenians more forcefully than they could strike back.
The Corinthians knew the Athenians’ larger fleet and masterly seamanship gave them a crushing advantage. To counter it, they modified their ships’ prows, making them shorter and stouter to withstand ramming. Having neutralised their adversaries’ superiority by departing from the conventional Greek ship design, they raised their victory trophy at Erineus on the Achaean shore.
But despite extensive damage, the Athenians held the water at the fighting’s end, recovered the wrecks and the dead and, according to traditional standards, were the victors. In the hours that followed, they rowed across the Gulf and planted a counter-trophy at Molycrian Rhion, on the Aetolian side.
By the early morning light the two trophies therefore came clearly into view only three kilometres apart. Longstanding rules, that awarded victory to one side or the other, had been breached; but it was something far deeper that lay broken at Erineus.

Are you not amuzed?

Did the pond not guarantee a fine old time? Can it get any better? Of course it can. Let there be Nazis, because they are not just the remit of Mark Felton or SBS. Our Henry likes to take them on his cruze:

German intellectual historian Hans Blumenberg – who had experienced the rise of Nazism – put it best. Human beings, he argued, are constitutionally incapable of living in unfiltered contact with reality, exposed to the overwhelming, undifferentiated threat of a world that offers no given orientation, no protection. We therefore connect ourselves to it through the mediating tissue of myth and ritual, metaphor and story.
These do not give us access to the world as it is; they render it intelligible by investing events with significance and placing them within a widely understood frame. And what makes a society viable is sufficient overlap between its members’ mental maps to allow them to manage their differences.

And now for what correspondents always lust after, are always panting for in eager anticipation. Thucydides!

When the common repertoire of memories, symbols and words breaks down, that connective tissue is not merely strained; it is torn apart. The result is what Thucydides called stasis: a condition in which conflict can no longer be contained by the civic order, driving society towards rupture.
The war, as Erineus revealed, had shredded the Greek world’s shared frame of significance – undermining ritual, dissolving trust and corroding alliances once deemed secure.
However, the process ran not only between poleis but within them. And nowhere was the descent into stasis more disastrous than in Thucydides’ beloved Athens.
Against stasis, Athens had, at the war’s outset, one extraordinary bulwark: the city as Pericles had taught his generation to see it. What distinguished the Athenians, Pericles said in the Funeral Oration, was that they loved life and lived it fully, yet were ready to die for their city, precisely because the city gave them so much.
But claiming love of, and loyalty to, the city was easy when both were without cost. Once the plague descended on Athens in 430BC, bringing sudden and unpredictable death, Athenians began to live for the moment, placing present appetite above future concerns.
Soon after, with Pericles dying while the plague raged, his demagogic successors devoted their specious rhetoric to inflaming division rather than fostering collective purpose.
It was, however, the war that consummated the rupture into opposing camps. “War,” Thucydides writes, “filches away the easy provision of the everyday.” The civic decencies proved dependent on peace and plenty; when citizens were forced to bear even the slightest hardship, the thinness of the civic compact was exposed.
By then, dialogue had collapsed and the factions were hermetically enclosed in their own myths, entrenching the hatreds between them. The war had come home. It was only a matter of time before external enemies administered the coup de grace to a body that had already lost its capacity to cohere. Thucydides’ formula is terse: the Athenians did not succumb to Sparta; they succumbed to one another.
Thucydides, with what Nietzsche praised as his “courage in the face of reality”, diagnosed the disease as its victim lay dying. But he did far more than that. His History is itself a compensatory act of significance-making in the face of significance’s dissolution.

Incroyable. Nietzsche as a bonus!

And wait, yet more Thucydides, with a fine example of Our Henry speaking in ancient tongues:

By giving the war a shape, a language, a set of themes that still organise political thought, Thucydides produced a “ktêma es aiei”, a possession for all time. He wrote, he tells us, so that future men, when they see similar tragedies looming – and the nature of human affairs makes their recurrence inevitable – may recognise the risks and act accordingly.
Two and a half millennia later, his warning resonates. Once again, we are in a war marred not only by the clash of arms but by a cacophony of contradictory claims.
War, by its nature, shrouds gains and losses in secrecy, deception and misrepresentation. Worse still, assessments of its likely course are vitiated by the inherent unpredictability of action and reaction: what Thucydides called “to astathmëton” – the irreducible contingency of a world that can be acted upon but never fully mastered.
But despite those factors, which urge caution, there is an extraordinary rush to judgment, pronouncing outcomes, and anointing victors, before they are decided. And no less extraordinary is the vehemence with which opposing views are held, assigning all success (and tactical shrewdness) to one side and all failure (and strategic folly) to the other.

And so at last to the modern world, and a little both siderism worthy of the New York Times:

The barely disguised schadenfreude of Donald Trump’s haters, and the matching ire of his supporters, are, no doubt, part of the explanation.

Oh no doubt, no doubt.

Is the man not in perfect balance, is there not an appealing symmetry to this presentation?

And now let us draw together the threads, so that the entire meaning of the season is unveiled, in a way that was only hinted at in that service in the Yabba in Wake in Fright:

They are, however, symptoms rather than causes, visible manifestations of the stasis Thucydides acutely analysed: the withering, here as throughout the West, of the common repertoire of values and practices through which contending arguments can be advanced, differences addressed, tensions however imperfectly contained.
And yet the crowds at the Anzac Day dawn service – one of the few occasions on which Australians still gather the frayed threads of historical significance – show the longing for a shared framework of meaning persists.
Inaugurated in another time of bitter division, after the searing antagonisms of the conscription referendums, the dawn service’s ritual centre, with its “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old”, says nothing of the dead’s relation to eternity; it speaks instead of the living’s relation to the dead, conferring enduring meaning on events that unfolded more than a century ago in war’s all-enveloping fog.
The Last Post is sounded into the dark; the silence is kept; the Rouse follows as the sky begins to brighten. Between the two lies a held breath in which the nation briefly becomes, once more, a community.
That is a pause, not a cure. But if, in those few moments, we can resolve to remember not only the fallen but the achievements, now so often derided, of the nation for which they fought and died; to refuse the continued perversion of truth and the escalation of hatred; and to renew the capacity – when the reckoning comes, as it will – to stand-to at dawn beside those who stand with us, then this will be a country that has merited their sacrifice.

The pond does believe this is one of the finest of the hole in bucket repair man's outings in recent times, a vintage excursion in to the meaning of war.

The pond didn't think anyone could match JD explaining Catholicism to the Pope ...

... but Our Henry has surpassed him!

It's a tough act to follow. Some might want to venture into a reptile EXCLUSIVE.

The best the pond could do was to send it to the intermittent archive ...

EXCLUSIVE
Cell to cenotaph: Roberts-Smith vows to take part in Anzac Day commemorations
Australia’s most-decorated soldier backs accused war criminal and fellow Victoria Cross recipient’s right to march, insisting ‘what happens in war, stays in war’.
By Jamie Walker

What happens in war stays in war?

What a tremendous variation on what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

If only the Nazis had that legal defence in the Nuremberg trials, they could have walked out of prison free and proud warriors, and Our Henry would have been stripped of a valuable reference.

I say, old chaps, we might have done a few beastly things to the Jews, but the Jews are being beastly to the Palestinians, and remember the old adage, what happens in war stays in war. (And the reptiles at the lizard Oz will write it up for the delectation of the hive mind).

And for more in the same area, some might want to contemplate the meretricious Merritt, helping out with ...

Australia’s civil justice system is on the brink of an uncivil war
Soldiers’ cases expose critical weaknesses in Australian law
In return for passing up their right to silence, four soldiers were promised their evidence would not be used against them in the future.
By Chris Merritt
Legal Affairs Contributor

The pond personally supervised that listing in the intermittent archive and trusts that it holds good for at least this day ...

And then there was an old digger trying to compete on Our Henry's sacred turf ...

The Ode tells of true significance of Anzac Eve
We instinctively understand the power of the eve – the quiet moments before momentous days. Anzac Eve deserves such a place.
By Peter Cosgrove

But how could he possibly match the hole in bucket man?

And besides, after that surfeit of Henry served in such spiffing style, the pond has had a surfeit of the spirit of the season for the moment ... so the pond carefully supervised its placement in the intermittent archive, pausing only for a celebratory 'toon.

And what about this shocking piece?

The pond has heard many rogue opinions in its day, but a reptile suggesting that we need to follow China's lead in anything is absolutely outrageous, entirely beyond the pale ...

We need to follow China’s lead on regulation of AI - ChatGPT has huge responsiblities (sic, AI checked and approved) that it is choosing to ignore
By Toby Walsh

Chatbots in the US have been linked to self harm. In one case, it is claimed that ChatGPT even offered to write the suicide note.

The pond did wake this morning to rather old news regarding AI spreading the word on a fake disease, which was written up in Nature:

Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real

Bixonimania doesn’t exist except in a clutch of obviously bogus academic papers. So why did AI chatbots warn people about this fictional illness?

Got sore, itchy eyes? You’re probably one of the millions of people who spend too much time staring at screens, being bombarded with blue light. Rub your eyes too much and your eyelids might turn a slight, pinkish hue.
So far, so normal. But if, in the past 18 months, you typed those symptoms into a range of popular chatbots and asked what was wrong with you, you might have got an odd answer: bixonimania.
The condition doesn’t appear in the standard medical literature — because it doesn’t exist. It’s the invention of a team led by Almira Osmanovic Thunström, a medical researcher at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, who dreamt up the skin condition and then uploaded two fake studies about it to a preprint server in early 2024. Osmanovic Thunström carried out this unusual experiment to test whether large language models (LLMs) would swallow the misinformation and then spit it out as reputable health advice. “I wanted to see if I can create a medical condition that did not exist in the database,” she says.
The problem was that the experiment worked too well. Within weeks of her uploading information about the condition, attributed to a fictional author, major artificial-intelligence systems began repeating the invented condition as if it were real.
Even more troublingly, other researchers say, the fake papers were then cited in peer-reviewed literature. Osmanovic Thunström says this suggests that some researchers are relying on AI-generated references without reading the underlying papers ...

And so on, and in that spirit the pond made sure that Prof Walsh's piece was saved to the intermittent archive, and will offer a teaser trailer, even if it involves the reprehensible concept of following China's lead ...

But even though the pond shares the prof's fears about AI and has more than a fair amount of contempt for Sam, the pond believes that nothing can match the experience of that noble Our Henry reading.

After experiencing it, the pond almost felt a Macbethian moment come upon it...

I have lived long enough. My way of life
Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have, but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath
Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not.

Put it another way ...

Picking itself up from that trough of despond and confusion, the pond allowed itself one last outing.

How could the pond avoid Mein Gott and his hearty renewables bashing ways?

He was sure to confuze the greenie foolz ...

Not for him a desire to return to the lying rodent and Petey boy days.

Here was a reptile who can embrace the spirit of the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, here was a reptile who could deliver good nuze, despite whatever was happening in the strait of Hormuz ...

What a stunning opening, and what contrasting snaps.

There was the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way looking vigorous and angry, while Satan's little helper looked at best bemused, and at worst completely bewildered, lips pursed like a carnival clown making ready to receive a ping pong ball.

The world weary Mein Gott continued on, in a way he has done many times before ...

As I have written many times, our nation has tremendous potential to use the photosynthesis process to profitably absorb carbon emissions. Bowen also now understands that we are going to need a lot of gas and he opens the way to link gas development with housing timber and agricultural carbon storage. As I pointed out in 2022, saltbush and similar plants can slash global carbon emissions and become a major source of world protein to relieve world food shortages. Carbon is stored in the root systems.
In the process, Australia has the potential to be a Middle East in reverse.
Bowen also understands the need for Australia to make its own nitrogenous fertilisers and, as my readers are well aware, we have the technology to extract oil and carbon from Victorian brown coal and use the carbon to make nitrogenous fertilisers.
We could start almost immediately but the Victorian government leaves diesel and fertiliser to Albo. The government and opposition need to consider combining to declare Victoria a state of sovereign risk.
But Bowen has not yet come to grips with the fact that while our solar-wind generation and transmission operation made sense a decade ago, the incredible cost blow-out now will set our nation back many decades. The rapid changes looming in technology already make it look obsolete. Maybe one day Bowen will change his mind.
That’s what Angus Taylor has done.
In a wonderful industry address he said: “Building tens of thousands of kilometres of power lines to nowhere, frankly, right now, is not what we need. It is only going to make the energy system more expensive and is going to drag down the government budget.”
I can’t think of anything more truthful than those Taylor words, and it provides real hope for the nation that he is prepared to make a stand in the national interest.
But telling the truth in this situation is very dangerous for Angus Taylor.

We'll all be rooned. It's not just Dame Groan who knows how to recite that poem, as the reptiles interrupted with a happy snap ... A politician confessing a mistake is such a rare event in Australia that it will send the environmentally friendly media into a frenzy. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass

How Mein Gott loves the positive role that Barners, Tamworth's ineradicable shame, plays in this conversation ...

When he was energy minister and Scott Morrison was prime minister, he undertook a memorandum of understanding with the NSW government which was designed to foster massive solar and wind generation plus transmission projects that he now says are “only going to make the energy system more expensive”.
Worse still, the regulator suggested that transmission towers near Riverina farmland should be limited to 330kV.
Taylor played a role in increasing capacity to 500kV, so increasing the height of the towers and their damage to Australian agriculture. This spread to other areas.
In hindsight he clearly made a fundamental mistake but to be fair, at that time, politicians on both sides were being told by cost estimators that the project would be economic because the cost was low.
We are now looking at the vicinity of $400bn capital outlay plus secret financing deals which will take the cost close to $1 trillion spread over 35 years.
That totally changes the game, particularly as all the signs are that we can reduce emissions at a fraction of the cost.
A politician confessing a mistake is such a rare event in Australia that it will send the environmentally friendly media into a frenzy but will highlight to the community the amount that will be needed to be raised via higher power prices to fund this disastrous project.
And on the wings is, of course, One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce.

Go Barners ... why, the reptiles will even give you an EXPLAINER AV distraction, The former political foes have joined force, Greg Brown reports.

And so to the wrap up ...

Barnaby would of course like to talk about the cost, but my guess is that he can smell a scandal in the secret funding. Many of the developers knew that the whole plan was uneconomic and were reluctant to proceed without guaranteed high rates of return. That is why it had to be kept secret. Barnaby will do his job and relentlessly work to uncover the finance scandal secrets.
And the discovery that Angus Taylor is now publicly contradicting his former stance as energy minister will send Barnaby into a frenzy of joy. My advice to Angus Taylor is to get in first.
As a nation Australia is being fundamentally changed by the Iran war which underlines our isolation and dependence on others. We have major projects in energy and defence that will require large sums of money and if we saddle these new enterprises with much higher power prices along with a $1 trillion community bill over 35 years our nation will be in a very dangerous situation.
We now have the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation who all understand the folly of what is taking place and there must be genuine politicians in the ALP who will bring the subject up with Anthony Albanese.
Already the Prime Minister has prevented two mistakes by the Treasurer – the tax on unrealised gains and the extra tax on gas which would have reduced our supplies of diesel, aviation fuel and petrol. Now he has to bring his energy minister into line with the national interest.

The world's energy issues solved in a trice, thanks to Mein Gott and Australia as the new middle east, with due credit to Barners and prime Angus.

And you thought you were over the nuze that would amuze.

At last have it pasty Hastie ...

The Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie says doubling down on the US relationship has eroded Australia’s sovereign capability, including its defence industry, as he warns the country must “get serious” about national security to rebalance the alliance.
In a speech to the Robert Menzies Institute in Melbourne last night, the shadow minister for industry and sovereign capability said the reliance on the US meant “strategic trade-offs” that had hastened the deindustrialisation of Australia and “weakened our hard power”.
He said it had cost Australia “sovereign capabilities like a robust defence industry” and “strategic freedom of action” in ways that were now becoming clear amid the Middle East war.
Hastie said under Donald Trump the US “should not be expected to guarantee much except its own strategic interests”, which meant Australia must “get serious about our own national security” by rebuilding its industrial base and a defence force “with teeth”.
To put it bluntly, if Anzus is going to continue for another 75 years, we need to invest in our industrial base and our defence force.
The former soldier has been an outspoken critic of Trump and his war in Iran, striking a different tone to the opposition leader, Angus Taylor

What could possibly go wrong?

And so to an aside, with the transcript here ...Penn & Teller & the Supreme Court & BS

In which, after celebrating King Chook with the bromancer, the pond does a reptile survey, and somehow ends up with in the spirit of the Dardanelles season ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 21:58:00 +0000

The pond was surprised to learn, via the Graudian and Graham Readfearn that the war criminal network (7) had joined the lizard Oz war against EVs and renewables, in Channel Seven's Spotlight dug for dirt on renewable energy. Here's what they left out.

The pond was surprised because it suddenly remembered that there were still four FTA networks in Australia, and that the Seven network actually still existed.

The pond can't recall watching a single show or even five minutes of Seven the last couple of decades, helped by not giving a toss about the AFL.

When ever in Melbourne, the pond stares blankly into the distance when asked what team it supports, and ABC news updates (many bulletins are in the grip of that spreader of brain damage and dementia) are enough to be able to mock members of the extended family devoted to losers like Richmond.

As for Ten, it takes the pond fever dream moments to remember decades of drivel of the Number 96 kind, with the pond unable to recall the name of a single show since.

And about Nine the pond says nothing, save to note that they've helped in the ruination of Australian media in multiple ways. Long gone are the days when Paul Sheehan could wax prolix pretending to be a prole while enjoying ten buck sourdough bread in Paddington.

As for that war, Wilcox managed to leave out one important empty box in her 'toon of the day...

Where's the empty "invisible thing" box for "benefits to the planet flowing from addiction to fossil fuels"?

Never mind, the pond appreciates news of what's going down in declining empires, even if there's no real need to care.

After all, the pond has the mother lode of the axis of weevils in the shape of the lizard Oz hive mind, and its nefarious offshoots, with occasional second hand insights turning up to reveal what Sky Noise down under is doing to degrade the hive mind even further.

And so to the latest news, and to the bromancer advising on mad King Donald's mindless middle east folly, set in progress with the aid and encouragement of the bromancer's employer, the Emeritus Chairman, and cheered on by the bromancer's Faux Noise US kissing cousins ...

Poor bromancer ...or should that be poor world?

The header: Is this the ultimate presidential TACO? Donald Trump faces a military stalemate with Iran as his repeated threats lose credibility and Tehran refuses to negotiate under pressure.

The caption for the dire collage celebrating the return of Emilia, at last given a credit for her ongoing demeaning of the graphics department: Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei and President Donald Trump both want the war to end but neither wants to be seen as having come off second best. Artwork: Emilia Tortorella

It's a peculiar, perverse pleasure, watching the bromancer showing every sign of being up for a turning.

It only takes three minutes of his time, and anything he talks about might well change in a nanosecond, but he's growing more and more testy with mad King Donald, with the latest his throwing about of that key sign of TDS, talk of King Donald as a weak-willed chook.

The bromancer cunningly poses it a question - he's just asking questions - but the weight falls on signs of chookdom. My chookdom for a Taco sauce:

Is this the ultimate TACO? Donald Trump chickened out from enforcing his umpteenth deadline for Iran to comply with his wishes by reopening the Strait of Hormuz and surrendering its 60 per cent enriched uranium stockpile.
Or is the US President preparing one last, massive military escalation?
The more extravagant Trump’s threats, the less likely he is to carry them out.
Thus, there was no chance that Trump would act to “end the civilisation” of Iran through massive bombing. This language offended Americans, outraged world opinion and drew a rebuke from Pope Leo XIV.

By golly, he's taken to listing mad King Donald's assorted crimes, and speaking of second hand news of that remote Sky Noise down under empire, the bromancer's piece was instantly interrupted by by the reptiles flinging in an AV distraction (how's that rebrand going?):

FDD Iran analyst Janatan Sayeh claims US President Donald Trump sees the next phase in the Iran war as being “even more catastrophic, going beyond just military”. “He sees the next phase as being even more catastrophic, going beyond just military and going after somehow using something from within Iranian territory against the regime,” he told Sky News host James Bolt. “That’s the only way they can meaningfully ensure that in the long term, at least you’re not just dealing with a wounded Islamic Republic and you’re not going back every six months to a year, bombing the regime, treating then bombing them again.”

Slurp down the bromancer's discontent while you can - it seems generations ago that he was hot to trot for a war with China by Xmas; now he's riven by fearsome doubting Thomas insights and billy goat butts:

But Trump has attacked militarily at the least likely times, such as during formal negotiations.
The uneasy balance is that Washington maintains the blockade of Iranian ports, while Iran blockades the Strait of Hormuz to all other shipping.
The President has extended the ceasefire indefinitely, allegedly at the request of the Pakistani government, which brokered US-Iran talks, and to allow what he describes as a “seriously fractured” Iranian government to present a consolidated position.
Iran says it has no intention of resuming talks under a deadline and accuses the US of plotting to launch another surprise attack.
The war has already gone on for eight weeks.
Trump keeps managing to talk the markets into believing it’s just about to end.
But this stage of negotiations has so far favoured Iran. It got a ceasefire, the suspension of the US and Israeli bombing campaign, and it got Trump to order Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to suspend military operations in Lebanon.
Tehran has used the pause to dig out buried missile launchers, missiles and drones. Estimates vary widely but there is significant Western and US briefing that Iran has more than 1000 missiles left, some 40 per cent of its pre-war drones and maybe 60 per cent of its missile launchers.
If these figures are remotely accurate, they show that Trump’s claims of damage to Iran’s war stocks have been seriously exaggerated.
It also means Iran may well be capable of renewed and even sustained attacks on Gulf Arab energy infrastructure, as well as on Israel and other targets.
Iran may have other ways of escalating the conflict, such as getting some of its proxies, Shia militia in Arab nations as well as the Houthis in Yemen, to attack regional energy infrastructure or ships sailing in the Red Sea.

The one indicator that this might not be a TACO moment is that Trump has brought a third aircraft carrier to the region as well as thousands of marines and amphibious troops.

The reptiles again interrupted, and again the pond reduced the distraction to a screen cap: U.S. forces operating in the Arabian Sea enforced naval blockade measures against an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel attempting to sail toward an Iranian port, April 19

Could the bromancer top his usual preferred dismissive "that's nuts"?

Trump plainly wants to avoid this, just as Iran wants to avoid the resumption of US and Israeli bombing of Iranian targets. So the fragile, unstable, temporary balance of the twin embargoes may be the way of things for a while.
The embargo is costing Iran hundreds of millions of dollars a day, in an economy already on its knees.
But Iran has stockpiled supplies, has some oil at sea, can do some trade overland, and has some arrangements with international supporters such as Russia, China and North Korea.
Indeed, the fact Russia and China have blatantly helped Iran, militarily and economically, and yet paid no price for this, has weakened US standing vis a vis the other great powers.
Trump now wants to finish the war quickly. It’s likely that Iran will ultimately offer some kind of fudge/compromise/deal on its nuclear materials.
But it will want massive sanctions relief in return.
It’s very unclear that Iran will allow the free passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
It was for many years a standing risk in all geostrategic calculations that Iran may seek one day to shut off the Strait.
It didn’t do this mainly because it feared massive US retaliation.
Now it has already suffered the massive American retaliation, so it’s going to be very reluctant to give up its colossal new leverage.
If Iran can survive a blockade for six months, and that, like everything else, is very uncertain, Trump surely cannot continue this war, which is so unpopular among ordinary Americans, and so costly and disruptive, for six months.
Trump has so devalued his own word that it now bears almost no relationship to reality, or perhaps an inverse relationship.
For example, in 2018 Trump announced that North Korea would give up all its nuclear weapons. No such thing happened.
After an Alaska summit with Vladimir Putin, Trump announced he’d solved the Ukraine war.
Utter nonsense. None of the peace agreement provisions Trump announced for the Gaza Strip has come to fruition.
And during this war Trump entirely reverses narrative on average twice a day.
The Iranians know Trump now very much wants out of this war, so the US President must do something highly unusual for him – play a weak hand brilliantly.

Well, it ain't talk of "nuts", or even mad King Donald, emperor of bone spurs boasting that he would have won the Vietnam war in a week or two, but the pond will settle for "Utter nonsense" as a sign of the bromancer's ongoing disenchantment with the mad king...

After that it was all down hill.

The pond noted a few days ago that the reptiles seem to live in a distant past populated by long lost figures of the Jim Cairns kind.

This day Geoff chambered another round by reminding the pond of a politician now wreathed in memories like a Network Ten show.

Luckily the intermittent archive is working, so the pond had only to pause to note what appalling snap the reptiles had managed to feature at the head of Geoff's outburst.

Doesn't she look like a demented gesticulating harridan, a mad witch? Is the parrot standing by with a chaff bag to help out Geoff? First the link, then the teaser trailer:

Only Labor can fix up Julia Gillard’s NDIS mess
Labor faces a high-stakes gamble as it prepares to slash $15bn from the disability scheme’s costs by removing participants the scheme was never designed to support.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

Enough of that already ...

And it's a ritual of the pond's never to give petulant Peta the time of day, though there was a whimsical desire to return to ancient days in her headline ...

Where are adults to save us? Howard and Costello took our debt to zero
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

This government has fostered the growth of productivity-smashing union power that has made new resource projects almost impossible.

Sheesh, they're still banging on about long lost picket fence days?

They're still dragging Petey boy on to Sky Noise down under to offer useless advice, even though the pond can vaguely remember - it's so long ago - that he never had the ticker?

And just look at the fossils featured in the snap at the top of her piece, and marvel that she didn't tip the nod to the onion muncher, now at a loose end as his authoritarian Hungary holidays come to an end ...

And that's more than enough of that.

Meanwhile, as the pond was speaking only yesterday about the reptiles ongoing devotion to jihads, the pond should note this effort by over boiled rice...

Yep, it's one of their hysterical patented EXCLUSIVES for a world that just doesn't care ...(be a loyal plastic robot, TV dinners by the pool, brown shoes don't make it - oh Frank, Frank, why did you zap the pond with political incorrectness?)

EXCLUSIVE
Medical regulator ‘captured’ by powerful trans lobby
Peak medical regulator ‘compromised’ by partnership with trans lobby group
AHPRA faces explosive claims it has been compromised by its partnership with trans lobby group ACON, with doctors now ‘too scared to dissent’ on gender treatments.
By Stephen Rice

Transphobia is one of the least appealing aspects of the hive mind, and one of the more pathetic jihads the pond always tries to avoid, as it gets the pond's TG friends agitated (has anyone in the hive mind ever met a TG person? There aren't that many out and about, for all the demonising and the hysteria).

It puts the reptiles in the same company as Vlad the sociopath (good news for Ukraine at last with the onion muncher's master no longer able to block), the Taliban and fundamentalist US evangelicals, and so all the pond can do is point to the jihad in the intermittent archive.

Ditto the pond has neither the time nor the space for women writing about men in heartfelt tones ...

Carving out space for men and boys beyond the shed
There’s been an erosion of the spaces where men gather. Traditional sites of male sociability are in long-term decline.
By Suzana Hardy

So few had cared that the pond had to personally supervise the piece's appearance in the intermittent archive.

Speaking of tradition, whatever happened to traditional spellings of Shoshan or Shoshannah, or if you will Susan, Susanna, or Susannah? The pond has been unnerved ever since Sussssan lost out in her battle with the lettuce.

The pond will also merely note the Thursday presence of Jack the Insider ...

Starmer flailing in a mire of his own making
Rather than seizing the opportunities, the British PM has spent his time stumbling around in a room full of upturned rakes.
By Jack the Insider
Columnist

Again the pond had to do the hard intermittent archive yards, and the pond does appreciate Jack's ongoing attempts to present as one of the more sensible reptiles, interested in life outside the hive mind, but why on earth would the pond want to waste time with him when the pond could revert to Marina delivering a jolly good Hydeing a few days ago in It’s a nightmare on Downing Street: Starmer has no one left to blame for this Mandelson horror show?

Phew, even doing a reptile survey is thirsty work, and the pond is in need of a break.

Actually that Luckovich is in the spirit of the proceedings, because as a final offering, the pond should note that the season is now in full swing, with the latest dire attempt to invoke the spirit of Gallipoli coming in this form ...

The pond settled for a couple of screen caps because it's such a pitiful and wretched searching for relevance, an attempt to use current events to fit into the spirit of the Dardanelles season that's so naked that it has no shame.

If wanting to talk of US military fiascos, any number of more recent examples spring to mind ... from 'Nam through the Iraq folly to the Afghanistan debacle, with that resulting in a never ending horror for the women of Afghanistan, while the latest reward for those Afghanis who supported and helped US troops is to be deported to the Congo. (Oh the mad King and his minions are so cruel in so many appalling ways).

Forget all that - somehow it's the spirit of the season to drag the Dardanelles back into the picture ...

Really? The spirit of a Dardanelles inquiry might assist the United States in sorting out its seemingly endless appetite for military excursions and adventures, even as the mad King campaigned for his re-election on the basis of no more wars and no more adventures and an isolationist America first?

Sigh, best whip up a batch of original Tamworth recipe Anzac biscuits in the spirit of the season.

Oh wait, the pond still has a spare pack of Aldi Pfeffernüsse cookies left over from the Xmas season!

Is that in the spirit of the current season, or like peppermints, will it give a dire hint of an appetite for Blut und Boden?

Best turn to the immortal Rowe to close with a reminder of Geoff chambering that round ...

And here's an echo of the bromancer ... because while Sir Keir might just be skidmarks on the tar after the next round of UK local council elections, the hapless Poms still have the pleasure of noting the real multiple car freeway pile up ...

In which a number of honourable mentions are capped by Dame Slap carrying on jihading ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 21:18:00 +0000

With mad King Donald's ongoing war in the middle east a spectacular mess, and with too many convolutions to track on an hourly basis, the lizard Oz editorialist felt the need to emit a squawk this day ...

Oh dear, so much for the war with China, and as for mad King Donald, put it another way ...

Shades of Sideshow Bob...

And now, thanks to the intermittent archive currently working, the pond decided to make a series of honourable mentions, on a thanks but no thanks basis ...

New tax on gas could backfire spectacularly
Australia’s proposed gas tax threatens to break our word with key trading partners
Australia’s gas belongs to Australians and we have the right to tax it any way we like, but it comes at a cost.
By Saul Kavonic

As a heads up, Saul is credited by the reptiles as: Saul Kavonic is head of energy research MST Marquee

Head off to the company website, and you'll see this in Saul's CV... He has worked in commercial and strategy roles at Woodside Energy, Australia's largest oil and gas company ...

Thanks but no thanks, but the pond is happy to put it another way ...

Also deserving of intermittent archive honourable mentions ...

Butler’s NDIS plan lets kids down
Mark Butler is walking away from children who have serious needs
For many without supports, their autism or development delay is a barrier to participate in everyday life.
By Amanda Camm

Amanda's credit ran ... Amanda Camm is the Queensland Families Minister.

The reptile trick here is to run countless numbers of articles and stories bashing the NDIS as out of control, a disaster for the economy, even worse than renewables, and then just as the hapless government attempts to do something about it, drag in a deep north ministerial toad to deplore said attempts.

In a similar vein ...

Our ‘lifeboat’ for those most in need is sinking
‘Lifeboat’ for those most in need is sinking with rorting, inefficiency and buck-passing
Parliament unanimously backed a national scheme built around fairness, dignity and choice – with significant ambition.
By John Della Bosca

This was an even more cunning reptile ploy, as the reptile credit explains, John Della Bosca is a former Labor politician who led the campaign for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

It's the old reptile ploy of getting 'em coming and getting 'em going. Don't do anything, and its a disaster; do try to do something, and it's a disaster.

Moving along, the pond would have liked a reptile excuse to segue to the Wilcox of the day, but whatever ...

And so to the first sign of the season, a bit like listening to the Delius tone poem, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring.

Come on down Jason ...

Let’s recommit to the nation our Diggers defended
We must never abandon the Australia our soldiers defended
Our political class have treated freedom as a limitless resource that can be extended to its enemies without consequence.
By Jason Thomas

Um, actually Jason, the Australia early diggers defended was inclined to racism, misogyny, bigotry, and a full on war between tykes and proddies, together with assorted other malfunctions and mistreatments of minorities (fancy being a gay in the the war years in Tamworth?).

Some of those aspects of "freedumb" needed to be abandoned ...though it has to be said that the reptiles at the lizard Oz still valiantly attempt to defend those ancient times, what with the war on China by Xmas a daily torment ...

For the record ... Jason Thomas is director of Frontier Assessments.

And if you head off to Jason's website, you're served a word salad which begins this way ...

Dr Jason Thomas specialises in geo-political, field-based assessments in complex operating environments to assist with due-diligence, capital raising, feasibility studies and early works of major projects and humanitarian operations.
Jason has a specific interest in complexities of cross-border projects or those located near porous international boundaries. He develops locally tailored approaches to establishing stable community and political relationships to protect a project’s commercial value.

A teaser trailer will explain why the pond gave the Jason game away early ...

There you go ... all that blather about a cohesive Judaeo-Xian democracy, and talk of Islamist-influenced utopias and so on and so forth.

On the other hand, Jason did mention George Orwell, for which the pond is profoundly grateful, because the pond had promised to itself that the first time it came across a George reference, it would run T. S. Eliot's rejection letter for Animal Farm (click on to enlarge):

(The story at the Graudian: It needs more public-spirited pigs': TS Eliot's rejection of Orwell's Animal Farm)

Does it have anything to do with Jason bleating about Judaeo-Xians and kicking atheists and secularists to the kerb?

Nah, but it's really funny to read the words of a conservative English ponce who simply didn't get a classic bit of writing ...

And so to the reptile treat of the day, courtesy Dame Slap ...

The header: You can teach people to count ... but you cannot make them think; Critics who tally story numbers to attack this newspaper have missed the point entirely.

The pathetically defensive caption for an uncredited, truly pathetic collage: The truth matters. And we said so. When did the left get so timid about challenging those who wield power over us?

Dame Slap is one of the sturdiest (and some would say silliest) reptile jihadists of them all.

She was conducting jihads on climate science long before she donned a MAGA cap and stepped into the New York night life to celebrate the arrival of a mad king, thereby giving free rein to a whole new world of jihads.

The Dame particularly dislikes uppity women, especially if they have an Islamic hue, but today she spent a bigly five minutes being curiously defensive about the jihadist lizard Oz ...

There is a new fad among critics of this newspaper. They count how many stories we run on a particular topic and claim the final sum as a scoop of proven wrongdoing. Some have gone even more granular, counting words. Lost in the bloomless fields of accounting, their exercise is misguided. Perhaps purposely so.
The best one can say is they can count – though that’s up for debate. But they sure can’t think.
Famous for being unfairly sacked by the ABC, Antoinette Lattouf claimed a journalistic coup recently by counting how many stories this newspaper has run about Israel-hating extremist academic Randa Abdel-Fattah.
Working with a data analyst and mathematician, Dr Robert Bean, Lattouf thinks she struck journalistic gold: their counting exercise found this newspaper ran 412 unique articles mentioning Abdel-Fattah – which apparently was “more than Nine Newspapers, ABC News Online, The Guardian and Australian Community Media’s Canberra Times, Newcastle Herald and Bendigo Advertiser COMBINED”.
With a Trumpian flourish like that, Lattouf and Dr Bean might be in the running for the Walkley’s new award for bean counters of the year. Except on our count Abdel-Fattah was mentioned only 268 times during the relevant period.
Double counting by the intrepid counters aside, the bigger point is: so what? Thinkers will notice why our coverage differs from other media outlets. Unlike most other media organisations, we take antisemitism seriously. If you’re at a loose end, Antoinette, count the number of stories we ran from Australians calling for a royal commission into antisemitism.
As an aside, before it folded in early 2025, the group co-chaired by Malcolm Turnbull – Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission – caught the counting bug too just weeks before the voice referendum. When it was clear the Yes side would not prevail, the group released research about how many pieces News Corp outlets ran supporting the No case to suggest wicked bias. As it turned out, the more interesting number was the 9,452,792 Australians (or 60.06 per cent) who voted against the constitutional change. They did so for sound reasons that The Australian and other News Corp outlets explored in far greater detail than all other news outlets combined. (No caps needed for emphasis.) We call this public interest journalism.

What's funny about this? You don't need to count numbers to realise that the lizard Oz routinely conducts jihads and one of their leading jihadists is Dame Slap.

Why bother disputing it? Why not wear it as a badge of honour? If you're going to carry on like a Taliban extremist or a ratbag mad mullah, why not just own it?

The problem with the counters is they don’t understand what really counts. Lattouf’s maths scoop failed to expose inaccuracies in our coverage or make a case that reporting about Abdel-Fattah was not in the public interest.
Instead, Lattouf regurgitated Abdel Fattah’s belief that “being a woman who is Palestinian and Muslim makes her a prime target for The Australian”. That sort of fatuous argument finds friends in the knee-jerk world of identity politics.
In the serious world of public interest journalism, being a woman who is Palestinian and a Muslim does not warrant any more scrutiny and – importantly – any less scrutiny than any other ethnic or religious background.

She squawks and bleats and protests too much, though that is the jihadist way.

The reptiles once again reminded the hive mind of the subject of one of their never-ending jihads - a jihad which incidentally the pond has largely ignored because it's been so angry and over the top: Coverage of academic Randa Abdel-Fattah has become a focal point in media criticism debates. Picture: AAP

Dame Slap used this chance to carry on with the jihad, regurgitating all the reptiles standard jihad talking points...

This newspaper reported on Abdel-Fattah’s behaviour – which included leading children’s chants of “intifada” hate speech at a protest at Sydney University, and updating her Facebook profile with the image of a parachutist in the colours of the Palestinian flag a day after Hamas terrorists parachuted into Israel to murder and kidnap hundreds of civilians.
The paper ran news stories on her circa $900,000 taxpayer-funded grant from the Australian Research Council, on her bragging about how she “bends the rules” on her grant and on her exclusion – then inclusion – at Adelaide Writers Week. All this was most certainly in the public interest.
The fact that Macquarie University took no action against Abdel-Fattah, that the ARC decided her grant was in order and the Adelaide Festival board decided to cave to pressure and re-invite her to speak at the 2027 Adelaide Writers Week, all of which we faithfully reported, invites more questions about our educational and cultural institutions. It turns out that readers were very interested to learn about how tax dollars are spent and the laughably hypocritical culture of writers festivals.
The only thing the counters have revealed is that Abdel Fattah owes The Australian a note of thanks. She is no longer an obscure academic. After all, what’s the point of all that bleating about Israel if no one hears you?
Amanda Meade at The Guardian likes to count too. After the Australian Press Council decided against this newspaper concerning a complaint by former ACT chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold, Meade counted how many words – apparently 4000 – we wrote putting our case that the press council got it woefully wrong.

The pond was exceptionally pleased to see the venerable Meade get a mention.

She must really have stuck in Dame Slap's craw, and what a chance to provide a link to The Australian throws 4,000-word tantrum at press council ruling as Drumgold waits for just one" sorry.

Of course another Dame Slap jihad was at the heart of it ...

When the press watchdog ruled that Murdoch’s broadsheet published three misleading, unfair and inaccurate articles about the former ACT prosecutor Shane Drumgold, The Australian responded by having a tantrum.
We say tantrum because the newspaper published on Thursday an extraordinary 4,000-word riposte, including a front-page story, a timeline, two comment pieces and a thundering editorial questioning the Australian Press Council’s competence and integrity.
This railing against the umpire is all the more bizarre, given News Corp effectively controls the APC as a majority member which pays up to 70% of its annual $1.7m budget.
The columnist Janet Albrechtsen wrote all three pieces that were criticised, although the Sydney bureau chief, Stephen Rice, shares a byline on one. Of Albrechtsen’s role, the council said it was “a significant omission” not to disclose the writer’s role in the inquiry into the Bruce Lehrmann trial for which Drumgold was the prosecutor.
In 2024, the ACT supreme court ruled Walter Sofronoff’s extensive communications with Albrechtsen gave rise to an impression of bias against him during the inquiry into the Lehrmann trial. The judge found Sofronoff’s 273 interactions with Albrechtsen gave the impression he “might have been influenced by the views held and publicly expressed” by her.
Drumgold complained to the council that three pieces written by Albrechtsen after the ruling misrepresented the findings. The APC ruled in Drumgold’s favour despite a last-ditch attempt by the Oz to change its mind.
When The Australian received the preliminary adverse finding it responded by commissioning two independent legal opinions. The council said the legal opinions were not relevant and it was only judging whether the publication had breached its editorial standards.
Drumgold responded to The Australian’s dummy spit with a post on LinkedIn: “Who needs the truth, when you have a whole newspaper … Sorry seems to be the hardest word.”

So when Dame Slap wrote the words "we wrote putting our case", she's deflecting from the real problem. It was she that wrote all three pieces judged to misrepresent the findings.

That's what happens when you're a jihadist intent more on ideology and theology than on giving someone a fair go, or admitting an error.

The reptiles decided this would be a good point to fling in a snap of the victim, Shane Drumgold. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Jihadist Dame Slap carried on bleating ...

It was telling that a journalist chose to count our words rather than read them. The substance of the matter was simple – should journalists and newspapers meekly kneel before the press council when they know a council ruling is wrong?
The truth matters. And we said so. When did the left get so timid about challenging those who wield power over us?
Of course, at the heart of this counting-as-journalism fetish is a discomfort with the nature of our news, analysis and opinion pieces. If Lattouf or Meade agreed with the stories, they wouldn’t have their calculators out. Most important, if these critics could find something genuinely wrong with our reporting – inaccuracies, for example, are always a good place to start – they would surely go hell for leather on that front. Instead, to borrow a phrase from Paul Keating, each has reduced themselves to a human abacus.
The most recent number-counting exercise to try to justify a claim this newspaper has done something dreadfully wrong concerns our reporting on the serious allegations about white art gallery workers intervening in the artworks of Indigenous artists and concealing that intervention.
The Australian’s “white hands on black art” investigation into the APY Art Centre Collective was high-quality journalism. Based on numerous sources, the 2023 investigation included a disturbing video showing a white staff member from APYACC-affiliated art centre Tjala Arts painting on the canvas of award-winning Indigenous artist Yaritji Young.
It’s understandable that groundbreaking investigations that question the status quo will raise the ire of vested interests. But these were matters of profound public interest for everyone involved in the Indigenous art world and beyond.
The reporting has proven deeply inconvenient for many at the centre of the allegations, and for institutions that carried out their own reviews.

It was a relief when the reptiles decided this would be a good time to con hive mind suckers out of a few shekels to keep the Murdochian clan in their accustomed US citizen lifestyle ...

PREMIUM
Yaritji Young paints Tjala Arts centre
Become a member to access our premium video content

That provided Dame Slap with a chance to regurgitate another favourite reptile jihad.

The Dame has always been up for a little bashing of uppity blacks, so why not indulge in her favourite pastime?

The APYACC was expelled from the Indigenous Art Code in 2023. Its state funding was suspended. An independent investigation by the National Gallery of Australia, into 28 paintings that were going to be shown at the APYACC exhibition at the NGA, excluded the video from its investigation because the relevant artwork was not part of the exhibition, before deciding all the paintings met its provenance standards. The SA government has still not released the findings of a tri-government inquiry. However, APYACC’s state funding has been restored.
Those who are deeply uncomfortable with The Australian’s investigation have failed to show concern for the truth. A partisan website launched last week to coincide with the APYACC exhibition makes wild claims about the white hands investigation, focusing on the volume of stories. The APYACC’s catalogue, on sale in the NGA’s gallery, carries an essay claiming, in effect, that the white hands on black art investigation might have been timed to defeat the voice referendum. This is a crazy conflation of two very serious matters.
In the end, readers will decide what matters. They read The Australian because we run important stories, not comfortable ones. They focus on substance, not numbers. For the record – to save our critics some time – this piece is 1253 words.

Oh that must have hurt, there's a lot of smarting and cheek-burning going on in that epic bout of defensiveness.

How tough it is to be a jihadist and cop all those slings and arrows and word counts.

That noted, by the pond's count, Dame Slap's piece was 1249 words too long.

Just a few words would have sufficed: The reptile jihad continues ...

And so to the Rowe of the day ...

And speaking of Orwellian ...

In which the bromancer resorts to prayer and Dame Groan goes back to ancient times in search of Dr. Jimbo ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 21:32:00 +0000

After the bliss of a walk down Smith Street and a Vietnamese style pancake in Richmond, the pond decided it was well over mad King Donald and his lunatic ways, but how could the pond sweep aside the bromancer, sent in by the reptiles to contemplate and deal with the mess?

The header: What next in Iran? It’s a good time to pray; With a fragile ceasefire nearing its end, stark choices face the US and Iran — and missteps now could reshape global security and trade.

The caption for the mad king looking bemused, or possibly bewildered, or contemplating a heaven he'll always be denied: Donald Trump’s decisions in the coming days could determine the war’s trajectory. Picture: Getty Images

Prayer? That's the bromancer's answer to it all? It's a good time to pray?

The reptiles were so astonished that they didn't attempt any visual distractions, and instead allowed the bromancer to let loose a four minute existential spray, beavering away at a mad King Donald dilemma which apparently could only be resolved by divine intervention:

We are now in the most dangerous and perhaps the most promising few days of the Iran war. This is evident in the US Navy boarding and seizing Iranian cargo ships and the supposedly non-existent Iranian navy firing on international tankers that tried to transit the Strait of Hormuz, some even apparently with what they thought was Iranian permission.
The ceasefire ends on Wednesday. Several outcomes are possible. Donald Trump could announce a grand bargain in principle that opens the strait while negotiations are finalised. The US would suspend its blockade of Iranian ports. Alternatively, Trump could announce he thinks a deal is close and so the ceasefire continues, but so does the US blockade and Iranian actions keeping the strait closed. Third, the Iranians could capitulate, giving up their 60 per cent enriched uranium and agreeing never to block the strait again. That’s total US victory. Fourth, Trump could end the ceasefire and resume bombing, with Iran resuming attacks on Gulf Arab oil infrastructure. Then it’s a question of who can endure pain longer, Trump or Tehran.
Finally, the US could accept some crippling concession, such as Iran down-mixing its enriched plutonium to make it less dangerous and allowing Iran, perhaps in partnership with the US, to charge tolls on ships navigating the strait.
Trump has often raised this last possibility, suggesting the US could charge international ships a fee to escort them militarily through the strait. That would be devastatingly bad because it would commit the US, for the first time in its history, to a policy of international piracy. It would irretrievably repudiate the doctrine of freedom of navigation that the US Navy, more than any other institution in the world, upholds. This benefits the US and the entire globe. It’s the most basic of security “commons” that the US has underwritten with the support of all its allies and most other nations as well. The precedent for other nations then to charge fees for what was previously innocent passage through straits or even international waters that simply abut their territories would be colossally damaging.
Such an outcome is just possible, however, because it’s one of the few formulations that would allow both Trump (albeit fraudulently) and the Iranians to claim victory.All outcomes are possible and all, except total US victory, are very troublesome for the world.

Total US victory? Perhaps by wiping Iran off the map entirely? Nothing like a genocide to warm the cockles of the hive mind.

At this point, the bromancer dared to be so bold as to roll his trousers up, walk upon a beach and perhaps devour a peach.

You see, gasp, he's been highly critical:

I’ve been highly critical of the way Trump has waged this conflict. His often grotesque language and social media posts have the whole world worried about his stability, have destroyed public support for the military campaign and made it impossible for allies to actively engage with his campaign because it has been at the political level so incoherent, changing and abusive of allies and innocent third parties (such as the Pope).

Um, no mention of the role that the Emeritus Chairman played in setting this folly in motion?

Perhaps that's a little too close to the bromancer bone. Do carry on:

Trump also declined to task the US national system to take all manner of preparatory actions that would have strengthened its position in the war, from elementary moves such as filling up the US oil reserve before the war began, to retaining in service the last US de-mining ships, to rapidly developing cheaper counter-drone capabilities instead of so wantonly using up scarce supplies of missiles and interceptors. Most important, perhaps, because he wrongly thought the war would be quick and easy, Trump didn’t convince the American people of its importance or win even a smidgin of bipartisan support, or secure social licence for a period of sacrifice and difficulty. This is where Trump’s personal performance is so important and so destructive.
Nonetheless, and here is the most important consideration of all, it’s overwhelmingly in the interests of humanity that the US and Israel triumph in this war against Iran. The Iranian threat through nuclear, missiles, proxy forces and terrorists, combined with its savage killings of its own people, mean the campaign was not disproportionate.
Indeed, so far the US and Israeli bombings, aimed carefully at military targets, have killed far fewer Iranians than the Iranian government has done this year alone in suppressing protests.
More troubling is the question of whether Iran represented an imminent threat. Iran has consistently attacked Israel, the US, Western societies such as Australia, its Arab enemies and its own citizens, but it has done so mostly using proxies and clandestine agents in a way that often falls just below the level that would provoke an immediate military response.

It wouldn't be the bromancer without a little tyke blather about a just war, though truth to tell, there's not the slightest indication that the mad king is interested in justice for the Iranian people:

This reality goes a long way towards meeting the criterion that a threat must be imminent before military action is morally defensible. On balance therefore, and although it’s not absolutely clear, you can make a good case that the war was justified, which is one reason the Albanese government and the federal opposition both supported US actions initially. However, Trump’s wild and self-contradictory statements and the lack of obvious and necessary preparatory actions have clouded the moral case.

Clouded the moral case? Oh dear, the bromancer couldn't even come at the just war carry-on that Our Henry and Polonius peddled to the hive mind with their prattle.

But wait, don't despair, the bromancer still has it in him to celebrate the deeds of Kegsbreath:

The US blockade of Iranian ports, in a war in which Iran itself is blockading the whole strait except for vessels linked to its commercial gain, is morally, militarily and strategically sound. In fact the US should have done this weeks ago because, with minimum violence, it cuts off the revenue Iran needs to pay its soldiers and to keep its government going.
There is obviously now deep division within the Iranian government, though the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps clearly still has the upper hand. Regime collapse is just possible and would be the best outcome. Blockading the ports seems to put Tehran under more pressure than the bombing campaign did. But for most of the war so far the US tolerated Iran closing the strait but simply allowed Iran to let its own oil go to market on various ships.
This was one of many US misjudgments. However, the US embargo nonetheless has big risks. Would the US board and take custody of a Chinese ship trying to transport oil through the strait? Not only that, despite all the happy talk about opening the strait by force, even the US Navy won’t sail in the strait itself. So the blockade has to be conducted from outside the southern entrance to the Persian Gulf. It is resource-intensive and unsustainable in the long term.
What next? If you believe in the power of prayer, now’s a good time.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

Prayer? That's the best the bromancer's got?

But what if the Islamics got the right god? What if it's the Jews' main non-trinitarian man? What if Christ is indeed just a minor prophet and a naughty boy? What about the Hindus or the Buddhists?

Who to pray to, and what sign prayers have been any use in the past, with prayers not having noticeably shorted a couple of world wars and lots of minor ones?

Luckily Wilcox had a prayer to hand ...

And so to the rest of the reptile rabble, and with the best will in the world, after all that, the pond simply couldn't summon up the strength to go into simplistic Simon raging at pigs ...

Where are our governments in the fight against the feral pig plague?
Of all the things Australians love to boast about, this probably isn’t one of them— there are now more feral pigs roaming our vast continent than there are humans.
By Simon Benson
Political analyst

Perhaps simpleton Simon could get hold of a gun, and head outback with other shooters determined to tackle the pigs? (YouTube link, warning, rampant night time pig killing. Beware what your logarithms might throw up - and just be aware it's more Tamworth than Tamworth).

It was off to the intermittent archive with him, and ditto away with Geoff chambering another round ...

Grim Jim spinning up a whirlpool in sea of red
The Treasurer has mastered the art of fiscal spin, but behind the budget curtain lies a sea of red ink that threatens to expose the government’s economic management.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

The only reason the pond offers a teaser trailer for Geoff is to draw attention to the photo at the top of the piece ...

You see?

That snap of Jimbo in despair.

It's a classic reptile offering, featuring Jimbo looking downcast, perhaps a tad sullen, a battered and defeated man.

Now guess what snap the reptiles featured at the top of this day's Dame Groan outing, cheek by jowl with Geoff?

The header: ‘Anti-economist’ Treasurer Jim Chalmers fails on spending, inflation and real wages; Jim Chalmers’ approach to looming crises hark back to a failed predecessor from the 1970s. It could be a long road back.

The caption for exactly the same snap, recycled endlessly on a loop of doom: Treasurer Jim Chalmers ‘distrusts markets and thinks government intervention and spending can produce superior outcomes’. Picture: Martin Ollman

Talk about predictable, but that's why the pond didn't bother with Geoff firing off shots.

Why settle for second best, when you can get a classic Dame Groan in peak "we'll all be rooned" form?

These are tricky days for any treasurer. The economic implications of the conflict in the Middle East are unclear and the degree of uncertainty is extremely high.
Even if there is an early resolution to the war, which looks unlikely, there will be a hit to our economic growth rate with headline inflation increasing. Certain sectors of the economy will be particularly hard hit, including agriculture, tourism and potentially parts of mining. Asian refineries will be able to supply Australia only as long as the flow of crude oil keeps up to accommodate overall demand. In the event of any shortfall, expect countries to cater for their own needs well ahead of ours.
It’s not necessary to have studied economics at university to be a good treasurer. Some of our best treasurers never went near a university economics course.
The principle of opportunity cost, that the cost of doing A is the cost of not doing B, just makes sense to them. Similarly, the central role that incentives play in driving behaviour is obvious, as is the scope for government as well as market failure. The need for budget discipline is self-evident lest the cost of excessive spending leads to inflation and imposes a burden on future generations.
Sadly, our current Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, is not one of those people who simply gets it. Indeed, he is essentially an anti-economist who, Sisyphus-like, is trying to transform the Australian economy from Canberra. He distrusts markets and thinks government intervention and spending can produce superior outcomes.

And at this point the pond has to ask exactly what is the demographic the reptiles and Dame Groan are aiming at, prompted by this still ... Dr Jim Cairns, also ‘way out of his depth’.

Are there any younglings whatsoever that have the first clue about Dr. Jimbo?

The pond can recall the times when the pond was living in Windsor and would head off to the Prahran markets, and see Dr. Jimbo sitting at a humble table, flogging his books.

But the pond is of an age. Are the reptiles really only interested in ancient times and ancient audiences?

Dame Groan possibly thought this was a killer reference, but she might just as well have referenced Jack Lang feuding with the banks in his Lang plan.

What on earth is the point, save to establish that you have to be old to stay in touch with this ancient chook's ranting.

Even Dame Groan had to admit that she was wandering a long way back ...

We need to go back a long time to identify another anti-economist who held the position of treasurer: another Dr Jim. Jim Cairns was also a politician way out of his depth who took the reins at a critical time – an oil shock, rising unemployment – and made a complete hash of it. We may be about to see history repeat itself.
In many ways, Chalmers has been one of the luckiest treasurers ever. Escaping from the clutches of Covid, commodity prices have soared and the terms of trade have recorded historical high levels. But unanticipated revenue has been quickly spent, often on very low-value ends.
Forget the nonsense that Chalmers spouts about the Labor government saving $112bn; it has saved nothing and has spent even more. The figures tell the story.
On-budget spending is up by $160bn since Labor took office. Payments as a proportion of GDP have gone from 24.3 per cent to 26.9 per cent. Then there is the explosion in off-budget spending. The now more meaningful figure is the headline cash balance, which shows a deficit of around $63bn next financial year. This compares with Chalmers’ preferred measure, the underlying cash balance, of minus $34bn. It also needs to be pointed out that government debt has risen by more than $100bn during Chalmers’ term in office and is now approaching $1 trillion.
When Chalmers left Australia recently to confer with finance ministers around the world, he made the astonishing claim Australia “is better placed and better prepared” than many countries.

If comparing Jimbo to Dr Jimbo is the best Dame Groan can do, then truly these are desperate times for an aged and out of touch hive mind, compounded by a completely meaningless snap which illustrates three fifths of f*ck all (*google bot approved): Asian refineries will be able to supply Australia only as long as the flow of crude oil keeps up to accommodate overall demand. Picture: Eddie Russell

Is Dame Groan's text so bland and boring that a snap of gas guzzlers in a queue to guzzle gas is the best they can do?

Isn't the reptile joke that it's EVs that have to line up for hours to access a charger?

Dame Groan was keen to absolve mad King Donald of any responsibility for the dismal state of the world, the sort of shufty that the reptiles love to perform, a quick peep before moving back to the main blame game ...

Carry on groaning ...

Was this some sort of joke? We have one of the lowest number of days of liquid fuel reserves among advanced economies; he has used up what fiscal headroom we could now have by his constant overspending; and domestically sourced inflation was a clear problem well before Donald Trump pulled the trigger. Chalmers, the anti-economist, had previously demonstrated his muddled thinking when he declared spending hundreds of millions of dollars on cost-of-living measures would miraculously reduce inflation. Higher interest rates have been one of the outcomes.
One of the important roles the treasurer plays is to block the unachievable ambitions of the spending ministers. The most successful treasurers have kept a close watch on the spending ministers as well as examining the policies they propose. On this score Chalmers is a failure, largely going along with the damaging and expensive ambitions of too many other cabinet ministers, including Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen.
The fact Chalmers can even talk about the care economy shows he completely misunderstands this role. In his world, uncapped spending on social welfare will lead to higher living standards. Demand-driven, non-means-tested programs have become almost universal, leading to runaway spending and an inability to forecast future outlays.
It’s not just the National Disability Insurance Scheme that’s out of control; think aged care, childcare and other badly designed programs.

It's as if the long years of Tory rule had nothing to do with the current state of affairs, and then came the bog standard reptile fear of EVs and renewables and all that jazz, with Satan's little demonic helper in the thick of it ... Energy Minister Chris Bowen has seized on the fuel crisis sparked by the conflict in the Middle East to declare the government must keep electrifying the nation and build Australia’s sovereign capability through renewables. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Then it was to the closing Dame Groan gobbet of despair.

How many times can she scribble that we're all rooned, how many ways can she spin her sorry tale of woe?

Sadly by this stage in her anti-economist career, there aren't that many, it's the predictability that's the feature, not a bug ...

The responsible way to look at government spending on social welfare is that budget affordability is the key. A strong economy with solid productivity growth is the means whereby taxpayers can afford to help the more disadvantaged in society.
Another area of profound weakness is Chalmers’ misunderstanding of the labour market. He thinks real wage gains simply can be mandated and workers will enjoy the benefits without any downside. The fact he is part of a government arguing for a “sustainable real wage increase” at the annual wage review at the Fair Work Commission makes the point. Without any increase in productivity, there is no sustainable way real wages can be increased, but Chalmers thinks these things can be imposed. The timing of this intervention couldn’t be worse.
Without a coherent economic framework, Chalmers’ response to war-induced economic difficulties is likely to be ill-advised and ineffective. His instinct will be to ditch any budget plans for real savings – note here the difference with reprioritisation – and to pour money into pump-priming the economy through more handouts. The minor tax reforms in the budget will be piecemeal and designed to shift attention away from the loose fiscal settings.
Chalmers may have the gift of the gab but the fact per capita income has gone backwards during his term is really all you need to know. He has abandoned the lessons of the Hawke-Keating era where a limited government role was accompanied by market forces largely determining the allocation of resources.
It will be a long road back from the ill-effects of having an anti-economist at the helm.

It reminded the pond of the sort of litany you get in a Catholic mass, with the high priestess blathering about productivity and pump-priming and handouts and so on and so forth, and then expecting a response from the hive mind. Et cum spiritu tuo ...

The immortal Rowe preferred to take to the high seas, and he at least gave mad King Donald a commanding role ...

And as EVs and renewables and all that jazz have been mentioned, the pond realises that it didn't provide an update on the EV running time for the return trip between Melbourne and Sydney.

Unfortunately, the timing was skewed because the pond stopped not just for charging but at other places it likes - the sweet little town of Euroa for coffee, the submariner town of Holbrook for a visit to the IGA, a genuinely odd rustic barn of a supermarket, and Gundagai, just because it's there, a dinkum reminder of Jack O'Hagan.

Boosted by listening to a four part podcast about the arrival of the Samurai and the Shōgun in medieval Japan, the pond was looking to an eleven and a half hour trip, a bit longer than usual but not so bad.

There was NIL competition for chargers, save for one bunch fairly close to Sydney that was full. All the pond did was drive on to the next set of chargers, where there was no competition whatsoever.

It was looking good. And then the pond hit Sydney.

First the motorway was clogged to the brim, full of cop and ambulance party hats attending multiple gas guzzler collisions. No way through there ...

Then the pond followed navigator Google's suggestion to get off the main road - never a good idea - and took a back way through Canterbury Road.

You guessed it, two more gas guzzlers had decided to collide and clog the road.

At this point the pond's schedule was shot, but it wasn't the fault of the EV. It was the fault of the gas guzzlers, wanting to live out J. G. Ballard's Crash. What they needed was a little of the accident avoidance tech that comes standard in EVs.

In short, EVs are fine for distance travel. If you want to ease range anxieties, pay more for a fast charging vehicle with good range (these days the speeds and the ranges on offer are remarkable, but there's a premium involved).

If you want to save money for local city stuff, get a little suburban EV runabout.

These days you can get one cheaply, with the pricing on a par with gas guzzlers. If your interest in cars has gone, stick to public transport - trains and light rail and trams and even some buses are electric, and it's all good.

Forget the reptiles. There's a reason this is in the news ...

Along the way, the pond did score one visual souvenir, from Euroa, a town better known for its magnificent magpie statue.

This one seemed to summarise what the pond would experience as soon as it plunged back into the hive mind...

Yes, it was a sense of impending ...r,r,r,rage ...

Of course it isn't what it seems on the surface ...

In 2026, RAGE will proudly present its inaugural Recycled Art Exhibition - a major celebration on the war on waste tapping into the creativity, innovation, and talent thriving in our communities. (Here)

Judging by their limited range of illustrations, the reptiles are also in to recycling, and that's why it seems worth reviving this immortal Rowe ... go electric younglings, you only have the hive mind to lose...

In which the pond goes Latin mass before turning to Lord Downer, the onion muncher and Major Mitchell ..

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 19 Apr 2026 21:24:00 +0000

The pond isn't going to go into the funeral it attended, which was a private affair in the form of a Catholic communion mass, but did want to note one aspect of the service.

But first an anecdote. A long, long time ago, in a Tamworth far away, wreathed in the mists of time, the pond attended St Dominic's Catholic school, run by Dominican nuns in what was then obligatory full penguin gear. (Later the site was sold, the building demolished and the space turned into a car park).

After lying about sins in confession to get a quick 'all clear' from a mysterious priest tucked away behind a screen ("disobedience" was always handy, as was in later times "impure thoughts") and saying the odd cleansing Hail Mary, students were obliged to attend mass at the next door St Nick's.

One time after the priest had stuck a wafer on the pond's tongue (a feat involving some dexterity) a wafer fragment got stuck in the pond's teeth.

Wandering back to the pew, the pond began to poke at this disagreeable bit of wafer with a finger in an attempt to dislodge it... when whack, a nun's hand delivered a sharp blow to the pond's cheek, the sound reverberating through the church.

Then she she leaned in, face contorted in anger, hissing words to the effect: "Don't you ever dare touch the body of Christ".

At that cheek-reddening, flesh-bruising moment, the pond was enlightened.

This wafer was no symbolic token gesture, this wafer was the actual body of Christ.

The pond was committing an act of flesh-eating cannibalism, of the same genus as all those cannibal stories that littered children's adventure fiction.

It was ... transubstantiation. (The official word for the concept came later to the pond. If you've never been there, you'll probably never get it.)

Let no filthy, grubby paw, or digit, get in the way of the magical moment when a priest put Christ's flesh on tongue, and the recipient gobbles down actual human flesh with pious relish.

Fast forward, and in the funeral service the pond was aghast, shocked and disturbed to see the priest passing out wafers to the grubby, grasping paws of the congregation. Then they could stuff the wafers in their mouths by themselves.

It was still flesh eating, but it was somehow prosaic and sordid, entirely without magic.

The last funeral communion mass the pond attended had been in pre-Covid days, and apparently this variation was introduced as a way to help deal with Covid.

The pond urgently wanted the opinion of Robert Kennedy on this, but he was too busy attending to a raccoon penis. Still the pond wondered whether mixing a little Ivermectin into the holy water might not have been a better solution, thereby allowing the priest to still deliver magical wafer direct to tongue.

The pond thought of that Dominican nun, now probably long dead, and wondered how she might have coped with this new age of heresy.

Eventually a sullen pond began to mutter the responses under breath in best Mel Gibson style - "Et cum spiritu tuo", "Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccáta mundi, miserére nobis", and so on, proving that years of indoctrination can survive a long time, and that while you can take an ex-Catholic out of the church, you can't take the church out of the ex-Catholic. (You are with Mel, JD, in a love of the Latin mass, aren't you?)

And speaking of heretics, it's time for reptiles filling the hive mind of the lizard Oz with odious, grubby thoughts...

Today it's all about the war and mad King Donald and the bumbling incompetence of him and his minions, and naturally the reptiles were out and about looking for excuses and people to blame.

Lord Downer led the way ...

The header: Progressive left backs our enemies, kills our economy; The policies of the left are driven by its ideology. They’re driven by the vibe.

The caption for an image designed to terrify the hive mind: Iranian women part in a rally to pay tribute to women killed during the Middle East war, in Tehran. Picture: AFP

Progressives kill the economy? Be fair, no progressive could manage the amount of damage inflicted on the world economy by mad King Donald and his minions, by way of tariff wars and meaningless wars of choice.

But Lord Downer is never inclined to be fair, he's more inclined to be relentlessly stupid ...

If ever you wanted evidence that the progressive left has taken over most of the key institutions of the Western world in recent years, have a look at how the West has reacted to the Iran war. First, much of the progressive left in the liberal democratic world clearly hopes that a brutal autocracy such as Iran’s wins the war against America and Israel.
The progressive left hates Donald Trump more than it loathes the Iranian theocracy. The left doesn’t care that Iran, especially through its proxies, has been at war with Israel since 1979. When the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps massacred 40,000 people at the end of last year and early this year, the progressive left didn’t care, just as it doesn’t care about the estimated 150,000 people who have been killed in the Sudan civil war and the 12 million displaced. It doesn’t care about rockets being fired on behalf of Iran into Israel daily. All it cares about is the horror of Israel defending itself. As is said of the ABC’s international reporting, “no Jews, no news”.
Secondly, the Iran war has demonstrated how utterly self-defeating Western energy policies – driven by the intense advocacy of the progressive left – have been over the past two decades.
Nowhere has this fecklessness been truer than in our own country. Instead of urging the Iranians to agree to American demands to end arming and directing proxies in the Middle East, desist from developing ballistic missiles and other weapons to threaten their neighbours, and to abandon their nuclear program, what does the Australian government do? It urges de-escalation. That’s it. Not consistent condemnation of Iran, but implicit neutrality. We all know why. It’s about domestic politics.

And what would crusader Lord Downer have us do? Hie off to the strait to join the crusade in all its folly? Quick, another snap designed to terrify the hive mind into fear and submission ... Supporters of the Iran-backed Houthi movement brandish their weapons as they rally in solidarity with Iran and Lebanon in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on April 17. Picture: AFP

Terrifying, but warrior Lord Downer is made of stern stuff, and didn't wilt ...

President Trump isn’t popular, so the war is not popular. What is more, there are all those left-wing voters in parts of Sydney and Melbourne who hope Iran will be able to see off the Americans and the Israelis. So the Prime Minister and his ministers are very careful not to be too supportive of our ally, who is the guarantor of the security of the Western world and way of life.
The Iran war has also laid bare the absurdity of the energy policies Australia has been pursuing for the past 20 years. Despite the tens of billions of dollars poured into renewables, still 92 per cent of Australia’s energy consumption comes from fossil fuels. But the progressive left – in particular, the Labor Party and the Greens – has spent two decades railing against fossil fuel exploitation in Australia. It has given an impression that Australia is enjoying an energy transition of great rapidity, and this is going to generate cheaper energy. We will also reduce global temperatures.

Ah, the old fossil fuel routine, but the pond has done enough celebrating of the joys of EVs.

Quick, instead produce another image designed to terrify the hive mind ... Iranian women brandish their rifles as they take part in a rally to pay tribute to women killed during the Middle East war. Picture: AFP

It would take more than a few women to deter His Lordship, but what with the war being a bit of a mess, he soon had to veer off into all sorts of thickets and weeds ...

Anybody with a practical bent of mind will be interested in the results. Not only have we contributed precisely nothing to abating global temperature but, alarmingly, the level of productivity in the Australian energy sector has declined by about 30 per cent over the past 20 years. That means we require substantially more capital investment for the same level of output. No wonder Australia’s electricity prices have increased by about 60 per cent in that period.
Well, as soon as the Strait of Hormuz was closed, reality struck home. We’re still hugely dependent on fossil fuels, and the energy transition has made energy more expensive, and we have had literally no impact whatsoever on the climate over the past 20 years.
Not surprisingly, corporates have been reluctant to invest in searching for and developing oilfields in and off Australia, as well as being restricted in their capacity to drill for gas.
What is extraordinary is that our governments, dominated by the progressive left, have discouraged the development of known exploitable onshore and offshore oilfields.
Let’s take two examples. Recently, the Queensland government announced it would give approval for the development of the Taroom Trough oil and gas field. This is the first development of an oilfield in Australia in 50 years. Yet for years the progressive left has wanted to leave it untouched. Secondly, and more dramatically, Santos has discovered a vast oil and gas field known as Dorado off the coast of Western Australia. Santos estimates this contains about 150 million barrels of oil, so it’s a sizeable deposit. It’s roughly the equivalent of Australia’s current total annual production of oil. If the Dorado deposit were exploited, it would give Australia significantly greater self-sufficiency in oil.
So why hasn’t Santos gone ahead and invested in the exploitation of Dorado?
The answer is illustrative of everything that’s wrong with the progressive left approach to energy policies. Santos have just weathered years of litigation to get the Barossa gas field off the coast of the Northern Territory up and running. It has been bogged down in litigation, driven by the Environmental Defenders Office, which gets $2m a year in funding from the federal Labor government.
Ultimately, Santos held off these challenges, but at substantial cost to the company. More than that, this litigation damaged Australia’s reputation as a country to invest in.
At the same time as discovering the Dorado oilfield, Santos also discovered an oil deposit in Alaska. The company decided it was far less risky and therefore far more profitable for its shareholders to proceed with the Alaska project.
There you have it. As a result of the policies of the progressive left, we failed to develop millions of barrels of oil offshore in Australia, oil, which would have given us genuine energy security.
So for the past four years, we’ve had a federal government opposed to fossil fuels, and suddenly it’s crying crocodile tears about a shortage of oil supplies because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The Prime Minister is burning up fossil fuels flying to Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia, begging them not to withdraw their supply of fossil fuels to Australia.
By the way, it’s not as if they would. The trips are just a political stunt.
That’s the progressive left for you. Policies are driven by its ideology. They’re driven by the vibe, not Australia’s tradition of practical policymaking.

Driven by the vibe? This hapless old antique is as ancient as The Castle, but without the first clue as to how to do comedy ...

The pond's mission this day is simply to line up a few reptiles for the pleasure of correspondents.

Sadly the pond couldn't spot the Caterist early in the morning and so had to settle for the onion muncher, a truly wretched and depressing thought ...

The header: PM’s begging tour exposes fuel security ignorance; As prime minister, I reluctantly accepted the official advice that efficient global markets meant that maintaining 90 days’ supply of liquid fuels onshore was no longer necessary. But now it’s critical.

The caption: Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah (left), Crown Prince Al-Muhtadee Billah (centre) and Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese walk after their official luncheon at Istana Nurul Iman in Bandar Seri Begawan on April 15. Picture: AFP

The pond hopes such onion muncher appearances aren't going to become a regular feature of the lizard Oz.

With his time as lickspittle sycophantic stooge in service to Viktor Mihály Orbán now over, the suck might now think he's out of a job, and in his narcissist way, turn to the lizard Oz to maintain his feeble attempt at relevance ...

Is he going to keep turning up in the lizard Oz to rabbit on in ways that will please other authoritarians? Is that the sort of punishment the reptiles are lining up for the hive mind?

The on-again, off-again reopening of the Strait of Hormuz doesn’t mean that Australia can take fuel security for granted. This is actually our second wake-up call about over-reliance on global supply chains and we can’t afford to go back to sleep once more, as we did after the first.
As prime minister, I reluctantly accepted the official advice that efficient global markets meant that maintaining 90 days’ supply of liquid fuels onshore was no longer necessary. The global scramble for masks, surgical gowns and vaccines during the pandemic made it obvious that, in an emergency, it would be every country for itself.
In its wake, the Morrison government asked the Productivity Commission to consider our supply chain vulnerability but – remarkably – its report hardly mentioned fuel security, even though no country on Earth is as dependent on fuel imports.
The Prime Minister’s begging tour around Asia, shows just how exposed we are to any disruption in global fuel supply. The month’s supply of petrol, diesel, avgas and jet fuel that we supposedly had at the start of the Iran war included only about three weeks’ worth that was actually onshore. The rest was cargoes at sea that, in extremis, could be sunk, or possibly diverted to other destinations in the event of a major threat to shipping.

Of course the joke is ...

Never gets old that one, but of course the narcissist is more interested in posing as relevant by having a snap of himself, preening into the void ... Tony Abbott. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.

Why is the lizard Oz filled to the brim with deadbeat ancient politicians who proved completely useless when in power?

Who knows, it's just a matter of getting through it ...

Iran’s denial of freedom of navigation through the Strait did not interfere with the actual delivery of refined products to Australia so much as the delivery of crude oil to the Asian refineries we buy from. Even so, the pump price of diesel in Australia almost doubled, about 10 per cent of our servos ran out of some or all stock due to panic buying, airlines started to cancel flights, and ports, mines and farms suddenly had to reconsider their operations.
While the Albanese government gave assurances that supplies were guaranteed until May, there could be no assurances beyond that because friendly countries (such as Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia) could not be sure of their own stock, and unfriendly ones (such as China) had already suspended deliveries.
The Prime Minister’s “fuel diplomacy coup” in securing two extra deliveries, each of 100 million litres, sounded impressive but actually constituted less than two days’ total Australian consumption. What’s more, it bordered on deranged for the government to insist that further electrification was the long-term solution to the fuel crisis, even while the PM was pleading for extra petrol and diesel.
Here’s the key point: a conflict in East Asia – such as Beijing attempting to coerce Taiwan – would not just close down deliveries of crude oil; it would close down the deliveries of refined products too.

Naturally there's a snap of the deviant to blame - not mad King Donald, but another miscreant, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: NewsWire / Damian Shaw

And then it's on to the usual blather about oils and whatever you do don't mention renewables or alternative sources of energy, because this is a bear with little by way of brains, having always been a few knights short of a BBQ ...

There would be no question of being able to trade security of gas supplies from Australia for security of fuel supplies from Southeast Asia because the moment hostilities in East Asia were imminent, the shipping lanes carrying 50 per cent of the world’s trade would shut down.
It would take months for protected convoys to be arranged, even if the tankers and container ships could be procured to sail in them; and that’s assuming Australia and its allies had the requisite naval strength.
It’s worth noting that the US did not even try to counter the closure of the Strait of Hormuz either by landing troops at key choke points or by escorting ships through. It was the US’s counter-blockade of Iran’s ports, doing to Iran what it was doing to others’ shipping, that might have created a breakthrough.
Countries such as Britain and France, that might once have considered forcing the Strait, were adamant they could only secure the passage of shipping once hostilities had ceased. In other words, the task of protecting shipping seems to have become much harder in the era of smart mines and drone swarms. Which makes it more important than ever not to be dependent on just-in-time deliveries for the essentials of daily life.
It’s crystal clear what Australia now needs to do to avoid massive domestic upheaval when the next supply crisis comes, as it almost inevitably will.
First, we need to build the 90 days of fuel reserves onshore that the International Energy Agency mandates. Much of this could be done by assisting large fuel users to expand their private storages.
Second, we need to resume exploration, extraction and refining of crude oil here. The development of new fields, such as Queensland’s Taroom Trough, needs to become an urgent national priority rather than being bogged down endlessly, as would normally now be the case, in environmental assessments and activist lawfare.
Third, we need to expand our capacity to defend and maintain sea lanes via a more capable navy, a recreated Australian National Line, and detailed contingency planning with our military partners.
While it’s quite likely that the US made no formal request for Australian military assistance, given the last-minute nature of its decision-making, once it became clear that hostilities were likely, Australia should have volunteered to help. There’s no doubt the RAAF could have made a significant contribution to the US and Israeli air campaign to destroy the Iranian war machine, had the Albanese government been able to overcome its visceral antipathy to President Donald Trump, tilt against Israel, attachment to the fantasy of “international law”, and fondness for military announcements that make no appreciable difference to our near-term military capability.
Resuming our strategic intimacy with America and accepting that our ongoing need for fossil fuels should trump climate concerns will almost certainly be too much for the ideologues in the current government. Immediate crisis averted, the PM will insist nothing really needs to change – even though almost everything does.

The pond almost regrets that Orbán went down.

What a relief it was to have the onion muncher abroad, doing his authoritarian suck, rather than being at home doing his mad King Donald suck ...

Here the pond should pause to note that not all the reptiles were sounding triumphant.

The lizard Oz editorialist was sounding quite glum and uncertain ...

Oh dear, King Donald should stop complimenting himself and claiming victory for the umpteenth time?

That surely can't stand. Quick, wheel in Major Mitchell, Zionist in chief for the Australian Daily Zionist News, to compliment King Donald and claim victory for the umpteenth time ...

The header: Iran’s media cheer squad can’t stomach Trump’s success; Donald Trump’s language is erratic, and the US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is not without risk. But the truth is that in the first six weeks of the war, Iran has sustained heavy setbacks.

The caption for a snap of the deeply weird, possibly demented, certainly barking mad king: President Donald Trump dances at a roundtable event last week. Picture: AP

Trump's success?

Only in the richly perverse world of Major Mitchell would a reptile try on that sort of clowning.

So much winning, the pond doesn't know where to begin, but the Major does ...because it's all the fault of weevils and white ants, and if you believe that, you qualify for the Major's "paranoid delusion" award of the week ...

Yes, just like Lord Downer, when in doubt, blame the meejia ...

Reporting about the Iran war is so coloured by media hostility toward US President Donald Trump that almost none of it reflects the truth about Iran’s military frailty, economic malaise or currency collapse.
When Trump responded to Iran’s decision to block the Strait of Hormuz and charge a toll on boats seeking safe passage by deciding that the US could do that too, few journalists thought that it was fair enough, or would even work.
The ABC regularly gives equal airtime to US claims and Iranian denials, even though Iran has lied about its weapons ambitions for decades.
Old leftie reporters on social media who claim the Iranian nuclear program is an Israeli lie should wonder why at last week’s talks in Islamabad the Iranians refused to delay their nuclear program for more than five years. And why possess uranium enriched to 60 per cent if not for weapons?
Trump was wrong not to anticipate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps would try to cause maximum global economic damage by shutting the Strait of Hormuz.
National Review reported on March 14 that General Dan Caine, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, had warned Trump about Hormuz before the war started on February 28.
Journalists have a duty to hold Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to account for failures. But journalists also have a duty to report the truth, and the truth is Iran and its Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi proxies are either on their knees or completely defeated, as is the case in Syria.
The New York Times pretends Trump did not have specific war aims. That’s rubbish. Trump has been saying publicly for more than a decade that Iran’s mullahs should never be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the timing of the attack was influenced by intelligence suggesting Iran was both rebuilding its weapons stockpiles after the 12-day war the previous June, and was in the process of acquiring hypersonic anti-ship missiles from China.

Liddle Marco? Didn't his contribution amount to a trip to the UFC? US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Picture: AFP

Not that one ... this one, trading on stolen valour, ersatz toughness and boofhead glory ...

The Major wasn't worried about any of that.

As usual, he'd managed to rope in assorted weird sources, what with his speciality offering insights via whatever the cat had dragged in ...

Rubio told a press conference on March 2 that Iran was building 100 missiles a month.
“Compare that to the six or seven interceptors that can be built in a month,” he said.
If the US did not attack when it did, Iran would soon have had enough weapons to swamp Israel’s defences and American bases in the region.
In such circumstances, any fair-minded reading of the first six weeks of the war would conclude that Iran had sustained heavy setbacks.
New York Times’ star columnist Thomas Friedman, a supporter of Israel but not of Netanyahu, summed up the approach of much of the media. Speaking on a CNN podcast on April 11, he said he wanted to see the regime in Tehran destroyed but added: “I really don’t want to see Bibi Netanyahu or Donald Trump politically strengthened by this war because they are two awful human beings”.
Michael Doran, director of the Centre for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Husdon Institute and a former senior director at the US National Security Council, nailed his assessment of the media and the war in Tablet Magazine on April 14: “Trump has inflicted heavy punishment in return for relatively light consequences, but pundits insist that a masterful Iran is dictating events,” he writes.
Serious journalists in Australia run the line that Iran has Trump on the run.

After that the Major came up with a doozy:

Trump leads a democracy.

Whatever the status of the banana republic known as the United States is these days, a democracy isn't the first thought that springs to mind.

Kleptocracy, maybe? Has there ever been rule by a bigger bunch of thieves since the days of the robber barons?

Facing midterm elections later this year, he must have an eye on prices Americans face at the petrol pump and in supermarkets. In Iran and Gaza, politicians do not have to care what their people think. Indeed, the survival of their regimes is far more important to them than the wellbeing of their people.
Unlike Western media surrender urgers, expat Iranian analysts thought Trump’s first big mistake was agreeing to a truce and peace talks, which they say gave the Iranians the idea Trump was contemplating backing down on Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.
Now the US media’s Iranian cheerleaders can’t see how a US blockade can succeed, but it is.
Doran’s piece outlines how most of the left media criticism of the war is driven by former Barack Obama and Joe Biden Democrats who were involved in attempts to broker better relations between the US and Iran in 2013 during Obama’s presidency. Doran says the political forces opposing Trump and Netanyahu inside the US are an unlikely amalgam of the globalist left with the isolationist right, including people such as Tucker Carlson.

Again if that's success, the pond would hate to see chaos and losing when it comes to actually achieving the strange conglomerate of aims announced at the start of proceedings, including the freeing of the Iranian people, and the end of the mad Mullahs.

Best drag in ancient politicians of the Obama, Biden kind ot take the blame ... Former president Barack Obama. Picture: AFP

So much easier to look back, rather than focus on the mad King and his delusional minions ...

“Along with a common set of enemies in Trump and Netanyahu, the Progressives and America Firsters share a dislike of American global leadership and the use of military force, and therefore they both excuse the behaviour of America’s enemies while blaming it for any conflict,” Doran writes.
Traditional conservatives see Iran as a revolutionary theocracy “committed to the destruction of Israel and the expulsion of the US from the Middle East”. Conservatives believe Iran, China, Russia and North Korea want to “overturn the American led global order’’.
Former Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan argues Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action stabilised Iranian relations until Trump pulled out in his first term in May 2018. Yet Tehran did not start enriching uranium to 60 per cent until April 2021.
“In other words, Iran made this crucial leap towards weaponisation under Biden, not Trump,” Doran writes.
Biden responded with sanctions relief which “funded missiles, drones and proxies”.
Doran says the Biden administration framed Hamas’s October 7 attack in southern Israel as a Palestinian issue.
“This framing advanced the fiction that America was not involved in the war. It also absolved Iran of any responsibility for the mass atrocities and hostage-taking of its proxy, Hamas, thus allowing the (Biden) administration to preserve its diplomatic outreach to Tehran.”
Iran immediately mobilised its entire proxy axis “in an assymetric war against the American Alliance system”.
Iranian-backed forces launched strikes on US bases in Iraq, Syria and Jordan as well as on US naval vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
“In any previous era … (this) would have been called open war. The Biden administration called it historic peace.”

As often happens with the reptiles, the Major tried to introduce a few billy goat butts, to hint that he wasn't entirely mad ...

They took the form of "of courses":

Of course Trump’s language is erratic. And of course the US blockade of Hormuz does not come without risks, including a possible Chinese response to US attempts to turn back tankers bound for China.

But these billy goat butts are just window dressing, and so the Major immediately reversed them with another "butt":

But Trump is correct that the world cannot afford to allow a bunch of medieval fanatics to control a major global sea lane and hold the world economy to ransom.

The pond can't quite see the Major's problem. After all a bunch of medieval - actually old testament biblical - are currently in charge of the government of Israel, and holding King Donald to ransom, in pursuit of ethnic cleansing and a greater Israel, but never mind ... we must just hope it'll all work out, in due course ...

What if the IRGC sees the financial logic of Trump’s move and comes back to the negotiating table? By Wednesday, the UN and Trump thought this imminent.
And by Thursday the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were reporting the US blockade seemed to be working. The Jerusalem Post reported intelligence sources believed Iran could survive without oil sales for less than three months.
The Jerusalem Post reported an unnamed Iranian spokesperson suggesting Iran might let all ships pass the Strait of Hormuz if they stuck to the southern Oman side and the US lifted its blockade. Imagine that. A siege – one of the world’s oldest military strategies – might actually work. How will The New York Times frame that as a Trump negative?

Perhaps first see that it works? And then worry about the framing?

Ain't been that much knockdown glory yet.

The Major should hope it isn't just another mad ploy by a desperate King and minions of the Kegsbreath and Kash kind.

And now, as the pond began with a religious service, time to end with a serve of supper (watch out for the wafers) ...

But there is still hope, because surely we can all agree...

In which the pond takes a road trip, but has time to catch up with Our Henry and prattling Polonius, dissing the Pope in mad King Donald war monger mode ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 21:37:00 +0000

The pond set out for Melbourne last Thursday, desperate to prove the reptiles wrong, determined to show that an EV could make the trip in a reasonable time.

Alas, things went wrong from the start. There was a five hour queue at Yass, and a slow charger, so add another two hours. The pond had so much time on its hands it attended a double bill at the restored Liberty theatre, and took in a service with Pastor Dave.

At Woodonga, things were so slow, an Islamic family got out the prayer mat and did their thing. Imagine the pond's terror - fancy proposing any reptile witness such proceedings in the fenced off exit to an expired burger store.

Then it was off to the mighty Wang for a top up, but everything was closed. The pond limped into Melbourne in the wee hours with all sense of time lost and a sense that the reptiles would be gloating for years at a nightmare 24 hour folly in a vehicle that cost somewhere north of the family home.

Hang on, hang on, for a real account of what happened, please see below.

In the interim, the pond must earn its keep and offer a message from the reptiles.

It being a disjointed weekend, the best the pond could do when near a computer was make an offering of ancient Henry, taken from the lizard Oz back on Friday.

As a blog of record, the pond doesn't like to miss the hole in bucket man, and this was a Zionist doozy, entirely fitting for the Australian Daily Zionist News:

The header: Pope Leo is guilty of repudiating the ‘just war’ doctrine; That our government has urged Israel to stand down confirms its moral evasiveness; that Pope Leo has done likewise is grievous.

The caption for the wayward Pope: Pope Leo XIV presides over the Easter vigil as part of the Holy Week celebrations, at St Peter's basilica in the Vatican. Picture: AFP

It should go without saying that Our Henry is up for the killing fields, especially when it's the current government of Israel doing the killing, and he was at it full bore in this outing ...

“Peace,” said Saint Augustine, “is so great a good that even in relation to the affairs of earth and our mortal state, nothing is desired with greater longing, nor can anything better be found.” Yet Augustine was no pacifist. He knew that in a fallen world, peace cannot be secured by permitting evil to go unchecked.
That hard truth was conspicuously absent from the Easter interventions of Pope Leo XIV on the wider war in the Middle East, and notably in Lebanon. Absent, too, was any serious engagement with one of Christianity’s greatest intellectual legacies: the doctrine of just war.
The doctrine did not emerge in a vacuum. Its roots lie in Hebrew scripture’s insistence that even war stands under judgment, and that those who wage it are accountable to a higher law.
The narrative of Jephthah in the Book of Judges makes the point: before war is joined, grievances are rehearsed, and an appeal is made to justice. War follows only – yet follows legitimately – when those claims fail, despite efforts to secure redress. Within that framework, wars of self-defence are not merely permitted; repelling an unjust attacker, or one who is imminently so, is a duty.
Complementing the biblical inheritance was the Greek tradition, which, finding its highest expression in Cicero, grounded the doctrine in ethics. War, Cicero argued in criticising conflicts “fought for conquest and glory”, is justified only as a last resort, engaged to correct a grievous wrong. Coining a formulation that would endure through the ages, he added that “the sole excuse for going to war is that we may live in peace” – that is, that the war’s aim must be to remove the adversary’s capacity and will to pursue aggression, allowing a measure of tranquillity to prevail.
Steeped in the Hebrew Bible and profoundly influenced by Cicero, Augustine joined these strands in his account of just war. It was on the foundations he laid that Thomas Aquinas later set out the doctrine’s canonical formulation. Aquinas did not pursue the utopian goal of abolishing war. He recognised that aggression has to be deterred and resisted; his aim was to subject that necessity to the discipline of Christian morality.
War, in the doctrine that would dominate Christian political theology for centuries, could only be legitimate if a properly constituted sovereign authority waged it – one capable of entering into credible peace settlements. There had to be a just cause: the enemy must have committed a wrong that warrants redress, whether through the violation of rights or the refusal to make restitution.
And those who wage war must have a right intention: they must aim to advance good or avert evil – that is, to thwart cruelty, criminality or the lust for domination. Where those conditions are met, the use of force is both sanctioned and morally justified.
Measured against those criteria, Pope Leo’s assessment of the conflict in Lebanon – and his scarcely veiled criticism of Israel – is seriously ill-considered. After all, none of the key facts is in dispute. Ever since the ceasefire came into effect on November 27, 2024, Hezbollah has systematically violated its conditions.

And there you have it. Cicero the Greek joining with Augustine and on with the killing fields, with Our Henry armed with a fierce lance of righteous blood lust.

This sort of blather could have put the pond in the awkward position of attempting to defend the Catholic church, but the church is more than capable of looking after itself, especially when placed up against the likes of mad King Donald and the genocidal Benji (though the pond did enjoy the late night show joke about the Pope and King Donald having a shared interest in hiding sex scandals).

The reptiles flung in a snap which in other times would have found favour in the Catholic Boys' Daily, Pope Leo XIV. Picture: AFP

Our Henry kept raging away ...

Now operating illegally – following the Lebanese government’s ban on its military activities – it has refused to comply with repeated instructions to disarm. Knowing the Lebanese armed forces are too weak and divided to act, Hezbollah’s vice-president, Mahmoud Comati, told Le Monde last month that were any attempt made to dismantle its arsenal, it stood ready to trigger – and triumph in – a devastating civil war.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah has sheltered the Iranian ambassador, whom the government had expelled, and – according to Lebanon’s Prime Minister, Nawaf Salam – has issued hundreds of false passports to foreign fighters associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And it has rained missiles and drones on Israel, overwhelmingly directed at purely civilian targets.
Hezbollah’s aim has never been to protect Lebanon – much less the Maronite community. It has instead dismissed the country as “one of the legacies of imperialism”, to be subsumed in the Islamic state it claims will emerge from “the great confrontation with the aggression of Zionists, Crusaders and world arrogance”. As Hassan Nasrallah put it in 2018, the organisation – far from owing loyalty to Lebanon – proudly sees itself as “an arm of the Iranian government and the Lebanese branch of the Guard Corps”.
Nor has it ever shown any interest in peace. Nasrallah repeatedly described Jews in gro-tesquely dehumanising terms as the “descendants of pigs and apes”, and Israelis as “a people of conquerors, occupiers and rapists of the land” who “must be killed”. Just this week, Hezbollah denounced Lebanon’s negotiations with Israel and declared it would not respect any agreement that might be reached.

Uh huh, and then Our Henry really took a sharp turn to the barking paranoid weird:

The moral implications are obvious. It is inconceivable that the Australian government would stand by were Papua New Guinea’s government unable – or unwilling – to act against an armed band launching missiles into Queensland and avowedly intent on exterminating the “settler colonialists” it denounces as “conquerors, occupiers and rapists of the land”. Deploying the ADF to eliminate the threat would be more than a right; it would be an obligation.

Dear sweet long absent lord, that's the best he could do in drumming up support for the outrageous ongoing behaviour of the current government of Israel? Seems so ...

Exactly the same principle applies here. Israel’s intervention is the surest, indeed only, means of forcing the Lebanese state to face the choice it has long evaded: either bring Hezbollah to heel or leave Israel to do so.

That our own government has urged Israel to stand down simply confirms its moral evasiveness and electoral opportunism; that Pope Leo has done likewise amounts to a grievous repudiation of the just war tradition, which has always upheld the right of nations to defend themselves against aggressors, and to prevent them from striking again.
That tradition is no exultation of war. On the contrary, the Book of Isaiah’s great vision of universal peace – “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares … nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” – testifies to an enduring insight: that war, while sometimes necessary, remains a tragedy, to be constrained, justified, and ultimately transcended.
But the just war doctrine recognises that the lions show no intention of lying down with the lambs. Facing up to that reality, it refuses to assert a false moral equivalence between those who murder and those who seek to stop them. And while praying, as does the Pope, for peace, it knows the charnel house of history creates situations in which the only choice is between evils.
Yes, we must attempt to prevent such situations from arising. But when history thrusts them upon us, we cannot merely dismiss all the alternatives as equally bad and believe the gesture washes our hands clean.
The church’s refusal to condemn Hitler’s genocidal war of aggression indelibly stained its reputation. Now, as he addresses a world crying out for moral guidance, the Pope should remember the truth captured in the Midrash, and classically anchored in the story of King Saul: “Those who are merciful to the cruel will, in the end, be cruel to the merciful.” To believe otherwise is not to advance peace. It is to bury it.

Oh dear, he had to play the Hitler card.

So be it.

Our Henry's refusal to condemn the current government of Israel's genocidal war of aggression, its policy of ethnic cleansing, its lust for a greater Israel no matter the human cost, indelibly stains his reputation, but he's not the only Zionist to peddle a pile of righteous tosh in defence of crimes against humanity.

At this point the pond was determined to make a full sermon of it, and turned to that other pompous pedant, Polonius, for a serve of his prattle ...

The header: ‘Our barbarian’: Why Christians back Donald Trump; From a controversial post to a widening rift with Pope Leo XIV, the US President’s rhetoric reignites debate over religion, war and political power.

The caption for a snap which allowed the reptiles to avoid running that infamous shot showing a doctoring King Donald curing Jon Stewart of what ailed him: US President Donald Trump’s social media post depicting himself as a Christ-like figure drew criticism and was later deleted. Picture: AFP

Who knew that Polonius would take up the Xian white nationalist cause, but stranger things have happened in the lizard Oz...and here we are, and what a broad minded chap he is all of a sudden ...

I was brought up a Catholic but I am by no means offended by President Donald J. Trump’s decision to post on Truth Social an image of himself as a Christ-like figure blessing a sick or dead man, while prayers are said in the presence of a Red Cross female nurse and a US serviceman with the Statue of Liberty in the background and a US Air Force jet and eagles in the sky overhead.
To me it was a joke, of the non-funny kind. In time Trump deleted the post, claiming he thought it depicted him as a doctor. A good try perhaps.

A good try perhaps? Oh Polonius, Polonius, is there anything else you can add to your comedy stylings, aka an attempt at justifying the mad King's work?

However, at least the President did not blame a staffer.

Sheesh, but at least there then came a minor billy goat butt ...

The post was extraordinarily unwise since some Christians would view such an image as close to blasphemy. And many Christians voted for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
Working as a political adviser is difficult enough without having to deal with an erratic president’s late night/early morning posts, which are at times explosive. But there is a bigger picture.
As cardinal George Pell wrote on March 30, 2019, in the first volume of his Prison Journal, “Unfortunately, President Trump is a bit of a barbarian, but in some important ways he is ‘our’ (Christian) barbarian.” Pell added that Trump’s “first two appointments to the Supreme Court will slow down the secular advance because the court there has immense power to shape society”.
Despite the fact, after he avoided assassination during a campaign rally at Butler, Pennsylvania in July 2024, Trump claimed to have been saved by God, he does not present as a devout Christian. But he has been supportive of Christians, in the US and elsewhere. Much more so than his predecessor, president Joe Biden, who presented as a Catholic.

Ah, of course the Pellists had to turn up. They always do when Polonius is in the room.

Naturally the reptiles lined up a Sky Noise after dark clown to add a MAGA message to Polonius beclowning himself (still no rebranding of the name?)...

Sky News Washington Analyst Annelise Nielsen believes if US President Donald Trump is strategic after public feud with Pope Leo, it will not have a large impact on votes. “I think it was a bit of a distraction tactic. I think he might have been doing this on purpose,” Ms Nielsen told Sky News Australia. “This isn’t the first time he’s had fights with the Pope. “He’s definitely got to manage the evangelical community.”

Naturally Polonius seized the opportunity to take a walk down Catholic memory lane ...

The current President Trump v Pope Leo XIV controversy would not come as a surprise to Australians who lived through, or are aware about, the first half of the 20th century.
When the Labor Party split in the mid-1950s, Daniel Mannix, the Catholic archbishop of Melbourne, was criticised for supporting those who split from/were expelled by the Labor Party and formed the Democratic Labor Party. However, little criticism was made by Norman Gilroy, the Catholic archbishop of Sydney, who urged Catholics to remain in the ALP. Both were involved in politics.
The fact is that Christian clergy have always been engaged in politics, to a greater or lesser extent, in a democratic society.
As Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was born a Muslim and converted to Christianity, pointed out in a perceptive article in the Daily Mail on April 16, on April 9 Leo met US Democratic Party operative David Axelrod.

Ah, it's a conspiracy with the Democrats.

And possibly with Marina Hyde, busy explaining Is the pope Catholic? JD Vance thinks he has the answer.

What a hoot of a read that was, and here the pond should note that it's spent some recent time with a Catholic priest who exudes some fair content for King Donald, as did many of the Catholics who attended the funeral which took the pond to Melbourne.

Polonius decided on a contrarian strategy, doing his best to take the side of mad King Donald, by explaining it was all just a "defensive" war:

A few day earlier, Leo issued his Easter message, which declared: “Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them!”
Not surprisingly, those words were interpreted as a criticism of the defensive war waged by the US and Israel against the brutal theocracy Iran intent on crushing what the mullahs call “the Great Satan”, that is the United States, along with Israel.
On April 7, Leo spoke against Trump’s threat to destroy Iran. Again, the President used inappropriate language. It was yet more Trump hyperbole. Leo was reported as describing Trump’s threat as “truly unacceptable”.

Um, it happened to be a statement of genocidal intent, the wiping out of an entire tribe, a war crime of the first water, up there with the genocidal Xian god's eradication of all life on earth, but whatever:

On April 13, Trump fired back – even if he managed only two exclamation marks to Leo’s four. He declared “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy”, going on to state that the Pope “thinks it’s ok for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon”. Trump also referred to Leo’s meeting with Axelrod and advised the Pope to “stop catering to the Radical Left”.
This is the familiar argument that the church should stay out of politics. However, Trump has a point. The Catholic Church is not a pacifist society. It has not always stood for peace as in unilateral disarmament.

Oh dear, here we go, here we go ...

For example, the Catholic Church has always accepted a “just war”.

You've endured Our Henry explaining Catholic theology, you might even have endured the couch molesting JD, now stand by for Polonius...

As Gerald O’Collins SJ and Edward G. Farrugia SJ point out in A Concise Dictionary of Theology (Paulist Press), the just war teaching can be traced back to Augustine of Hippo (354-430). Namely, that war must be defensive and in response to unjust aggression, there must be a reasonable chance of success and deliberate attacks on civilians must be avoided and so on. Pope Pius XII never opposed the Allied forces’ war against Nazi Germany.

Hang on, hang on, shouldn't have Our Henry and Polonius compared notes on the matter of the second world war?

It is known that Leo is critical of the Trump administration’s response to unlawful immigration. However, Benedict XVI in October 2012 declared that “every state has the right to regulate migration”. Sure, the current Pope has his political left-of-centre beliefs. But that does not bind Catholics in what the church depicts as ex cathedra pronouncements.
On April 16, Leo called for an unarmed peace. To some, myself included, that sounds a bit like surrender to the likes of Iran, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, North Korea and so on. And then there is Leo’s silence. As Melanie Phillips pointed out in these pages on April 14, Leo “has chosen to ignore totally the deliberate and mass shedding of innocent blood by the Iranian regime, which earlier this year murdered around 40,000 innocent protesters and has spent the last 47 years waging war on America and the West through murderous terrorist atrocities”.
For her part, Ali made the point that “Pope Leo has been conspicuously silent about the systematic persecution of Christians at the hands of Muslims in majority-Muslim countries”. And added that Pope Francis did not explicitly condemn Hamas for its murderous attacks on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.
Jesus Christ declared that his kingdom was not of this world. But Christian leaders have rarely followed such a teaching. So, when a pope declares that a president has initiated an unjust war, it stands to reason that there is likely to be a secular response. From the White House and elsewhere.

But he did initiate a pointless, farcical, cruel war, from which he's since been desperately trying to escape, and all but the lunatics at News Corp would recognise it and call it out ...

Whatever happened to the notion of liberating the Iranian people? So much festering dung in the minds of these reptiles.

In short, strange days indeed, and strange company for the likes of Our Henry and Polonius to be keeping, but the pond always knew they had a good deal of war mongering and killing fields in them, and so they are just staying true to their nature ...

And so what really happened on that Melbourne EV trip.

Well it took about 11 hours. Left at 6 am and arrived at 5 pm. The pond could have cheated and said it saw the "welcome to Melbourne" sign at 4.30 pm, but the pond added a little time to reach the now long gone Loaded Dog pub building, near where the pond once lived.

Of course you could spend more hours getting to bits of Melbourne, which has now sprawled out everywhere, but current home to old Melbourne home seemed like a reasonable measure.

That compares to the early gas guzzling days when the pond did it in 10 hours, but in later gas guzzling days, what with Goulburn cops, Victorian speed cameras and the need for sensible breaks, the pond took about ... 11 hours.

It so happens that EV breaks and sensible breaks sort of match up, and the time spent waiting to access an EV charger amounted to ... NIL.

Of course charging takes longer than guzzling gas, but it makes for good breaks.

At Yass, there wasn't another EV in sight at the charger. The pond did a tour of the main drag, which is hurting badly because the Woollies/Aldi action is up the road - closed businesses, some for sale, a junk store taking up space, an evangelical church at the river end, and only a small K-hub as a mark of conventional retail.

The pond had a coffee and a treat, and took a look at the restored theatre, which is littered with small shops, and also saw that Pastor Dave still hadn't got rid of his Easter decor.

At Wodonga, there were no EVs until an Islamic family turned up (leaving two other stands still empty) and they did indeed get out a prayer mat and perform their rituals while their indolent son looked on. The pond didn't take a snap - let them pray in peace - but did take a snap of the spot where they prayed.

At the mighty Wang, the pond had time to take in a message from the nearby church, and visit the Wangaratta Arts Centre for a relieving pee, and check out the entertainment on offer.

It was a dull, tedious trip of the kind the Hume always offers - hence the need for breaks - relieved by a four part podcast about the Klu Klux Klan, which almost felt like readings from the lizard Oz.

And so to the pictorial record of the trip...

First up the desolate, alienated chargers at Yass, starved for company by the chargers up the road. The mighty Yass Soldiers club is in the b/g... (click on to enlarge)

Just time for a coffee and a check of the town, which has hit hard times and has just knocked down a grand old pub, while restoring the local theatre ...

To add insult to injury, the town had bunged on an EV do ...curses, missed it ...

And there really is a Pastor Dave at the river end of the main drag, replete with faux Easter rock scene, just visible through the reflections ...

While at the Wodonga chargers, the pond really did see an Islamic family get out the prayer mat, and set themselves up to do their thing where the white car is in this snap ...

It's not exactly an exciting location for anything, but after the ritual they did head off to the nearby servo for whatever, and so must be considered dinkum, because anybody wanting to buy servo junk at inflated prices is doing right by the reptiles' idea of the Oz way of life.

It was also an excellent demonstration that there are many ways to enjoy a charging break.

And for the brief top up at the mighty Wang, the pond did take in a mysterious church message and did visit the arts centre for a pee and for coming attractions in stunning "digitally orchestrated" format ...

In which it's all hands on the Catholic deck for the antiChrist, with the bromancer leading the way ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 21:51:00 +0000

First, a little housekeeping: the pond is heading down to Melbourne for a funeral and so will be off air for some time.

To get there, the pond will be driving by way of an EV down the Hume.

This is an incredibly dangerous, tedious and expensive business and so the pond will likely take some time to recover.

The pond has it on good authority that EVs cost between $60 and $150k - there's not a single car below that price point - and that Telsas can run to $150k, and so the pond has had to take out a huge loan just to be able to do the EV thing.

Second, EVs are notably unsuitable for going on extended trips. Think of them as toys running on clockwork, with the spring pretty useless and likely to give out at crucial times.

The pond also understands that such a lengthy trip might involve getting in a queue to get a charge, and that you can get stuck in the queue for five interminable hours!

As the pond will be doing three charges, it's likely that will add at least fifteen hours to the trip, meaning it probably can't be done in under a day, even by driving all day and night, and ditto the reverse leg will also waste more than a day.

Along the way, the pond will encounter baleful reminders of the complete uselessness of renewables - there are the whale-killing windmills down Goulburn way (how the beefy boofhead failed in his mission!) and the solar arrays roadside in rural Victoria.

Pray for the pond in best King Donald style, and ruminate on what the world lost when tungsten light bulbs were cruelly tossed aside.

So sadly the rest of this week will be lost, and that means that this week's Our Henry must be rescued from the intermittent archive by dedicated correspondents.

(See below for the pond's expert sources on EVs).

And so to the day's reptile news, and hallelujah, the reptiles have had a come to Jesus moment...

Now the pond only showed that full array of the "news" section to show what the reptiles really thought of the beefy boofhead's talk on immigration.

Instead of following up with a reptile jihad, ye ancient cats and dogs they preferred featuring the absolute freedom of superyachts.

This was a supreme tragedy for the pond because there had been a number of cartoons lined up to greet the beefy boofhead ...

What a terrible waste ... and there was even more wastage to come ...

Alas, all wasted, and it was no better over on the extreme far right, where the beefy boofhead simply couldn't get a run, and early in the morning the bromancer was top of the world, ma ...

The header: For Christ’s sake, Donald Trump, just don’t go there; The US President’s blasphemous social media posts showing himself as Christ have prompted even his Catholic supporters to demand an apology.

The caption? No need for a caption when confronted by a vision of Jesus Christ on earth.

The bromancer could only summon up three minutes of ranting, and his favourite descriptor "nuts".

Is this what FAFO sounds like, bromancer style?

It would be going too far, and surely over-theologising mere personal weirdness, to suggest Donald Trump should call on the services of an exorcist.
But you have to wonder what wicked spirits got into the President’s mind to have him make a personal attack on Pope Leo XIV, and post an AI-generated image of himself as a Christ-like figure in biblical clothing, with divine light emanating from his hand as he cures a sick person by laying his hand on his head.
Mr President. Are you nuts?
Trump seems to have a special rule. He bears no personal accountability for the frequently ridiculous and offensive things he says, but anyone who criticises him has committed a mortal sin.
Thus Trump threatens to bomb Iran back to the stone age, to “end” a civilisation, to attack desalination plants that provide drinking water for civilians, then gets upset that the Pope argues for peace instead of war.
Trump has every right to disagree with the Pope on international politics, or anything else, but personal attacks on Leo and blasphemous self-glorifying social media images are nearly deranged.
Those who think Trump is always more clever than his interlocutors, playing 4-D chess, must believe there’s a giant vote of extreme right-wing Christian nationalists who hate the Pope and regard Trump as godlike. However big that vote is, Trump’s sure got it sewn up now.
I’m not sure it’s an election winning cohort.
It’s also the case, incidentally, that Leo, the first pope from the US, is no crypto-communist. When he lived in Chicago, Leo voted in Republican primaries. He has praised the NATO alliance, showing he’s not some lefty who demonises soldiers. He has also said nations have a right to secure borders, to decide who comes into their countries, but that they should treat all people with dignity and care.

The reptiles didn't provide any relief from the rant by way of stills so the pond decided to help out ...

The pond has rarely seen the bromancer so gloomy for such a prolonged stretch ...

What on earth would you expect the Pope to say? Leo is a thoughtful, cautious, sensible, prayerful Pope. Trump seems unable to understand, or even recognise, such a figure.
To descend to mere politics, these latest moves are self-destructive for Trump and Republicans.
Trump has always been a mixed grill. He does and says some good things which other presidents would not be bold enough to do. He also does and says some nearly insane things. And even when he does something defensible, he’s inclined to wreck it with hubris, spite and madness.
His supporters wildly overstate his political strength. Unlike George W. Bush, Trump never won a majority of the popular vote in a US election. At the last election, he won a majority of US Catholics. They are diverse, of course, but most are swing voters because while they tend to be patriotic and moderately socially conservative, they remember their recent working-class roots, they are universal rather than racial in their human outlook and have some concern for social justice and ethical standards.
Trump therefore presents to them the same contradictions as he does to other voters. Trump lost the Catholic vote to Joe Biden in 2020, but won it, fairly narrowly, against Kamala Harris, partly because Biden was such a bad president.
Catholics have not really bought on to the idea, popular in some fairly extreme evangelical circles, that Trump is somehow a specially chosen instrument of divine providence.
A majority of US Catholics now disapprove of Trump and recent incidents will make that much worse. Republicans are likely to suffer in the mid-term elections as a result.
Trump has mobilised even those mainstream figures who have striven to see the good in his administration into straightforward denunciation of him. On social media, he’s like an excited kid lacking parental supervision. He’s badly missing the adults of his first administration.
No mainstream European leader has striven harder to see the good in Trump than Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, yet she condemned his attack.

It was as if something had snapped ... as if he'd done a Melania ...

The bromancer even played the Orbán card, though the reptiles resolutely refused to deploy the acute accent over the á:

Even conservative American Catholics have now denounced Trump. Bishop Robert Barron, founder of the Word on Fire internet ministry, is the most popular Catholic churchman in America, who serves on Trump’s religious liberty commission and has taken flak for supporting him on some issues. He too condemned Trump’s remarks and called on him to apologise to the Pope. This is a very widespread reaction among those Christians who have tried hard to identify with the good in the Trump program.
It’s now damaging to any political figure to have been Trump’s friend. His Vice-President, JD Vance, was in Hungary, wholly inappropriately, campaigning for Trump’s friend Viktor Orban, just before the election.
John O’Sullivan, the shrewdest of analysts, thinks this was a factor in the anti-Orban landslide that ensued.
If this is 4-D chess, Trump should go back to checkers.
And start his nightly prayers with an act of contrition.

Checkers? The cheeky bromancer has taken to bearding the emperor with wit?

And yet the hapless bromancer still thinks that King Donald might be up for an act of contrition, might know how to say a Hail Mary, the Apostle's creed, an Our Father, and a Glory Be, while clutching at his rosary beads?

At least the bro's still delusional ...

What was once the Australian Daily Catholic Times (before becoming the Australian Daily Zionist News and cheering on bigly ethnic cleansing) was so alarmed that it wheeled out a tyke to wonder if it was all the Pope's fault.

Unlike King Donald, a master of subtlety and nuance, the clunky Pope might well have sounded like an oafish boofhead:

The header: Pope v Trump reveals the complexity of ‘just war’ in our troubled times; Should Pope Leo have been more nuanced in his language on war?

The caption: Pope Leo XIV attends a meeting with the Algerian community in the Basilica of Our Lady of Africa, in Algiers on Monday. Picture: AFP

Now for that rap over the knuckles for that insensitive Pope addling his response to that extremely sensitive mad King Donald:

Given what has been reported in the media, there is an extra sentence that I would like Pope Leo to have added to his comments on the war in Iran: that he was “addressing all relevant political decision-makers”.
It is easy to see why, without this qualification, he seemed to be referring only to DonaldTrump, given that this war was the US President’s initiative.
Trump’s reactions have been predictably outrageous, though his AI-generated image as a healing religious figure exceeds even his own narcissistic standards.
But perhaps Pope Leo really was singling Trump out for special condemnation? Some commentators have asked why Leo has not likewise criticised leaders of Iran or Hezbollah. Leo has explained that his task is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, which commands us to be peacemakers.

It's outrageous that this wretched Pope should single out mad King Donald. What on earth was he thinking? Didn't he realise that the mad king was the recipient of the inaugural FIFA peace prize, and blessed are the cheesemakers?

And remember, this is a just war...

As an earlier pope, John Paul II, said: “War is always a failure of humanity” – a failure to resolve conflicts in a way that respects the life and dignity of all affected. Nonetheless, defensive wars are sometimes a legitimate, necessary evil, even if the failure is chiefly on one side. Leo would not deny this; he is not a pacifist.

The reptiles reminded us of the humble king by turning to a snap:

US President Donald Trump speaks to the press outside the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, on Monday. Picture: AFP

As for all that bloody peace business, why are the bloody popes always yammering on about peace when they should be applauding the likes of Vlad the Sociopath and Benji the greater Israel man in their quest for a piece of this and a piece of that:

It is true that several recent popes have been reluctant to apply traditional “just war” criteria and have sounded more and more pacifist. The criteria were developed centuries ago when wars were waged by standing armies on defined battlefields away from civilians. While the principle that non-combatants must not be directly harmed remains sacrosanct, it is not clear how just war criteria can be applied in contexts where an enemy uses human shields, installs weapons in hospitals and schools, and wages a grey war through terrorist proxies.
Perhaps it is the nature of contemporary warfare that has led popes to simply urge peacemaking in all circumstances.
In Leo’s words, war today is “senseless and inhuman violence” even if it is defensive.
Given the longstanding conduct of Iran and its proxies, it can be argued that Trump’s chosen war against Iran is in truth defensive. Many will dispute this, but a reasoned argument is needed in either case instead of the bald assertions on both sides.
But even if Trump’s war is defensive, there is always a further ethical question to be faced about strategy and means. On this point, those who defend Trump’s pre-emptive action must by now be having their doubts. Was there really no other way of dealing with the Iran threat? Is the chosen and ever evolving strategy proportionate to the noble goal?

Here we must pause to contemplate the wretch himself: the Pope addresses Algerian authorities, members of the civil society, and diplomatic corps at the Djamaa el Djazair Conference Center in Algiers, on Monday. Picture: AP

So to a little more both siderist thinking and cluck clucking and tut-tutting in a way worthy of any pious prelate:

It is worth recalling John Paul II’s condemnation of the war in Iraq and his prediction about its consequences. Likewise, Leo’s longstanding warning that the Middle East faces an “irreparable abyss” has become all too prophetic. In truth, many nations share responsibility for what has occurred – for they have stood by and allowed the violence and instability of the region to fester.
For better or (probably ) worse, the US and Israel have intervened – and both the surrounding nations and other influential nations are discovering too late that they should have taken responsibility sooner. There is a “failure of humanity” in every direction.
Even when a war has a legitimate defensive goal and is pursued by effective and proportionate strategies, this should never be an occasion for religious triumphalism.
Unlike US “secretary for war” Peter Hegseth, a Christian should wage war with profound and humble regret about the loss of innocent life, the destruction of cities and the economic harm to millions more. There is nothing to celebrate here; there will be blood on our hands, and the inevitable post-traumatic stress disorder for those closely involved.
Of course, religious leaders are likely to be criticised whether they do or do not speak out against aggression. When the Dutch Catholic bishops publicly condemned Nazism in 1942 the Gestapo began a new round-up of Jews, especially those such as philosopher and Carmelite nun Edith Stein (and her still Jewish sister), who had become Christians. They died in Auschwitz. Subsequently, The Netherlands had one of the highest mortality rates for Jews in Western Europe.
This does not necessarily mean the bishops should have remained silent; it does highlight the complexity of prudential judgments during wartime.
Pope Leo’s words could be more nuanced, even though he cannot purport to offer an ethical evaluation of the many facets of the current conflict. He is reminding us of the higher Christian perspective within which to view our actions. We must never cease from pursuing peaceful resolutions through dialogue and recognition of our common humanity. And if we must go to war, it should not be with an arrogant confidence in God’s blessing; at best, we can but trust that the defensive actions we need to take will be justified in the circumstances, and that God will bring good out of the evil we do.

And just who was that wanker?

Gerald Gleeson is a deputy vice-chancellor at the Australian Catholic University. He is a former vicar-general of the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney.

He would have served ably in the church in Spain in the times of Franco ...

Glory unto King Donald ... hosannah in the highest ...

And here the pond clapped out though the finest reptile minds were out and about on parade, not least Dame Slap ... but after those sermons it was a bit of a downer for the pond to see that Dame Slap was blathering about "Civilisation":

Federal judge: Civilisation relies on us; don’t let the show down
A lecture from Federal Court judge Ian Jackman shows why character, not identity, should be the focus of citizenship.
By Janet Albrechtsen

The pond personally supervised her placement in the intermittent archive and will only offer this teaser trailer ...as she attempted to do a little bit of Our Henry in her opening flourish:

Given that Dame Slap was borrowing from a judge, one of that despicable bunch that Dame Slap routinely reviles, there was a hint of stolen valour in the way that Dame Slap pillaged his words and recycled them to her own glory.

And spoiler alert, here's the closer, a true measure of the extent of the meaningless blather ...

Say that again:

"Not letting the show down".

I say, gadzooks, wot wot, old chaps, there'll always be an England, must take the Spittie out for an early morning lap ...

...and what a chance to run the pond's favourite primary school poem, running deep with the thoughts of empire, doing the right thing, and conforming to the rigid teachings of Dame Slap ...

Vitaï Lampada

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night —
Ten to make and the match to win —
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

The sand of the desert is sodden red, —
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; —
The Gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of schoolboy rallies the ranks,
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

This is the word that year by year
While in her place the School is set
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind —
"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

Wouldn't want to let the show down by not playing the game. Provided the pond can serve by way of keyboard.

And that's about that.

The pond decided to send warrior Liz to the intermittent archive cornfield ...

Ditch the talk, the best defence is innovation
Anything other than the two existential threats in Australia’s defence conversation is pretty much noise.
By Elizabeth Buchanan

The intermittent archive is working this morning, so a teaser trailer is more than enough ...

Splendid stuff, demanding an end to idle, meaningless talk, by bursting into action ... by writing a column for the lizard Oz.

Why that must mean the pond is action central.

Ditto Martin ...

The NDIS was a promise – now it’s a broken market
I hardly recognise what the National Disability Insurance Scheme has become; today the NDIS is hardly meeting anyone’s expectations.
By Martin Laverty

The only thing the pond will note about Martin is that the reptiles unfortunately started his piece with a snap of him looking like a smirking Cheshire cat ...

And so as promised to the source of the ancient reptile EV lore with which the pond began the day.

The pond never watches Sky Noise down under (still no rebrand?) and so was startled when the pond's logarithms unearthed this clip.

It featured dazzling blonde Danica De Giorgio, who is so thick she makes a piece of 4 be 2 look like a toothpick ...

It was titled Sky News Is Still Lying About EVs and Batteries - Here's what they just said... and so it caught the pond's eye.

It came as no surprise that the reptiles lied on Sky Noise - they lie every day in the lizard Oz, and the dog botherer was also featured, so naturally there'd be lies, but even the pond wasn't prepared for this level of inanity.

The pond only mentions it for those opening precious few moments of Sky Noise down under drivel ...

And speaking of war criminals deserving a papal lashing...

In which a gloomy bromancer tries to cope, and cultists should be appeased by a Dame Groan sighting ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 21:31:00 +0000

The pond's partner has a thing for JD, and while the pond tries to argue against it, the arguments in favour of the couch molester are hard to refute.

JD visits the pope, who promptly dies, and a new liberal - or at least King Donald incurious - pope is installed. A real win for a Catholic convert anxious to see the church get ahead.

JD flies off to Hungary to support Viktor Orbán. He loses, so JC can take credit for saving Europe. What a winner.

JD heads off to the middle east to lead the negotiations, and produces an incredible negotiated settlement that sees both sides blockade the strait, plunging the world into chaos. So much winning.

Is it any wonder that couches want to lie with him, so that their beastly cushions can do the two backs thingie with him?

Others think he deserves our deepest thanks ...

But in the rush to praise JD for his legendary work, let's not forget that each day there's the same sort of incredible winning on display by the reptiles parading in the lizard Oz ...

Come on down bromancer, do the winning thingie for News Corpse and Faux Noise ...

The header: Iran knows it has Donald Trump politically snookered; This will probably be for Trump as damaging as the withdrawal from Kabul was for Joe Biden, possibly much worse.

The caption for the demented mad King: President Donald Trump speaks with reporters at Joint Base Andrews. Picture: Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP Photo

Watching the bromancer spend a bigly four minutes or so trying to cope with the doings of the mad King has become a peculiar pleasure for the pond of late.

Sure, the world is going to hell in a handbasket, in no small part due to the role played by the bro's kissing cousins at Faux Noise and to American-owned News Corp, but you must take your pleasures where you find them...

See how he struggles to discern some kind of sanity, marvel at the way he decodes the entrails ...

Australians should prepare for severe disruption for months, for shortages of fuel and other essentials, and the strong chance of recession, as a result of conflict in the Strait of Hormuz.
The military logic of what’s unfolding in the strait offers no reason to imagine a return to normal soon. Things will certainly get worse before they get better. They may get much, much worse.
One security insider put it to me this way: “The law of diminishing returns now applies to Trump. He wants to get out as quickly as possible. The law of increasing returns applies to Iran. It wants to keep using its new leverage.”
The case for taking action against Iran was very strong, because of its nuclear, ballistic missile, proxy and terrorist capabilities.
However, the way the Trump administration has handled this has in many ways played into Iran’s long-term strategic strengths. Mike Pezzullo argues that Trump should have involved allies much earlier. Failing to prepare de-mining capabilities or to get allies to help Gulf Arab states in counter-drone defences betrays poor planning.
The Americans say peace talks with Iran failed because they couldn’t get sufficient reassurance on nuclear enrichment. I think that’s misleading. The key today is Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz.

The disgraced Pezzullo still being quoted as a reliable expert?

Only in bromancer land, as the reptiles featured that heroic winner, Vice President JD Vance speaks during a news conference in Islamabad. Picture: Jacquelyn Martin / AP Photo

On and on the bromancer rambled, with the possibility that China might be dragged into proceedings surely a cause for celebration, because at last he might get his much desired war with China well before Xmas ...

Washington has achieved degradation of Iranian military capabilities. But Iran uses drones, sea mines, missiles and even artillery to make the Strait of Hormuz impassable without its permission. If the US walks away leaving Iran controlling who gets through the strait, and charging each ship a toll, that’s a massive defeat.
Here’s a weird thing. Until now the US has allowed Iran to keep trading its own oil on shadow fleets. Because of the spike in oil prices, this meant Iran was making twice as much money from its oil as it was before the war.
The US blockade is designed to cut all that money off and therefore make it harder for Tehran to keep on resisting. This will in the short term remove more oil from the international system.
It’s unclear how the US will enforce the blockade. Presumably it won’t actually sink any oil tanker that refuses its order to stop and be inspected. Instead it would have to board such a ship with US Navy SEALs and the like, then determine whether the ship’s cargo carried was loaded in Iran, then take custody of the ship or turn it back.
Iran has been allowing ships from friendly nations such as China to get through. Will the US enforce its blockade against Chinese ships, or ships with other nations’ flags carrying oil for China?

On the basis that you can never have enough bro, the reptiles introduced an AV distraction featuring him blathering to petulant Peta in his usual gloomy way, and luckily the pond could reduce it to an indicative screen cap ... The Australian Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan says if the Iranians control the Strait of Hormuz, they have “won an enormous victory”. “They have withstood the worst that Trump can give, and they haven’t buckled,” Mr Sheridan told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “The Islamic Revolutionary Guard is still in control in Iran. “That is a big victory.”

What a defeatist, as the bromancer kept showing signs of blinking ...

Here is where my friend’s laws of diminishing returns for the US and increasing returns for Iran come in. Iranians can read US poll numbers. This is an exceptionally unpopular war with the American public, about one-third of whom support it. Trump’s statements have swung wildly throughout the war, creating much confusion and ill will. He alternates between trying to influence oil and stock markets by telling them the war is almost over, virtually over, about to be over. He follows with wild threats to destroy Iranian civilisation or attack every Iranian electricity plant etc.
The Iranians aren’t scared by these threats. They know Trump can’t, politically, carry them out. They interpret them as signs of Trump’s frustration, even some political desperation. All this gives Iranian policymakers an incentive to try to wait Trump out, confident that domestic US politics will force him to quit before he opens the strait. Alternatively, the Iranians believe that to get agreement on the strait, Trump could make huge concessions to them that he would try to disguise in presentation.
This will probably be for Trump as damaging as the withdrawal from Kabul was for Joe Biden, possibly much worse.
What about Australia? The three factors that will help us avoid technical recession are the huge rise in commodity prices (as usual, the Green-demonised mining industry could save us), immigration, which tends to make the overall economy bigger, and inflation.
But there’s every chance we’ll get inflation combined with massive disruption because of the energy crisis. That’s inflation plus recession – stagflation. In such circumstances the Albanese government will spend wildly, at home to cushion recession, abroad to bid for scarce resources.
Dangerous paths of escalation for this conflict are obvious, though not inevitable. If the Americans are serious about opening the strait against Iranian opposition they probably need to occupy a number of Iranian islands. That means renewed war, boots on the ground and probably US casualties.

Glorious days, as the reptiles tried to distract with a snap of other news, Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles announce senior leadership changes within the Australian Defence Force at Parliament House. The government has appointed Vice Admiral Mark Hammond as the Chief of the Defence Force. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Then there came a final plunge into bromancer gloomsville...

Iran would respond by attacking Gulf nations’ energy infrastructure. It may be able to get its Houthi clients to attack energy shipping in the Red Sea, meaning even bigger disruption.
Incoming chief of the defence force Mark Hammond claimed Australia could send our navy to the Strait of Hormuz if asked. Hammond is a distinguished, capable and honourable man who would never knowingly lie. His statement is technically true but substantially meaningless.
Our seven Anzac frigates are among the world’s least capable warships. They are old and have just eight vertical launch cells each. You could fit them with limited extra counter-drone systems but we have no serious capabilities in that area.
Of course, within a US air and sea defence bubble, even an Anzac frigate could survive. If the Americans protect civilian vessels, they will survive too. That’s the point of such operations. Our frigate couldn’t reliably defend itself. The Albanese government decided not to upgrade Anzac frigate capabilities. We could send an air warfare destroyer, of which we have just two in service, as a marginal contribution. You have to see Hammond’s comments as part of official propaganda to convince Australians we have a much more capable defence force than we really do.
The US is now retrofitting solutions to problems it should have anticipated. We have almost no influence in all this and are doing not much to prepare for an increasingly dangerous future.

Say what? Isn't AUKUS going to save us?

Maybe not ... (*intermittent archive link)

No wonder he's gloomy, but perhaps that's because he missed the story about mad King Donald the redeemer, which is pretty much everywhere, but which also appeared early in the morning in the lizard Oz just below the bromancer's piece ... though no reptile could be found to attach his name to it, and it was left to agencies...

Donald Trump deletes Jesus post of himself after outcry
Even among conservative-leaning bishops, there was dismay over the President’s unprecedented assault on Pope Leo and his Truth Social post. Trump heard them.
By AFP and AP

The nub of it was that photo ... how could the pond resist a dose of sacrilege and blasphemy early in the morning?

The likes of Marge took a view ...

Apparently many are asking these days if He's the Antichrist (Wired link), and it's on for young and old ...

But the explanation was perfectly reasonable and sensible, at least for anyone in their dotage ...

Asked about the post, Mr Trump denied that he was trying to look like Jesus Christ. “I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor and had to do Red Cross,” he told journalists. “It’s supposed to be me as a doctor, making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot better.”

Talk about senility in plain sight ...

It isn't easy for local reptiles to match that level of comedy, and Geoff, as he chambered a round for the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, didn't even try ...

Taylor learns from Dutton errors
Angus Taylor has released the Coalition’s first immigration policy phase, learning from Peter Dutton’s past mistakes while targeting One Nation voters with detailed measures.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

The pond decided that a teaser trailer would do, with the intermittent archive hopefully doing the rest ...

Why do the reptiles think they're helping when they start with a snap of prime Angus grinning inanely and looking sunstruck, like a prize loon cherry red tomato in a hothouse?

So long ago, the days when talk of migrants eating cats and dogs was an election winner.

The pond didn't even bother to offer a teaser trailer for Jennings of the fifth form, delivering a standard whine ...

New ADF leaders, but no extra money
Australia’s military has appointed new leaders to senior positions, yet they inherit an under-resourced Defence Force struggling with rapidly escalating regional security threats.
By Peter Jennings

Come now, Jennings of the fifth form, surely putting a woman in charge of something is the real problem. Why, Pete Kegsbreath wouldn't stand for it ...

But at least that clearing of the reptile deck allowed space for Dame Groan's Tuesday outing.

It too was a standard whine, but the pond must pay attention to her cult following and their insatiable lust for hanging on every one of her words ...

The header: National fuel gauge is on empty – and no one is refilling; The government needs to take note as the global energy market, particularly for liquid fuels, is transformed, possibly forever.

The caption? Sadly there was no caption but that's possibly because everyone knew who he was ... Satan's little helper.

In fact Satan's little helper had probably set Dame Groan off ...

In this oil crisis, no one is calling for more fossil fuels: Bowen
Chris Bowen made the declaration as he leads the response to the fuel shock while balancing his duties as president of the COP31 UN summit.
By Rosie Lewis

Outrageous.

No one is calling for more fossil fuels?

Hold Dame Groan's beer ...

I have had my petrol car for some time. It is just fine apart from one minor defect. The fuel gauge moves from quarter to empty in the blink of an eye. I have learnt to deal with this by filling up the tank when the quarter mark approaches. It’s just a pity the federal government hasn’t adopted this cautious approach when it comes to the supply of liquid fuels – petrol, diesel, aviation fuel – that the country holds.
It came as a shock to many people that the country’s reserves of these critical fuels are around 30 days, a third of the level recommended by the International Energy Agency. We are at the bottom of the pack among advanced economies.
Even our cousins over the ditch have more than 50 days of reserve fuel. Italy has 90, France has 108 and Japan has 250 days.
There’s no need to rush out to fill up the tank if there are 200 days in reserve; 30 days is a different matter. It is not surprising therefore that the increase in the retail price of fuel has been higher in countries with relatively low reserves, leaving aside the impact of excise adjustment.
Successive governments have known about this problem for years but have dithered. Senator Jim Molan had loudly belled the cat on the issue. There was an earlier important report written by John Blackburn for the NRMA alerting us to the problem of our inadequate fuel reserves.
One option is to set up a government company that would purchase fuel reserves over several years to meet the IEA standard of 90 days. There would be a need for more storage, but over time this problem could be sorted.

It was everything her cult following expected, neigh demanded, and the next snap was also sure to send her off the deep end ... Anthony Albanese addresses the media at Parliament House. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Dame Groan offered an incredible solution ...

To be sure, the fuels couldn’t just be left in the tanks – the quality deteriorates – but this turnover also could be sorted. In the short term, we could store some fuel reserves with allies – an example of “friendshoring”.
There would be a cost to the taxpayer – perhaps as much as $20bn a year initially – but the reserves would sit as an asset in the books of the government company. An additional excise on fuel – say 10c a litre – could defray some of these costs, including for storage. Over time, it’s not clear that motorists would notice.

"Friendshoring"?

Hadn't that been tried with the US?

Oh dear, another beefy boofhead triumph, at least until we discovered that the friend had fallen under the baleful rule of a demented mad King ...

Perhaps Dame Groan was thinking of New Zealand? Or at a pinch Tasmania?

Apparently this talk of "friendshoring" is completely wrong in reptile la la land if it happens to involve people of the wrong skin colour.

But do carry on ...

A contribution also would be expected from those operators currently in receipt of the diesel fuel rebate because the revenue would be used to add to reserves that would benefit them as well.
A similar contribution would be expected from the aviation industry.
An ideal outcome would be if the addition to the national supplies of fuel could be sourced locally. But over the past two decades the proportion of liquid fuels from domestic wells has fallen sharply.
The almost complete absence of exploration and new developments has ensured this outcome as well as the closure of most of our refineries.
The broader context of this trend is the hostility to fossil fuel developments on the part of both the federal and state governments. Driven by an obsession with net zero and meeting arbitrary emissions reduction targets, potential investments in fossil fuel-based developments have fled the country.
It’s not as though our consumption of liquid fuels has fallen; we have simply exported the associated emissions to the countries from which we import the fuels, both crude and refined.
A crossroad has now been reached. There is broad recognition of the inadequacy of our liquid fuel reserves and the consequences that potential shortages and higher prices are having well beyond servo bowsers.

It couldn't be fully fossilised foolishness about fossil fuels without an appearance by fossil Jimbo, and so it came to pass ... Jim Molan

Of late it seems that the pond should spend some time introducing the dramatis personae to be found in reptile texts.

Come on down Vaclav Smil ...alleged "noted environmental scientist" ...

Ok, Doomer: What Vaclav Smil and the disinformation echo chamber get wrong about the climate crisis

After reading the fawning coverage of Vaclav Smil’s 41st, and hopefully final, book How the World Really Works (2022) — the latest edition of an old white dude mansplaining to future generations why a just, sustainable society is impossible — I got riled up and started to write a detailed rebuttal. There are so many problems with Smil’s book.. and the man himself.
A Professor Emeritus of Geography (retired) at the University of Manitoba, Smil is sort of the high priest of naysaying, who has a long history with the American Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank that has received millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests, including oil giant ExxonMobil. He is the master of a particular form of climate denial that I call climate action denial.
He doesn’t believe a world powered by 100% clean, renewable energy is feasible, and he has published literature sowing doubt about the significance of human-caused climate change. Unsurprisingly, he thinks fracking is awesome and that the public is far too worried about the risks posed by extractive industries. He characterized the idea of transitioning to electric vehicles as a “myth” and sustainability in general as a “laugh.”

And so on and on, and he sounds perfect for a walk-on role.

It's unlikely that Central Casting could have found anyone better suited to Dame Groan's needs ...

The impact is hitting agriculture, particularly in terms of diesel and urea availability and prices, mining, construction, healthcare as well as what’s left of manufacturing. There are still true believers who regard recent events as a signal to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels and push for higher rates of electrification, particularly of road transport.
But note here that road transport accounts for less than 20 per cent of total emissions.
We are still a long way off long-haul trucks converting to battery power at any scale and the costs of the conversion are extremely high. In the short to medium term, excavators, cranes, bulldozers, tractors, combine harvesters, irrigation pumps, marine equipment and the like are overwhelmingly powered by diesel.
It is worth noting here the finding of Vaclav Smil, the noted environmental scientist, that there are currently no practical and cost-effective alternatives to fossil fuel for primary iron, cement, ammonia (fertilisers) and plastics.
According to Smil’s calculation, the best we can expect from electrification is a decline in emissions of between 20 and 25 per cent. The recent demise of the green hydrogen dream as a zero-emissions liquid fuel has reinforced his conclusion.
It is alarming our political leaders are failing to comprehend the magnitude of the threat to our economy and way of life of our low fuel reserves. The Prime Minister has announced that “Singapore is a major supplier of fuel to Australia”, without realising that a great deal of the fuel that Singapore refines is sourced through the Strait of Hormuz.

At this point, the reptiles decided to crank up the volume by inserting an AV distraction featuring the mad King, who also serves these days as climate science denialist in chief, doing more to wreck the world than a hundred Groanings could manage ...

US President Donald Trump has vowed to end Iran’s “world extortion” in the Strait of Hormuz. He accused Tehran of exploiting global oil routes by demanding tolls from passing tankers. Trump warned that the US would take decisive action to reopen the critical shipping lane. “THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION, and Leaders of Countries, especially the United States of America, will never be extorted,” Trump wrote to Truth Social. The threat came after peace talks collapsed following 21 hours of negotiations.

And so at last to the final bleat, with nuking the country and coal also ready for walk-on roles, with special thanks to the mad King...

The Treasurer has been prattling on about the need for “cleaner and cheaper energy, more diverse sources and more reliable and robust supply chains”. Apart from the possibility of adding biofuels to our reserves it’s not even clear what he is talking about.
In muted terms, the Productivity Commission had warned the government about some of these problems, finding that “the main supply chain risks lie in the use of vulnerable chemical imports in health (human medicine manufacturing), energy (petrol and coal product refining) and water treatment industries”. It was just easier to ignore the warning.
The leaders of several countries are now explicitly declaring the primacy of energy security over other objectives. Japan is returning to nuclear power; Germany is prolonging the life of coal-fired electricity plants and is considering the reintroduction of nuclear; and the EU is walking away from rigid adherence to climate neutrality. The US, of course, has ditched its commitment to net zero and has exited the Paris Agreement.
The Australian government needs to take note of these developments as the global energy market, particularly for liquid fuels, is transformed, possibly forever.

Finally, the pond couldn't resist a gloat after spotting this in The Graudian ...

Tony Abbott labels Viktor Orbán ‘Trump with brains’ as future of Budapest thinktank linked to former PM in doubt
Former Australian PM, who has been associated with pro-Orbán Danube Institute since 2023, praises ousted Hungarian leader

What a deeply corrupt man he is, selling his narcissistic preening soul for a mess of authoritarian pottage...

Tony Abbott has likened Viktor Orbán to “[Donald] Trump with brains” and labelled him Hungary’s “greatest modern leader”, as the future of his work for the ousted leader’s pet thinktank hangs in the balance.
Orbán’s 16-year grip on power in Hungary has ended after the rightwing populist leader conceded his Fidesz party had lost to the opposition Tisza party led by Péter Magyar, which won at least 138 of the 199 seats in the country’s parliament.
Abbott has been connected to the conservative Danube Institute as a senior visiting fellow since 2023, according to Australia’s foreign influence transparency scheme. Orbán’s ousting puts the future of pro-Fidesz thinktanks like the Danube Institute, which rely heavily on his former government’s funding, in doubt.
Abbott, Australia’s 28th prime minister, praised Orbán on social media for making Budapest “something of a haven for conservative intellectuals”, saying he did not “expect the new government will want that to change”.
“The economy has strengthened, the city of Budapest has been transformed, and Hungary’s family policies and determination to keep its culture have been studied around the world,” Abbott said.
“[Orbán] and I differed on Ukraine but I thought he was dead right to defy the EU, on illegal immigration especially. Why should a sovereign nation be bullied by Brussels into policies that would jeopardise its future as a distinct people?”

If the new Hungarian government has a whit or jot of sense they'll kick this craven lickspittle and fellow traveller out so fast his budgie smugglers will be forced to wander a north shore beach desolate and alone.

The pond these days finds itself routinely astonished at being found quoting Anne Applebaum, and yet here we are in The Atlantic ...

Illiberalism Is Not Inevitable
If Viktor Orbán can lose, then his Russian and American admirers can lose too. (*intermittent archive link)

In the end, the defeat of Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s autocratic prime minister, required not just an ordinary election campaign or new messaging but rather the construction of a broad, diverse, and patriotic grassroots social movement. And by building exactly that, Hungary’s opposition changed politics around the world.
Orbán’s loss brings to an end the assumption of inevitability that has pervaded the MAGA movement, as well as the belief—also present in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric—that illiberal parties are somehow destined not just to win but to hold power forever, because they have the support of the “real” people. As it turns out, history doesn’t work like that. “Real” people grow tired of their rulers. Old ideas become stale. Younger people question orthodoxy. Illiberalism leads to corruption. And if Orbán can lose, then his Russian and American admirers can lose too.

So it was with the onion muncher, so surely it will hopefully be with mad king Donald.

And again ...

...whatever happens next, this election represents a real turning point. For most European governments, this result is a relief: We can’t know yet what kind of government Tisza will create, but it won’t be one that functions as Russia’s puppet in Europe, blocking EU funding for Ukraine or European sanctions on Russia. Nor will it be a regime that serves as a model for Americans or Europeans who want to capture their own states, or take apart their own checks and balances, or impose their own illiberal ideologies on people who don’t accept them.

It might be a frying pan v. fire situation, but at least there's a change of scenery.

And so ends another day ...

In which the Caterist and Major Mitchell lead the climate science denying, renewables bashing way. Yawn!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 21:37:00 +0000

The pond recently noticed this piece by Arianne Shahvisi in the LRB headed Gamer’s Dilemma (*intermittent archive link)

Shahvisi started off this way ...

In a strong field of contenders, the most morally troubling computer game ever made is probably RapeLay, released in Japan in 2006. Players are required to adopt the role of a sex offender who must stalk and rape a woman and her daughters, aged 12 and 17. It was banned in the UK in 2009 and eventually removed from sale in Japan too. The game spurred a debate among academic philosophers, centred on the ‘gamer’s dilemma’, a conceit formulated by Morgan Luck. Why is virtual killing morally acceptable in computer games, Luck asked, while virtual child sex abuse is not, given that no real person is harmed in either case?

... but quickly honed in on a more important dilemma ...

...If there are rumours that you’ve sexually abused a child, waging an expensive, unpopular, illegal war, let alone one whose opening salvo kills more than a hundred little girls, seems a strange bid at reputation laundering. But Trump is relying on the wonky moral arithmetic that produces the gamer’s dilemma, plus the racial supremacy that drives all Western foreign policy: the suspicion that he abused a white girl is a threat to his legitimacy in a way that the documented obliteration of a school of brown girls is not.
The inconsistency crops up again in the apologies that have spread like a rash among powerful men in Epstein’s orbit: they are sorry, they didn’t know, they hope for justice. Bill Clinton regrets his friendship. Does he regret obliterating Sudan’s malaria drugs and IV fluids? There is much to regret. Epstein was into everything: sexual abuse, eugenics, settler colonialism. He made donations to the Israeli Defence Forces and the Jewish National Fund, which finances illegal settlements on Palestinian land.
There is an audio recording of Epstein’s friend Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel, telling the financier that he had told Vladimir Putin that Israel needed a million Russian Jews to ‘control the quality’ of the population, given the growing numbers of Palestinians and racialised Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, adding the sweetener that ‘many young, beautiful girls would come, tall and slim.’ Barak ‘regrets’ his links to Epstein. Does his regret his role as the defence minister who ordered the killing of 1400 Palestinians, including more than three hundred children, in Israel’s Operation Cast Lead?
The apologies from those linked to Epstein are grubby, suspect, insufficient. But they display a deference to the terms of some kind of morality: it is never OK to sexually abuse a child and it is very bad to be associated with those who do. Is it OK to kill a child? To associate with those who do? What about twenty thousand children? Will we ever see apologies from those whose friends have blown the limbs off children in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran? The discrepancy that drives the gamer’s dilemma doesn’t come from our rightful horror at paedophilia – virtual or real – but from our complacency about so much murder.

It made the pond wonder.

Nearly all refugees admitted in US since October 2025 were (white) South Africans, data shows...

No need to wonder, but will the pond - or the hive mind - ever see apologies from News Corp and its minions, who have enabled and encouraged ethnic cleansing and the killing fields and the white Xian nationalism?

Probably not, but it explains why the pond frequently feels the need to apologise for presenting reprehensible reptiles to an admittedly discreet and worldly wise bunch of correspondents ...

And so we begin again this day with some great news, though it was too late in the morning for those on the extreme far right of the rag to contemplate said BREAKING news ...

BREAKING
‘Painful’: Hungary’s Orban ousted in historic poll defeat
The long-serving Hungarian Prime Minister has conceded defeat, telling supporters: ‘The result of the election is clear and painful.’
By Jacquelin Magnay

So the onion muncher's and Vlad the Sociopath's and JD Vance's friend has gone down?

There's probably gong to be a sting in the tail somewhere down the line, but the pond will settle for a rush of joy.

Meanwhile there was other "news" in the "news" section of the lizard Oz...

Middle East at war
Trump announces US to blockade Strait of Hormuz
US President Donald Trump said the US Navy would begin blockading ‘any and all ships trying to enter or leave the Strait of Hormuz’, after peace talks with Iran in Islamabad collapsed.
By Jack Quail and Agencies

That splash led to a short summary ...

President Donald Trump on Sunday ordered a US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz in response to Iran’s “unyielding” refusal to give up its nuclear ambitions during peace talks in Islamabad.
While acknowledging that the marathon talks in Pakistan had gone “well” and “most points were agreed to,” Trump said Tehran had refused to concede on the issue of its nuclear program.
“Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
“I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas,” Trump said.

So he intends to plunge the world's economy into a spiral of doom while acting as a common or garden eighteenth century pirate?

Agggh, me hearties.

The pond notes this because in the lizard Oz editorial whining about the recalcitrant Iranians came this corker...

The Tehran regime must understand, if it cares, that there will be no end to Iranians’ suffering, and more devastation until complete freedom of navigation through the Strait is assured. Western nations should be helping the US secure that crucial goal. The importance to the world of reopening the Strait has been underlined by the failure of the Islamabad talks.

So a compleat BLOCKADE is the way forward, complete freedom is a complete blockage, war is peace, and no doubt chairman Xi will take note.

Perhaps it's just another thought bubble from a mad King, who seems to more and more be favouring Roman Emperors as role models ...

And that's the end of the entertainment because alas, this day the reptiles used the crisis to indulge in yet another round of climate science denialism and fossil fuel worship.

Trust the reptiles always to learn the wrong lesson ...trust the quarry whisperer to lead the way:

The header: The four dates that punctured the left’s net-zero fantasies; As the Trump administration has shown, the net-zero industrial complex must be starved, not slain.

The caption for a snap much used by the reptiles: Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen during a visit to the Ampol Lytton refinery in Brisbane. Picture: NewsWire / Tertius Pickard

The pond will understand if senior herpetology students decide to sneak out of class this time.

Been there, done that so many times, with a yadda yadda here and a whatever there...

The monomaniacal pursuit of net zero had to be abandoned sooner or later. Politically contaminated science, coupled with the requirement for a watertight global agreement, made it vulnerable to the lightest brush with reality.
Historians may well recall that its demise occurred between February 2022 and April 9, 2026, beginning with Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine that shut off Russian oil and gas supplies, and destroyed the romance of decarbonisation for hundreds of millions of Europeans.
The second pivotal moment occurred on October 7, 2023, when the global left’s response to mass torture, rape, killing and kidnapping of Israeli men, women and children revealed that Palestine had replaced global warming as its cause de jour.
The US-Israel campaign against Iran that began on February 28, triggering the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, destroyed the delusion that the energy transition was making progress. It turned out that the world was even more dependent on hydrocarbons than it had been 53 years earlier during the last major supply crisis.
In Australia, at least, historians will probably nominate Thursday, April 9, as the day the final nail was hammered into the coffin. It was the day Energy Minister Chris Bowen and Anthony Albanese visited the Lytton refinery near the Port of Brisbane, the first visit by a prime minister since May 2021, when Scott Morrison and his then energy minister, Angus Taylor, announced the deal to stop the Ampol refinery moving offshore.

The reptiles flung in a snap of their favourite villain ... Chris Bowen during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The pond has been zooming around town in the old EV startled by the singular absence of traffic even in peak hour, but refuses to gloat ... while the phantom flood waters analyst carried on in his luddite way..

The PM didn’t want to be seen near the joint this time last year when he was campaigning in the seat of Bonner. Today, however, it’s a different story, even if not every reporter at last week’s press conference was across the government’s revised talking points on fossil fuels. Subject: Loaded Adjectives. Text: Delete “dirty, harmful, and morally indefensible” and insert “reliable, affordable, and prosperity-enabling”.
Asked for an update on the Safeguard Mechanism, Labor’s keynote policy designed to reduce emissions from large industrial facilities such as Lytton, Bowen replied: “It’s not on the top of my to-do list right now, to be frank with you. I’m focused on other matters.”
Bowen may try to dismiss this as a throwaway line, just as he suggests that abandoning the 82 per cent renewables target for the east coast grid is of little consequence. Yet the government’s energy U-turn cannot easily be brushed off.
For four years, the Albanese government has lavished subsidies, raised punitive taxes and increased regulation to reduce fossil fuel demand. Now, as the PM told us after returning from Singapore, the government’s three top priorities are supply, supply and supply.
Just a year ago, Labor delayed approving a major extension of Australia’s largest LNG development until after the election to avoid a backlash from the left. Last week, the PM went cap-in-hand to Singapore, where he used gas from that very project as a bargaining chip to secure imports of petrol, diesel and avgas.

Not content with one Caterist, the reptiles doubled down with him appearing with lovely meter maid Rita (still no rebranding? Must we wait forever for the name?)

Menzies Research Centre Senior Fellow Nick Cater claims reality is catching up with the net zero debate. “Reality is starting to catch up with this debate,” Mr Cater told Sky News host Rita Panahi. “This is crazy modelling; they’ve stuck with it as long as they can.”

There then came some impeccable analysis by the quarry whisperer:

This brazen about-turn carries low political risk for Labor. French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy’s 2010 prediction that the intellectual left’s animating cause would be a version of antisemitism has proved correct.
Raising awareness of the climate emergency by gluing oneself to the Harbour Bridge is old-school. Today, one’s social justice credentials are displayed by marching across it in a keffiyeh in the company of an assortment of dubious characters.
The moral force of net zero has diminished. Five years ago, Morrison signed up to the Paris Agreement not because he wanted to but because he was frightened that the Liberal Party’s support would collapse if he didn’t. As it turned out, the Liberals’ vote collapsed anyway. Late last year, the Coalition dropped the commitment to net zero, and almost no one noticed.

Um, perhaps because the coalition has, in following News Corp's lead on climate science, been a rabble whispering into a void, and now such a rump no one notices? Especially as it's a rump led by a beefy boofhead who earned his stripes ranting at windmills?

Correspondents will note that the pond is feeling a tad jaded by all this...

Yet we should not imagine, for a moment, that the change in the political wind means public policy will change course. Bureaucracies do not reverse on command. They carry stored momentum, converted into agencies, grant programs, reporting frameworks, procurement rules and career structures.
The degree of institutional inertia is considerable. Abolishing the Department of Climate Change and Energy, as One Nation promises to do, will do little more than place a line in the sand. The dense undergrowth of quasi-government bodies, regulators, advisory boards and grant recipients will largely remain untouched.

It wouldn't be a campaign ad proper if the mob didn't score a snap...

Leader of the Opposition Angus Taylor MP and Leader of the Nationals Senator Matt Canavan, joined by Liberal and National Party Members and Senators, hold a press conference at Parliament House. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

And that was about it ...

Even if the scalpel were taken to the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Clean Energy Regulator, the Renewable Energy Target, the Emissions Reduction Fund and the Climate Change Authority, the real work would scarcely have begun.
Dozens of quangos, commissions, agencies and co-ordinators have been created at state level. Beyond government sits an even wider ecosystem: advocacy groups funded to keep the pressure on, universities with research centres and grants, public broadcasters with specialist climate rounds, and corporations whose incentives are driven by ESG.
Even after the political tide turns, all of this machinery goes on whirring. The momentum is embedded in payrolls, contracts, budgets and careers. The Coalition should take note.
As the Trump administration has shown, the net-zero industrial complex must be starved, not slain. It will be overcome by defunding, deregulation and the exhaustion of capital. NASA’s success in sending astronauts beyond the moon suggests the threat of deep cuts to the agency’s climate-related work is already bearing fruit.
There is no quick fix, however, particularly in a parliamentary system that does not allow an incoming prime minister to exercise the sweeping executive powers of a US president. Democratic correction here will be less dramatic, beginning with the slow bleed of money, status and cultural authority. Net zero will end not with a bang, but with a whimper.

As for the planet? If the Caterist and his companions at the lizard Oz have his way, it will end in the manner of a stuffed and right royally cooked goose ...

As for the rest of the rabble, the pond seized on the chance discovery of the intermittent archive in working mode to send a number of them off to that dismal cornfield.

The pond apologises in advance. It's a risky strategy, a minute by minute proposition, an exercise in frustration, but actually dealing with this mob would be worse.

Nick led the march of the damned ...

The hollow populism of Max Chandler-Mather
The Greens have not broken through but consolidated a niche – and a niche is not a mass movement.
By Nick Dyrenfurth
Contributor

Whenever the pond reads the tag, Nick Dyrenfurth is executive director of the John Curtin Research Centre, the pond can't help but ask why Nick has turned into a reptile regular. Still pleased to be one of the reptiles ruining the planet, Nick? Still determined to make Curtin keep rolling in his grave.

As usual, there was an obligatory piece about the war with China by Xmas, but instead of the bromancer, it was Rowan ...

Xi is planning a ‘peaceful’ Taiwan deal Trump can accept
When Trump meets Xi in a month, he may believe he holds the upper hand, no longer feeling a need to make concessions.
By Rowan Callick
Contributor

The pond was delighted that Rowan had only yesterday had an intimate discussion with Chairman Xi, and so had intimate knowledge of his plans, but the pond thought it might be better just to wait and see what actually might unfold.

After all, King Donald has shown the way forward. Blockade!

Brownie was also to hand ...

Tell us strait: there’s nothing wrong in a leader saying sorry
Anthony Albanese should be more prepared to admit mistakes and even issue the occasional apology when he gets it wrong.
By Greg Brown
Chief political correspondent

The pond might have taken Brownie seriously if he'd started with an apology for the unseemly way his boss had encouraged King Donald to embark on the Iran folly, with another apology for the way his kissing cousins at Faux Noise had acted as war mongering cheerleaders. Physician heal thyself, and set the example would have been good starting points for Brownie, but no such like.

As for simpleton Simon, it was just the usual bog standard outing ..

Jim’s ‘voodoo economics’ strikes back
Chalmers has been making all the right noises about not wasting a crisis, but he may be overruled again.
By Simon Benson
Political analys

The pond will wait for Dame Groan's groaning tomorrow ...

And that meant that all that was left was the sorry sight of assorted reptiles seizing on the current crisis to plunge the world back into the days of picket fences and gas guzzlers... including the lizard Oz editorialist...

The editorialist would say that, that's how it works in the hive mind, incessant repetition, incantations and yearning for things to stay the same, as if the climate heeds their monotonous chanting.

Cue Major Mitchell, doing a standard Major five minute rant ...

The header: Oil shock shows world still runs on fossil fuels, not green promises; Environment writers who claim the Iran war oil shock will be a boost for renewable energy don’t understand how industrial production actually works.

The caption: Scottich (sic) First Minister John Swinney launches an SNP campaign on fuel prices on April 7, in Leith, Scotland. Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Yawn.

The best the pond can do is introduce the dramatis personae in this turgid outing, as dull as George Bernard Shaw in full verbiage flight.

The first, a certain Michael Shellenberger, made an appearance in an old Damian Carrington piece for the Graudian, The four types of climate denier, and why you should ignore them all

A new book, described as “deeply and fatally flawed” by an expert reviewer, recently reached the top of Amazon’s bestseller list for environmental science and made it into a weekly top 10 list for all nonfiction titles.
How did this happen? Because, as Brendan Behan put it, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity”. In an article promoting his book, Michael Shellenberger – with jaw-dropping hubris – apologises on behalf of all environmentalists for the “climate scare we created over the last 30 years”.
Shellenberger was named a hero of the environment by Time magazine in 2008 and is a loud advocate of nuclear power, but the article was described by six leading scientists as “cherry-picking”, “misleading” and containing “outright falsehoods”.

Sounds exactly like the sort of leading man the Major would love.

There's a lot more that can be found about him on the full to overflowing intertubes, but the short version is that he's a flake and a phoney.

As for the leading woman, some would think that the name alone, Zion Lights, explains everything.

The Major wants to think that she's been largely ignored, a stunning ingenue ready to take leading lady status and dominate centre stage, but in reality she could be found peddling her wares in the 'Tiser way back in October 2021 ...

Extinction Rebellion to climate champion: Zion Lights explains why nuclear power is our answer
A former key official in the Extinction Rebellion movement has revealed why she’s turning her back on its doomsday messages to back nuclear power.

That header alone suggests an explanation, which a metaphor might elucidate: Opus Dei fanatic becomes fanatical atheist, or vice versa, fanatical atheist becomes Opus Dei zealot ...

“I used to be in that kind of camp saying: ‘We should all use less,’ but, actually, let’s be honest, where has that gotten us?
“For decades, it’s gotten us nowhere. It hasn’t happened. Behavioural scientists have not found a way to make people magically to have a huge reduction in how much energy they use.”
Ms Lights argues reducing emissions means increasing electricity use, to transfer transport and heating from fossil fuel power.

Don't ask the pond to explain what that last line actually means. The important point is that Zion saw the Lights and she decided to nuke the planet to save the planet.

With that introduction to the main characters, it's on with the Major ...

Environment writers who claim the Iran war oil shock will be a boost for renewable energy don’t understand how industrial production actually works.
The world spent $US2.5 trillion ($3.55 trillion) on green projects in 2025 alone.
Yet more than 91 per cent of total Australian energy use still relies on fossil fuels. The global figure is more than 82 per cent.
All the renewable energy installed in the past decade has not shielded the world from the effects of the partial blockage of 20 per cent of the world’s oil by Iran in the Straits of Hormuz for only six weeks.
It’s a lesson that should have been learned earlier. Many countries, especially in Europe, accelerated the closure of reliable fossil fuel power after the gas shock triggered by Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, thinking more renewables would protect them.
It’s like even governments don’t understand almost every industry globally depends on fossil fuels, from making fertiliser, plastics and cement to smelting metals, refining Avgas for planes, diesel for farm machinery, and trucks and heavy oil for shipping.
Yet environment editor Nick O’Malley in the Nine papers assured his readers on March 19 that the way forward from the present oil crisis was more subsidies for electrification.
O’Malley claimed China was showing the world the way forward without fossil fuels by building more renewables capacity since 2022 than the rest of the world combined. True but China is also the world’s biggest CO2 emitter, largest user of coal and second largest user of oil.
That won’t change any time soon because the green steel, green ammonia and green hydrogen the Nine papers have been spruiking for a decade do not exist.
Sure renewables are becoming the backbone of our electricity system but 80 per cent of our fossil fuel use is in industries other than electricity generation.
And while the world has been spending trillions of dollars a year since Covid building out renewables, it has wound back spending on oil and gas exploration and production.
Mike Shellenberger on the Public website estimates total global spending on oil and gas exploration and production peaked at $US780bn in 2014 and fell to $US350bn by 2020 – a fraction of what is spent on renewables that deliver only a small proportion of global total energy.
Discussing a new book, Abundance, that Labor ministers here have been spruiking, Shellenberger in “Democrats’ Fake ‘Abundance’ Agenda Will Continue Energy Scarcity” on April 5 said the Hormuz crisis showed the world needed to build more oil and gas pipelines.
“The only energy abundance solution that works at the scale of civilisation right now is piping natural gas and oil. A pipeline delivers energy continuously, at near zero marginal cost per unit delivered, with no exposure to shipping choke points, insurance markets or geopolitical disruption.”
Asking why the left continues to push the idea renewables are the solution to industrial processes renewables cannot power, Shellenberger answers, “The first reason is profit. Solar and wind development is an enormously lucrative business, not because the technology is superior but because the subsidies are guaranteed.”
Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act allocated $US370bn to solar, wind and batteries. The EU Green Deal offered a trillion euros.
“The returns are attractive precisely because the government guarantees them.”
This is the model the Albanese government and Minister for Energy Chris Bowen are copying without wondering where the rest of our energy requirement will come from even if we do manage to build an electrical grid on renewables, storage, batteries and gas back-up.
Shellenberger says bankers are the big drivers of support for renewables because every wind farm, solar array and big battery project involves commissions for financial intermediaries brokering deals between manufacturers and power providers.
“Goldman does not profit from cheap, abundant energy delivered through pipelines at near-zero marginal cost. Goldman profits from complex, capital intensive projects that require financing, structuring and advisory fees.”
As this column has argued for a decade, it’s big bankers and financiers preaching the gospel of sustainability who reap the rewards of renewables. Think Malcolm Turnbull and Simon Holmes a Court here.
Shellenberger says China is the other big winner.
“China proliferated cheap solar panels to the West not out of environmental conviction but as an industrial strategy that made Western nations dependant on Chinese manufacturing while China itself relied on the energy source that actually works at scale: coal.
“China burns more than half the world’s coal. It built an electricity grid twice the size of America’s. It stockpiled critical minerals.
“It built coal-to-chemicals facilities to produce diesel and jet fuel domestically and for military needs,” Shellenberger says.
Meanwhile, Australia, the largest exporter of coal to China, plans to shut all its coal power generation plants and places stringent approvals processes in front of any potential new coal mine. Yet Labor claims it is accelerating its Future Made in Australia strategy in response to the present oil crisis.
What of the world’s biggest losers from the renewables transition? That would be the poorest people from the world’s least developed countries.

The pond let the Major ramble on because the reptiles were so zonked on Valium they didn't have the heart to interrupt him with a single visual distraction.

Not one snap of demonic whale-killing windmills? Not one snap of renewables ruining landscapes?

The reptiles did briefly rouse from their slumbers to feature the demonic sun and sinister solar glistening in its evil light ... Bankers are the big drivers of support for renewables because every wind farm, solar array and big battery project involves commissions. Picture: Lintao Zhang/Getty Images

Bankers! Evil bankers!! Possibly even cosmopolitans!!

Some might be wondering when Zion would make her appearance. Worry not, here she is, Lightsing the way ...

Shellenberger on April 1 interviewed Zion Lights, an activist who quit Extinction Rebellion in the UK in 2020 and was quoted in this column about XR’s extreme methods at the time.
Lights has written an important new book, Energy is Life, Why Environmentalism Went Nuclear.
She describes how for the past two decades “climate policy has been the dominant priority in wealthy nations’ engagement with the developing world”.
“Western NGOs have even blocked the construction of hydro-electric dams, which tends to be the first reliable source of power that poor nations develop as they rise the development ladder,” she tells Shellenberger’s podcast.
After the Paris Agreement in 2015, private institutions and national governments “began systematically restricting financing for oil, gas and coal projects in the developing world”.
“The practical effect was to deny poor countries the energy infrastructure that every wealthy nation used to climb out of poverty.
“Between 2017 and 2019, multilateral development banks provided an average $US9.7bn annually in direct fossil fuel finance.
“By 2020-22, that figure had collapsed to $US3.2bn.
“In March 2021, the UK’s export finance agency ended all financial support for overseas fossil fuel projects.”
At COP 26 in Glasgow in November 2021, 20 countries and five development banks pledged to stop financing unabated fossil fuels by the end of 2022
Lights goes on to outline how the Asian Development Bank and the African Development Bank then began forcing the closure of various fossil fuel projects.
Yet in Africa, 600 million people are living without electricity.
Lights says she has never been interviewed by the BBC. Our ABC, Guardian Australia and Nine papers are just as deaf to thoughtful voices on the realities of energy and environmentalism.

Relax, Zion, your natural home is the hive mind, dwelling amongst the reptiles in fossil fuel bliss ...murmuring all the while about evil bankers, perhaps even the Rothschilds, though that sounds a tad strange coming from the lips of a devoted Zionist of the Major kind ...

Enough already ,,, on with the main show ...

Go, Faux Noise... turn a pig's ear into a pearl right before our disbelieving eyes ...

In which Polonius sets the war crimes pace, the Ughmann takes a warrior sidestep, and Our Henry arrives to seal the war crimes deal ..

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 20:25:00 +0000

A word of explanation...

Yesterday this was at the top of the lizard Oz ...

... and the pond studiously ignored it.

First it was by that lesser member of the Kelly gang, Joe, and second, already everything has changed.

If you wanted a third, you could find it in the possibly working intermittent archive ...

If you wanted a fourth, the pond would much rather be reading Susan B. Glasser ranting away in The New Yorker in The Costs of Trump's Iran-War Folly (*archive link)

If you wanted a fifth, the pond much preferred this opening flourish by David Remnick's obvious comparison in his piece Trump's Strategic and Moral Failure in Iran (*archive link)

Not many years ago, a ruthless man with an uneasy mind took power in his country and created a cult of personality. In the center of the capital, he erected a gold statue of himself that rotated with the sun. He stashed billions in a foreign bank. He closed the academy of sciences, the ballet, the philharmonic, the circus, and all provincial libraries. His autobiography became the nation’s spiritual guide. He banned dogs from the capital for their “unappealing odor.” He renamed the months: January for himself, April for his mother. He was fond of melons. The second Sunday of August became National Melon Day. Such was the world of Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmenistan’s leader from 1985 until his death, by cardiac arrest, in 2006. For the Turkmen people, there was nothing comical about life under his dictatorship. He barred dissent and packed his jails with prisoners of conscience. The only consolation was that he could not impose his grandiosity on the globe.

So the United States is now a banana republic and, spoiler alert, it led to a corker of a punchline ...

...In the midst of the war, Trump released plans for his Presidential library. Its centerpiece will be an auditorium with an immense gold statue of himself. Whether it will turn with the sun is not yet known.

But the pond must make some attempt at reptile offerings for keen herpetology students.

The problem was that a considerable number were obsessed with the doings of an alleged war criminal, so the pond must set the scene ...

Soon enough, the trial will begin and the pond will refrain from commenting, as it does on matters before the court, but in the interim, the pond should note that on the balance of probabilities, Ben Roberts-Smith has already been found guilty of war crimes ... in a case he brought himself.

Also on the balance of probabilities, it seems that the hive mind pack are all in on the right to commit war crimes and get away with it.

The reptiles were wildly indignant at the persecution of the "war hero", with prattling Polonius leading the way ...

The header: War hero Ben Roberts-Smith merits the presumption of innocence;A dramatic arrest, media frenzy and political restraint collide, prompting questions about due process and the presumption of innocence.

The caption for the masked marauders: Ben Roberts-Smith is escorted by AFP officers at Sydney airport following his arrest. Picture: Australian Federal Police

Question.

Why is Ben Roberts-Smith still being called a war hero by the lizards of Oz, when on the balance of probabilities, according to an Australian court, he committed war crimes, including multiple murders?

Who knows?

For a while, at least, Ben Roberts-Smith was a name Australian Federal Police commissioner Krissy Barrett dared not speak.
Shortly after 1pm on April 7, Barrett read a statement to the media that began: “A former Australian Defence Force member has today been arrested and will be charged with five counts of war crime – murder after a joint investigation between the Office of the Special Investigator and the AFP.”
Barrett added: “The former soldier was arrested at Sydney’s domestic airport this morning and is expected to face a NSW court later today.” Everyone at the media conference knew the reference was to Roberts-Smith. But the AFP was running a “no names, no pack-drill” line.
Until the lead-up to the evening TV news bulletins, that is. By then, the AFP had released film of Roberts-Smith being escorted off a plane at Sydney airport by AFP members. He had been charged with murder in the presence of his teenage children and partner. Later that day, the AFP did not prevent the media from photographing the accused sitting in a prison van, handcuffed.
It’s not the kind of behaviour that facilitates a fair trial. In The Nightly on April 8, Aaron Patrick wrote: “Mr Roberts-Smith’s lawyers offered in writing to make him available ‘at any place, at any time’ to the authorities, a source close to the former SAS corporal said.”
Obviously, the AFP wanted to put on a show.
Interviewed on Sky News’ The Bolt Report on April 9, former NSW Labor police minister Michael Costa said this was no way to treat a man who had served with distinction and had been awarded a Victoria Cross in the process.
Costa said: “He wasn’t a flight risk; he should have been phoned up and asked to attend the police station for the charging with his lawyer.” He then made a broader point that “this is happening all the time” – referring to the case of Cardinal George Pell – before adding “the list is endless”.

Ah, the Pellist ploy.

And Costa. The pond had hoped to have heard the last of him when he announced I'm leaving a failure.

The pond should note at this point the reptiles didn't offer Polonius any more visual distractions.

The pond should also point out that when it comes to snaps of the man - who on the balance of probabilities committed war crimes - the reptiles rarely feature him in all his elemental glory ... so the pond will help out.

He might not be guilty of war crimes - let the court decide - but he's certainly guilty of other crimes.

And so to a final beefy chunk of Polonial goodness ...

Then there was the media on the morning after. Roberts-Smith had unsuccessfully sued Nine – that is Network Nine and Nine newspapers such as The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. The entire front page of the SMH on April 8 contained a photo of a darkened, sinister-looking Roberts-Smith, his eyes diverted downwards. It declared in scoffing tone: “From Medals To Murder Charges”. The following six pages were devoted to the accused. As if the Middle East war, oil and fertiliser shortages and the cost of living were of lesser interest to everyday Australians.
It was the same with The Age. Except that the article on the case written by Nine journalist Nick McKenzie had a different heading to that in the SMH. It read: “Many narcissists have tried to twist the legal system; one thing sets this man apart.” McKenzie, an activist journalist who is a long-term Roberts-Smith antagonist, alleged the former soldier had “positioned himself” above the law. How? Well, Roberts-Smith attempted “to use the civil legal system to suppress his conduct in Afghanistan” and this “revealed him as a man who thought the law his servant, a tool to bend to his will”.
No he didn’t. Roberts-Smith took a defamation case against Nine, with respect to claims made about him by Nine’s McKenzie and others, and lost. That’s all. This is not the action of a man “above the law” – whatever that might mean. In his sneering tone the journalist felt the need to refer to the VC winner “as the son of a Supreme Court judge”. What’s that got to do with it?
Having read McKenzie’s lightweight piece in the Nine newspapers, respected Melbourne Law School professor Jeremy Gans posted on X a one-word assessment – “bile”. Yet Nine editors, in their wisdom or lack of same, saw fit to publish such verbal sludge in a prominent place.
The one thing that can be said for truisms is that they are true. It is true that everyone is entitled to a fair trial. And also a presumption of innocence until found guilty, in a criminal trial, to the standard of “beyond reasonable doubt”. Roberts-Smith’s defamation case against Nine was a civil case in the Federal Court of Australia where the standard of proof is “on the balance of probabilities”.
Both Anthony Albanese and Angus Taylor responded to the news of the charges laid against Roberts-Smith with professionalism. Both have said that the matter is before the courts.
In her scripted comments, Barrett said: “The overwhelming majority of our ADF do our country proud. Today’s charges are not reflective of the majority members who serve under our Australian flag with honour, distinction and with the values of a democratic nation.” This is capable of being interpreted that a minority – of undisclosed size – do not. This overlooks the fact that of the 30,000 men and women who served in Afghanistan, two have faced charges and none has been convicted of war crimes so far.
Former senior politicians are entitled to discuss the case, as are journalists, provided they are careful with their words.
Writing in The Australian on April 8, Stephen Rice provided an excellent summary of the prosecution’s case. The analysis suggests the case against Roberts-Smith is certainly contestable.
In a statement, former prime minister Tony Abbott made this important point: “If Ben Roberts-Smith transgressed, why wasn’t this picked up prior to his gallantry awards and why wasn’t any culture of brutality towards prisoners detected by his more senior officers, and dealt with quickly, rather than being allowed to fester, as has been alleged, for over a decade?”
While stating that no man or woman is above the reach of the law, John Howard called for the trial to be held “as expeditiously as possible”. The reference is to the truism that justice delayed is justice denied.
As to the AFP’s actions, Roberts-Smith deserves the respect due to all who have been charged with criminal offences. This means not parading the accused under arrest before media outlets.

At this point the pond should pause for a break, because who doesn't love war criminals committing war crimes ...

Refreshed, the pond could turn to the Ughmann...

The header: Australia’s busted bet: the imperative for energy independence; Canberra’s escort of US minesweepers from the Gulf signalled the end of a world order Australia’s economy built upon. Its ‘busted flush’ demands urgent energy and security re-evaluation.

The caption: The USS Canberra (LCS 30) escorts the merchant vessel Seaway Hawk, laden with four decommissioned US Navy Avenger-class minesweepers, through the Arabian Gulf, on January 21, 2026. Picture: Supplied

This might seem like a step away from war crimes, but only by degree, because the Ughmann is big on war and warriors (and the pond thanks him for his seminarian service):

In January, the Pentagon released an image of the USS Canberra escorting a massive cargo ship carrying four ageing US Navy Avenger-class minesweepers out of the Persian Gulf.
The wood and fibreglass vessels were beginning a long journey to a scrapyard in Philadelphia after being retired from service with the Bahrain-based US Fifth Fleet last year.
American minesweepers have been patrolling the waterways of the Gulf since tankers were targeted during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. But as the Cold War peace dividend was cashed in, de-mining slipped down the Pentagon’s priorities. Mine Warfare Command was dismantled in 2006 and its ageing fleet was left to atrophy in a corner of the US Navy that had no real champion.
The picture of the minesweepers’ departure, just before the shooting started in the third Gulf War, is pregnant with meaning. Most immediately, it reveals Operation Epic Fury as an epic failure of timing, judgment and strategic imagination.
Days after the war began, Iran laid mines in the Strait of Hormuz, disrupted the world’s most vital artery and sent shockwaves through the global economy. The presence of the minesweepers was testimony to the fact the US had understood this risk for 40 years. Donald Trump chose to ignore it.

No need to pause here, except to join the Ughmann in his celebration of kit, The M/V Seaway Hawk transports four decommissioned Avenger-class minesweepers, a visible legacy of a 40-year-old risk that Donald Trump chose to ignore. Picture: Supplied

So there's a sixth reason: the Ughmann is going to go over the same old tired grounds where many reptiles have trodden ...

A New York Times article co-authored by its Australian-born and bred White House reporter, Jonathan Swan, revealed this week that the US President was convinced any war with Iran would be swift and decisive. He was already leaning into that view before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in the White House Situation Room on February 11 to argue that Iran was ripe for regime change and that a joint US-Israeli mission could topple the Islamic Republic.
The next day Trump’s advisers gathered without their Israeli counterparts to caution the President against the notion of a quick and clean victory. CIA director John Ratcliffe is reported to have described the regime change scenarios as farcical. Secretary of State Marco Rubio weighed in, saying, “In other words, it’s bullshit.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine warned that a major campaign against Iran would drastically deplete American weapons stockpiles. He also flagged the enormous difficulty of securing the Strait of Hormuz and the risk that Iran would attempt to block it.
Those who believe Trump enjoys a kind of secular papal infallibility will dismiss this report because of the masthead that printed it. The counter is that Swan has been remarkably good at his craft for a long time and the report rings true because the concerns raised are exactly what anyone paying even modest attention to the region, its history and its geography would have concluded.
Someone also might have added that the enduring feature of American military campaigns since Vietnam has been the difficulty of converting overwhelming tactical superiority into lasting strategic success.
Once Trump would have volunteered this view. One of the reasons so many war-weary Americans were drawn to him was his pledge to end the forever wars. In 2020 he told a group of West Point graduates it was not the job of American forces “to solve ancient conflicts in faraway lands that many people have not even heard of”.

Oh dear, not a collage ... US President Donald Trump and advisers monitor Operation Epic Fury against Iran. Picture: AFP

And yes, all that was just a prelude to the Ughmann going full isolationist, full prepper, full "get your kit ready for the bug out", full we must industrialise and do everything at home, in short, full survivalist ...

Since last year’s 12-day warm-up in Iran and the assault on Venezuela, it is as if the President had discovered a new key he believed could unlock all doors. It must be intoxicating to have the power to rain destruction on your enemies but, alas, not all have the same motivation. Some don’t do earthly deals. The threat of death does not work on people who believe martyrdom is a glorious gateway to eternal life.
Those of us who love life are left to grapple with how best to deal with navigating the realities of this world. And earthly concerns have been rapidly reordered around the planet.
That is why there is a far deeper meaning buried in the image of ageing American minesweepers being led out of the Persian Gulf by a ship bearing the name of our capital. It speaks to something difficult to capture in words other than epoch defining.
This was a funeral procession for a world order Australia’s leaders assumed would endure. It is a photograph taken at the hinge of history, capturing not just the retirement of a class of ships but the crumbling of an empire of ideas. The old order has been discarded, largely through a wilful act of vandalism by the President of the nation that built and defended it.
Unfortunately, Australia built its modern economy on that order. That bet is now a busted flush. The only certainty from here is that the times will suit us less well. So, we need to deal with the world as it is, not as we hope it might be.
In the shadow of the US security guarantee, we built an island nation that could outsource most of the goods it needs to survive. We grew things, dug things up and sold them for export cash that crashed on to our shores in ever larger waves as commodity prices rose with the spectacular rise of China.
We slowly unlearned how to make things as manufacturing was shipped offshore. In its place we built supply chains that circled the globe and delivered cheap imports. We grew rich and became complacent as inflation fell and the job losses that come with recessions passed out of memory.

What an unhealthy seven minutes of swill, all the more ironic as its coming from a newspaper owned by Americans ...

How did that happen, how did we ship our news offshore? Cargo ships at the Port of Melbourne. Australia built an island nation on global supply chains and outsourced goods, a bet now a

As with all things Ughmann, it wouldn't be a weekend offering without a goodly, bigly dose of climate science denialism, coal worship and renewables bashing ...

It was in that era that one of the most liquid fuel-dependent countries on Earth mostly stopped producing oil, shut down domestic refining and became addicted to imports. We dismantled our buffers and discarded resilience as inefficiency.
We barely contemplated the idea that the world beyond our shores might not always be open, stable and benign. We organised our economy around a just-in-time delivery in a world where, one day, times were bound to turn. Which is why, when the system failed, the shock was immediate and elemental.
We are now scrounging around the world for shipments of fuel at any price. What matters now is how we respond. We need a short, medium and long-term plan for securing our energy independence. It will not be cheap or easy but the cost of not doing it could not be written more starkly and there are opportunities for a country with Australia’s deep energy endowment.
In tailoring our response, we should watch what the world is doing as it confronts the same crisis.
With a fifth of the world’s oil and gas disrupted by war, a vast hydrocarbon hole has opened in the global economy. Countries are scrambling to fill it. Governments are turning to what they can control. Thermal coal prices have climbed from around $US110 a tonne earlier this year to about $US130 to $US140, as gas disruptions in Asia force utilities to switch fuel.
Coal-fired plants that were meant to close are being kept open. Others are being run harder. Japan is increasing coal-fired generation to conserve gas. South Korea has lifted caps on coal output. India has ordered its coal fleet to run flat out. The Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Thailand are doing the same. Italy has postponed the closure of its coal-fired plants for more than a decade. Germany, once the wind and solar standard bearer and now twice mugged by the real world, is beating a strategic retreat. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has warned that if this crisis endures, Berlin may have to keep coal-fired power plants running longer than planned.
“We have to supply this country with electricity,” Merz said. “I am not prepared to jeopardise the core of our industry just because we have decided on phase-out plans that have become unrealistic.”

This is what happens in the hive mind, the incessant repetition, the inanely similar squawking, the relentless repetition by rote, until all the reptiles are thinking the same thoughts ... and expect their hive mind readership to join in the inane chorus Noshiro Thermal Power Station, Akita Prefecture. Japan is increasing coal-fired generation to conserve gas and ease an energy crunch, a direct consequence of the Middle East war. Picture: AFP

The pond has already been here before with the dog botherer, and how wearisome it is to be here again ...

At a conference in Texas Berlin’s Energy Minister Katherina Reiche said the EU should loosen its “rigid” adherence to climate neutrality and allow itself to miss its 2050 net-zero goal.
Reiche stressed that economic growth must come before green targets.
“At the end of the day, it is good to have a goal of sustainability – but if sustainability crashes your economy, you have to readjust,” Reiche said. “And that’s what we’re doing right now.”
In Europe, the price of carbon has fallen since the war began. The system designed to penalise emissions is under pressure to release more permits and soften its constraints. The price of emitting is being lowered just as the incentive to emit is rising.
Decisions taken under stress tell you a lot. Energy security is a must-have. Cutting carbon is an adornment.

One last snap featuring coal worship ... Labourers sort coal as India’s power plants run flat out to counter Middle East war-induced energy disruptions. Soaring LPG prices are forcing families back to coal, exacerbating health and air quality concerns. Picture: AFP

And one last gobbet of more of the same ...

The markets are sending the same signal. Oil moves with every presidential utterance, but the more important story lies further down the chain. Diesel, petrol and jet fuel are what move trucks, ships, planes and armies, and they are rising faster than crude. With the interruption to the oil supply and the worldwide scramble for fuels those costs will stay high even if the passage through the Strait of Hormuz is cleared.
In bond markets, the cost of money is climbing. Governments are paying more to borrow as energy, inflation and risk are repriced together. They are also preparing to spend more to cushion the shock, pushing long-term borrowing costs higher still. The cost of keeping the system running is rising at the same time as the system itself becomes more uncertain.
Put these signals together and a pattern emerges. When the system is stressed, it behaves as built and the house hydrocarbons built still runs on coal, oil and gas.
That reality should shape Australia’s response. We should use every resource at our disposal to secure our independence in liquid fuels and all other sources of power. We should be truly energy agnostic. Coal, gas, oil, uranium, wind, solar and batteries all have a role to play and we should aim to become an energy superpower.
The Gulf states understood this decades ago. They did not just extract hydrocarbons. They built the industries that flow from them, from plastics to fertilisers, from petrochemicals to pharmaceuticals. They captured value across the entire chain.
Australia could do the same. We could power energy-intensive industries. We could host the data centres that will drive the next wave of artificial intelligence. We could secure our own future while helping to fill the hydrocarbon deficit now emerging in the global system.
That requires a shift in thinking. It requires us to see energy not as a carbon-emitting liability to be managed but as a strategic asset to be developed. The lesson from this crisis is that security is essential and energy security underpins economic and national security. No fuel, no future.
A ship bearing the name Canberra escorting the last minesweepers out of the Gulf is a snapshot of an era when the world was governed by American power and a network of alliances.
That era has passed. Now we endeavour to chart our own future or live in a world where hostile states determine it for us. We are not powerless unless we choose to ignore the power beneath our feet.

And here we are, and what can be done to Gaza can be done to the world ...

And now back to the matter of Ben Roberts-Smith.

Any number of reptiles splashed in this water, but the pond had to send a couple to the intermittent archive, so many there were ... (both intermittent archive links)

The BRS case has been troubling from the start
Poor bugger, Ben Roberts-Smith. The decorated soldier stands no chance.
By Noel Pearson

Anzac’s tragic irony: Diggers face prosecution as their enemies walk free
As Anzac Day approaches, a profound paradox haunts Australia’s war heroes: justice pursued for some, while others walk free.
By Joel Fitzgibbon

A reminder: on the balance of probabilities, Ben Roberts-Smith was found guilty of war crimes, so Noel and Joel are going out of their way to defend the right to commit war crimes ...

It's easy to see why the pond decided to cut Noel and Joel short.

The pond has never been big on war crimes or war criminals, or their talk ...

Reluctantly the pond must concede that the hive mind is not entirely monolithic.

This came via the venerable Beade in the Weekly Beast last Friday: Andrew Bolt swims against News Corp tide on Ben Roberts-Smith prosecution:

Occasionally the Murdoch commentator Andrew Bolt defies the party line. In 2021 he said News Corp Australia’s editorial campaign for net zero emissions by 2050 was “rubbish” and “global warming propaganda”.
This week Bolt stuck his neck out in support of the war crimes prosecution of Ben Roberts-Smith, in a marked departure from News Corp’s approach since 2018, when the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald published a series of stories alleging the Victoria Cross recipient had committed murder and other war crimes.
“I have a simple question for the people angrily defending Ben Roberts-Smith, claiming a war hero is being persecuted by woke civilians judging soldiers in battle from the comfort of their sofas,” Bolt wrote in his Herald Sun column. “Do you think Australian soldiers should be allowed to shoot unarmed prisoners?”
Reporters Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters have had to contend with multiple attacks on their journalism in News Corp pages.
In 2018 Roberts-Smith hired a PR firm and the investigative reporter Ross Coulthart as a consultant, and the Weekend Australian gave him a favourable sit-down interview, accompanied by photos of Roberts-Smith with his then wife Emma.
The former soldier claimed in a front-page story run by the national broadsheet that the stories were “demonstrably false’’.
“Nine has accused me of murder,” he said. “Frankly, it is time for their journalists to put up their evidence or admit they have none.”
As recently as May last year McKenzie was subjected to accusations on Sky News Australia that he had been “caught on secret tapes” acting unethically. Roberts-Smith’s application to reopen the appeal over the recording was rejected.
In his 2023 book Flawed Hero: Truth, Lies and War Crimes, Masters wrote: “I do not buy The Australian. It makes me sick.”

The lizard Oz makes the pond sick, but the pond doesn't buy it. Instead the pond confesses to a morbid fascination, a deep masochism, a wilful sickness.

After Joel's and Noel's attempts at FUD then comes a remarkable challenge. Could Our Henry sound more depraved than the Bolter?

Oh there's much more humbug on offer, much more of a word salad of pompous ancient references, but line him up and you could find him in the Nuremberg trials on the wrong side.

The pond discovered this because the reptiles offered a weekend special bonus Our Henry, with the hole in bucket repair man all in on war crimes and war criminals ... understandable enough when you remember that war criminal Benji is one of his heroes:

The header: Both great and terrible things happen in combat — that’s the hard truth; The laws we expect our soldiers to obey are increasingly at odds with the grim realities of modern armed conflict.

The reptiles left out any credit for that triptych and once again they muffed the chance to feature a different view, though they had these snaps in their archive ...

By golly, there are war crimes and then there are dress code violations...

On with Our Henry, and this day is rolled gold Henry, a reversion to the good old days. (Rolled gold might just be a thin coating, but who thought Our Henry was deep?)

Yes, it's peak Henry, it's fully certified Thucydides ...

War, said Thucydides, is the cruellest teacher – and what it teaches is cruelty. A former Athenian general, Thucydides was a hard man, neck-deep in the human condition as it is, rather than as it could be.
To know life, he wrote, is to know that war is not just ineradicable but at times necessary – for other than the credible threat of violence, little can deter the bad from crushing the good.
And victory, he cautioned, goes only to those who are immune to “expensive hope” – mankind’s habit of “carelessly longing for what it desires, using sovereign reason to thrust aside what it does not fancy”. Prudent without being timorous, they are the few who combine an acute awareness of danger with the capacity for resolute action, instinctively performing deeds of valour when others would be frozen by doubt.
Thucydides’ reflections – shaped by both a clear-eyed sympathy for war’s victims and a genuine admiration for those who put their lives at risk on their fellow citizens’ behalf – are worth recalling as Australians consider the charges against Ben Roberts-Smith. They bring into view dilemmas as old as organised violence itself.
Some points are clear. To kill prisoners in cold blood is completely indefensible: the refusal to do so is one of the marks by which civilisation distinguishes itself from barbarism. But clarity at that margin does not resolve the harder question: how norms are to be sustained when confronting adversaries who reject them altogether.
The rules of war and a collapse into savagery
The idea that those adversaries should benefit from the protections the norms afford is a very recent one. The Greeks, for example, developed elaborate rules of war that were intended to ensure the clash of arms remained governed by reason rather than naked fury. Yet they never supposed that the restraints on the conduct of battle bound all alike.
It is therefore unsurprising that when Plato suggested, in The Laws, that Athens should apply the same constraints to wars with barbarians that applied to those with Greeks, his proposal was ridiculed as utterly naive.

There's an incredible amount of humbug at play here. After all US submariners cheerfully left Iranian sailors to die, with the full throated support of war criminal Pete Kegsbreath, and no reptile has said boo to that barbaric goose.

And by reverting to ancient times, Our Henry manages to skirt around the Nuremberg trials and the Geneva Conventions that arose from the second world war, and which were designed to stop the appalling behaviour of war criminals committing war crimes.

But apologists will always find a way to skirt the rules and find their heroes ...

Then-SAS Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith on a tour of duty in Afghanistan with the Australian Special Operations Task Group in 2010. Roberts-Smith was awarded a Victoria Cross for saving the lives of wounded comrades in battle.

The pond is quite ready to believe that Roberts-Smith will get off, on the basis of the many attempts to influence the court in his behaviour even before the trial begins, and on the basis of the many filthy rich and influential people backing his cause. and not least because the likes of Our Henry are keen to discover a keen philosophical basis for war criminality ... but no matter what, on the balance of probabilities, a court has already found him guilty of war crimes ...

Nor, centuries later, did the rules of chivalry extend to those who had not sworn to uphold them. In practice, their protections were confined to the knightly class – those able, if wronged, to invoke enforcement by a Christian prince. And there is little evidence that chivalry’s rules were observed in the Crusades – no more by the Crusaders than by their Muslim adversaries.
The collapse, in the late 16th century, of the norms of chivalry – and the descent of warfare into savagery during the Wars of Religion – prompted a reformulation of the laws of war by Enlightenment jurists. Like their predecessors, however, they did not contend that the restraints they formulated could or should bear on conflicts with adversaries who rejected them altogether.
Thus, German philosopher Christian Wolff, who introduced the distinction between combatants and non-combatants in his 1749 treatise on the Law of Nations, emphasised that the distinction could be sustained only if the combatants on each side clearly demarcated themselves from their civilian counterparts; adversaries who didn’t were no better than pirates and deserved to be erased from the face of the Earth.
Retired Special Forces Major Heston Russell discusses the recent arrest of Ben Roberts-Smith and calls out the media for the “dramatic" way in which he was detained.
So too Swiss jurist Emer de Vattel, whose Law of Nations (1758) is often treated as a foundation of modern international law. Of those guilty of “enormous breaches of the law of nations” – such as hiding behind civilians – he wrote: “Enemies of the human race, who injure all nations by trampling underfoot the foundations of humanity’s common safety, they must be refused any quarter.”
The St Petersburg Declaration
When international lawyers began to translate the evolving norms into binding instruments – starting with the St Petersburg Declaration of 1868 – it was widely assumed, if not always stated, that they applied only within the “family of nations”: the states whose “government is sufficiently stable to undertake binding commitments under international law”, including as to the conduct of war.
But the catastrophes of the two world wars brought an immense expansion and a universalisation of the restraints the laws of war imposed. Driven in part by humanitarian impulse, in part by revulsion at the scale of the slaughter, and in part by the utopian belief that rationally constructed rules – enforced through international institutions – could tame the furies of war, increasingly stringent obligations were imposed on the deployment of armed force.

It goes without saying that Our Henry is inclined to the furies of war, and almost goes full Taliban ... Taliban fighters stand guard near the Torkham border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Nangarhar province.

But then Our Henry is devoted to Benji, as big a war criminal as can be found, up there with the mad Mullahs, so the hole in bucket man knows he must make sure to dehumanise any victims of unlawful violence ...

And it was, for the first time, unambiguously asserted that the obligations were binding in all conflicts, even against adversaries who blatantly ignored them.
Reality, however, has borne no relationship to the soaring aspirations that inspired those changes. States that take the rules seriously have rarely, if ever, fought one another. Instead, their soldiers have confronted enemies prepared to use any means available in their quest for victory – including by exploiting the protections the laws of war afford. In the fog of battle, where decisions are made in an instant and often at the edge of survival, the apparent clarity of intricate rules has repeatedly proven to be illusory.
Assuming the worst of our soldiers
To make things worse, terrorists and their supporters have increasingly levelled claims of violations without any credible evidence, propagating them so as to demonise their opponents, drive them into undue caution and secure a decisive operational advantage – the reckless allegations by Hamas’s supporters against Israel being merely the latest case in point.

Just to add to the emotional balance, the reptiles threw in a snap designed to stir the hive mind ... Palestinian militants drive back to the Gaza Strip with the body of Shani Louk, a German-Israeli dual citizen, after kidnapping her from Israel’s Nova music festival on October 7, 2023.

And so to a final exhortation to allow the right to commit war crimes to continue unhindered, at least if you're supposed to be a goodie:

The result has been to politicise the processes by which those claims are debated, undermining objectivity in their assessment and inducing a rush to judgment – not least about Roberts-Smith.
On one side, “progressives”, deeply hostile to the culture and ethos of the military – especially its elite units – are quick to assume the worst of our soldiers. On the other, conservatives, appalled by what they see as a collapse of loyalty and the refusal to acknowledge the burdens borne by those who fight on Australia’s behalf, are equally quick to insist that whatever our troops have done must be defended.
That polarisation has been exacerbated by the shabby treatment of the units concerned – including investigatory delays that are, in themselves, absolutely inexcusable – deepening the anger conservatives feel at the sanctimony of their opponents.
Whatever the causes of those delays, it is now reasonable to wonder whether Roberts-Smith can, after so many years and with Afghanistan firmly in the Taliban’s grip, receive a fair trial. Nonetheless, a trial there will be; and it will need to be judged on its merits, as will Roberts-Smith, taking account of the circumstances in which the alleged events occurred and the overwhelming pressures those circumstances create.
The Greeks placed their rules of war under the patronage of Athena, the goddess not of fury but of discipline. They knew, however, that the god Ares, a “bloodthirsty marauder” (as Homer called him) who haunted the field of battle, could seize the mind of even the finest warriors – as he did in propelling Achilles’ murderous instincts, Ajax’s rage and the savage outbursts of Ulysses.
That both great things and terrible things are done in combat is a fact as old as mankind. Even so, the focus there will quite properly be on this trial should not blind us to the larger truth: that the laws we expect our soldiers to obey are increasingly at odds with the grim realities of armed conflict.
Thucydides described the suffering war inflicts as “meizo e kata dacrya”: too great to be measured by tears. And as its horrors stripped away the veneer of civilised morality, even the gods were driven to weep. While retaining and preserving our values, we should ensure we do not impose more suffering on our fighting men and women than realism, reason and prudence demand.

And there you have it.

A double Thucydides bunger, with Our Henry fully down with the grim realities of armed conflict.

Murder an unarmed civilian, take off his prosthetic leg and drink from it, perhaps toasting Our Henry for his splendid philosophical insights?

Sure thing ... it's the dinkum Our Henry way ...

Altar wine lifts fragile Xian spirits, and every Xian loves a good teleportation story ... it also shows the spirits at work ...

Finally the pond has problems with Wolff, but not as many as Melania has ...

In which the bromancer continues his decline, while the dog botherer and Lloydie of the Amazon do bog standard News Corp denialism ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 21:44:00 +0000

The big question to be sorted this morning: given the infallibly stupid suggestion by the onion muncher that we join mad King Donald in his crusade (a subsidiary to sociopathic Benji's quest for a greater Israel), how does the bromancer feel about the venture? And what's he thinking about his best bro?

The headline didn't make the pond feel that comfortable about the direction the bromancer might be heading ...

The header: Donald Trump’s wild talk is destroying vital US alliances; America has been at the heart of Australia’s security and national identity for more than 100 years. Now all that is under threat.

The caption for a snap which didn't feature either bunny or an autopen: President Donald Trump speaks during the White House Easter Egg Roll in Washington. Picture: AP

A subsidiary question might concern the authoritarian dictator Viktor Orbán - what does the bromancer think about his best bro's lickspittle fawning devotion to the Putin puppet?

Will the bromancer take a stand if Orbán, whatever the result, however much election stacking has gone down, refuses to walk off into the night? Will he celebrate with the onion muncher, and couch-molester JD if Orbán stays the course?

But the pond isn't greedy.

An answer to the big question will suffice ...and it took five minutes for the bromancer of yabbering around the point for the pond to realise that maybe the bromancer wasn't entirely up for a middle east adventure with mad King Donald...

Australia’s security alliance with the US is not only the beating heart of our national security. It’s fundamental to our national identity, in a way that’s little understood today.
The influence of the US on Australia over the past century is far greater than Britain’s, culturally, militarily, inspirationally, in every way.
In the age of Donald Trump that whole complex web of institutional, cultural, military and social dynamics is suddenly under threat. In recent months, Trump’s wild, often bizarre and ridiculous statements have done more to damage the structure of US alliances than any modern president.
Anthony Albanese has responded essentially by making a token military deployment, otherwise hoping not to be noticed. It’s not the worst possible policy option but it’s not much.
In responding to the Trump effect, Australia shouldn’t panic. But autopilot isn’t good enough either.
Nobody really knows how the Iran ceasefire will work out. If Trump achieves free passage in the Strait of Hormuz, gets his hands on Iran’s 60 per cent enriched uranium or the regime collapses, history may forgive bizarre presidential statements. But if the Iranian regime survives, keeps its enriched uranium and control of the strait – the situation today – that’s a bad defeat, made much worse by Trump’s personal behaviour.

The pond should interrupt at this point to note that the reptiles didn't break up the bromancer's words with illustrations or AV distractions.

And this is about as close to answering the big question that the bromancer gets.

Apparently he couldn't bring himself to completely break in public with the onion muncher, his very best bro - but his devotion to the cause of mad King Donald is clearly waning ...

It’s no longer any good concentrating on Trump’s actions rather than his words. His words now have strategic effects that damage US alliances, US capabilities and Australian security. How we respond to this new and ugly reality is challenging.
Trump has said repeatedly he may leave NATO, thereby already damaging US alliance credibility. He has accused NATO allies of doing nothing to help the US and said he might punish selected NATO countries. Trump is simply lying about all this. Britain, Portugal, Germany and Italy have allowed substantial US access to bases on their soil, France more restricted access, while Spain has been worst. Greece provided refuelling and resupply for US aircraft carriers involved in the Iran war. Some European countries, France and Britain among them, have sent military forces to the Middle East to help secure Gulf Arab nations that are US allies.
Australia, similarly, sent an AWAC Wedgetail intelligence and control aircraft to the United Arab Emirates. The intelligence it gathers is shared with the US.
Trump abuses allies, including Australia, for not sending ships to the Strait of Hormuz, but the US itself escorts no ships in the strait and has advanced no specific military plan regarding it.
Trump is scapegoating allies for his own chaotic mismanagement of the politics and diplomacy of the war. It’s crude and irresponsible.
Not only that, Trump has also said he would bomb Iranian desalination plants and destroy every single electricity generating plant in Iran, as well as “ending” the Iranian civilisation, presumably through strategic bombing. Those would all be explicit war crimes. It’s impossible for any European or Australian leader to support those missions, even if Trump finally never went through with them.
He has announced countless deadlines, then ignored them. Much that he says never happens. But a more rational president would have enjoyed much more allied support. The American military furnished Trump a much more limited list of potential energy targets in Iran, all of which had explicit military roles. They reject Trump’s fantasies too.
Trump previously threatened to invade Greenland, the sovereign territory of a NATO ally. He also makes offensive remarks about the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron. There’s no universe in which any of this is funny, clever or beneficial to anybody.
Should Australia reconsider commitment to the US alliance? The answer’s no, because the alliance serves our interests and historically served our values.
Trump has no mandate to wreck the institutions he’s so careless of. It’s popular in the US to want allies to do more, it’s not popular to destroy US alliances. Six European nations already spend a higher percentage of their GNP on defence than the US does and all are doing more. We too should do much more in our own interests.

It's hardly a ringing endorsement of the onion muncher's proposal we join mad King Donald's crusade, and it then became apparent that the bromancer was in a state of mourning.

All he could do was take a walk down memory lane, celebrating the good days.

It got so teary and sentimental, so Banjo, that the pond almost felt the need to send a box of tissues to Surrey Hills by courier ...

No nation, not even Canada, has had the US so much at the heart of its national life as Australia has. From the very first, America inhabited our imagination and fired our dreams. In 1901 the states federated to become a nation for national security, so Australia could secure possession of this continent. Our Constitution was a mix of British and US influences. Federalism and the Senate followed US models.
Quickly, Australian leaders worked to draw the US into our security. Alfred Deakin, our most brilliant and complex prime minister, defied British instruction, and Winston Churchill’s vigorous opposition, to invite US president Teddy Roosevelt to send the Great White Fleet to Australia in 1908. Deakin already worried about Japanese military power. The fleet got a fantastic, rapturous public welcome that led Roosevelt, who incidentally loved Banjo Paterson’s ballads, to declare: “I have a hearty … admiration for Australia and I believe America should be ready to stand back of Australia in any serious emergency.”
When American troops first entered World War I, they did so under the command of John Monash, our greatest general. In the darkest days of World War II, prime minister John Curtin famously declared: “Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links of kinship with the United Kingdom.”
After World War II, Labor in government tried unsuccessfully to get a security treaty with the US. In June 1950, Percy Spender, foreign minister in Robert Menzies’ government, got word that Britain was planning to send ground troops to help the US in the Korean war. Spender, like Deakin, had visited the US before he ever went to Britain and was fired with American ambition. Menzies was on a ship travelling from Britain to the US. Spender was so conscious of the strategic importance of the relationship with Washington that, in Menzies’ absence, he forced acting prime minister Arthur Fadden to declare, before Britain, that Australia would send troops to Korea.
This brought Australia credit for being the first to come to the side of the US in battle. This was crucial in 1951 when Spender came to sell, almost single-handedly, what became the ANZUS Treaty to US president Harry Truman, who had fought beside Australians in the first world war.
Australia later became a key member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance with the US, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Under John Howard and George W. Bush the alliance achieved the greatest intimacy it has ever enjoyed, then or since. Canberra secured unparalleled access to US intelligence and decision-making.
Now there are Australian service personnel throughout the US system and Americans in our system, which makes the story that Australian servicemen on a US submarine retired to their bunks when that sub sank an Iranian ship near Sri Lanka utterly bizarre. Cross-crewing is about increasing capability. That’s not possible if you’re scared to fight.

Or maybe they avoided participating in a war crime?

Never mind, there's still a lingering war monger in the bromancer.

That must have perked up the onion muncher, though the bromancer was keen to deny he was a servile lickspittle like his best buddy bro...

The US is by far the greatest cultural influence on Australia, much more so than Britain. Conversely, our influence with the US is part of our influence with other nations. None of this makes Australia servile. Canberra gets immense benefits from the alliance but disagrees with Washington when necessary.
The US is a modern universal. Many nations define themselves in part by their relationship with the US. But even the most pro-alliance politicians must deal with Trumpian reality and thus sometimes publicly disagree with Trump. But the Trump presidency will pass. We need to influence it where we can, and ensure alliance structures and institutions survive intact, at a time when Trump’s negative genius has made it intensely unfashionable to defend.
This requires from our political class moral leadership, greater national self-reliance, nuance, a grasp of history, dynamism, agency, integrated strategy, a focus on our core national interests. Any takers?
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

Here you go, here's a taker, just the man, thick as a brick and ready to serve ...(warning, News Corp link)

What a chance to join the victory parade ...

And so to the dog botherer, and the pond had serious qualms of conscience.

How could the pond serve up yet again a load of dog botherer climate science denying, renewables bashing bollocks?

Sadly the reptiles keep doing it, and so must the pond.

The header: How the green energy dream became a civilisational crisis; As we ignore the engineering of coal and nuclear, our economy is paying the ultimate price for political virtue signaling. (sic)

Say what? No credit for the singular collage which manages to feature Satan's little helper, wretched solar panels and terrifying whale-killing windmills? Apparently so ... perhaps AI is a modest little helper and needs to credit for destroying the last remaining shreds of what was once a proud graphics department.

As for the dog botherer, it was a tedious five minute outing, but as usual the pond could seize the chance and use the outing as an excuse to note some alternative worlds ...

Red List alarm: Emperor penguins, Antarctic fur seals 'Endangered'

The emperor penguin and Antarctic fur seal have both been uplisted to Endangered on the IUCN Red List, as scientists warn that melting sea-ice and warming oceans are reshaping life at the bottom of the world.
Antarctica has long been a place apart – a place where life endures against extraordinary odds. But the latest update to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species signals that even the continent’s most iconic inhabitants are losing their battle with a rapidly changing climate.
The emperor penguin, long considered a symbol of Antarctic resilience, has been uplisted from Near Threatened to Endangered. Satellite data reveals that the species lost around 10% of its population between 2009 and 2018 alone – more than 20,000 adult birds. The primary culprit is the early break-up of fast ice, the coastal and grounded sea-ice upon which emperor penguins depend for raising chicks and moulting.

Fiddle-faddle, what does the dog botherer care about that sort of hysteria?

We are a country convulsed by fuel anxiety; distressed about housing affordability; hampered by electricity prices, the demise of manufacturing and poor productivity; burdened by debt and deficit; and worried about our capacity to improve any of this while dealing with record immigration. We are a strong and significant nation made vulnerable.
Rich in energy resources, we are enduring crises in supply and affordability for electricity and liquid fuels. A world-leading exporter of coal, gas and uranium, we are trying to wean ourselves off the hydrocarbons and refuse to use nuclear power.
It is time to observe what we have done and where we are heading. It is time to make the calculations about economics, engineering, environment and politics.
Decades of warnings about national energy self-harm have been ignored. South Australia provided the test case, shutting down coal-fired generation and its only coalmine so that it became the canary without a coalmine.
Governments ignored predictions this would make it dangerously dependent on electricity brought overland from Victoria and a decade ago, when a storm took down some transmission lines and wind farms dropped offline, the interconnector failed and the state went dark for the first time. In response, the government imported $600m worth of diesel generators for emergency back-up.
The state has the nation’s highest penetration of renewable energy, most expensive electricity and least reliable supplies. But politicians around the country – state, federal, Labor, Liberal, Green and teal – are in denial about causal links.

As always, the reptiles made sure there was a snap of Satan's little solar panel helper, and Satan himself, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen during a visit to the Ampol Lytton refinery in Brisbane. Picture: NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

This is the sort of rant where the dog botherer rails at the 'leets, apparently unaware of his own position as a member of the News Corp/Sky Noise down under 'leet squad (still no rebrand?):

Other states pursue the same strategy and even the pro-renewables Australian Energy Market Operator has intervened to keep significant coal generators going to guarantee supplies. Taxpayers subsidises renewable energy to force coal generation out, then subsidise coal generation to insure against unreliable renewables, and subsidies also go to consumers and industries so they can survive record power costs.
This is all as absurd and macabre as a David Lynch film. All our energy problems are predictable and self-generated (pun intended), yet we have refused to learn any lessons.
We are led, like lemmings, by politicians and bureaucrats convinced they are leaping into a green energy future. They tell us Australia will be a “renewable energy superpower”, which sounds about as likely as a balsa wood aircraft carrier; they even talk about “reliable renewables”, a phrase that renders satire redundant.
Our governing elites are loath to confess the total cost of their unnecessary renewable energy experiment, but with the help of artificial intelligence we can ascertain that in the past 25 years the federal government has spent at least $150bn, with the states adding about half that again. On top of that there is more than $100bn and growing of private investment that will all be recouped with margins from consumers.
The opportunity cost of all this is difficult to quantify. It has added to debt, inflation and taxation pressures; it has taken people, investment and resources from more productive pursuits; it has baked in added cost pressures for business and industry; it has alienated land; and it has not produced any material benefit for the nation or the environment.

Nothing new here and for that the pond apologises, and the reptiles must also have felt the emptiness because they offered an audio distraction...

Luckily the pond just has to note the distraction - screen caps don't play - and press on ...

To justify this economic madness, politicians and media deliberately conflate normal weather extremes with “dangerous climate change” to fuel an alarmist narrative. Children are indoctrinated with the same catastrophism as floods, fires, droughts and heatwaves are described as “unprecedented” when a simple check of the record exposes the ruse.
I have detailed examples in these pages relating to floods, fires and maximum temperatures. The facts are not rebutted, just ignored in favour of the hysterical narrative.
Our temporary predicament over liquid fuels must be a turning point in our debate. In their green frenzy governments have forgotten the basics and left us exposed, and the fragility of our petrol and diesel dependence will be sorely exposed if we ever see conflict in the East Asia region.

He's detailed the facts? He's done a Sgt Joe Friday?

Could the pond help a little? Per the Graudian:

US had hottest March on record as nation faced ‘unprecedented’ heat
The continental US registered its most abnormally hot month in 132 years of records, according to Noaa data

March’s persistent unseasonable heat was so intense that the continental United States registered its most abnormally hot month in 132 years of records, according to federal weather data. And the next year or so looks to turn the dial up on global warmth even more, as some forecasts predict a brewing El Niño will reach super strength.
Not only was it the hottest March on record for the US but the amount it was above normal beat any other month in history for the lower 48 states. March’s average temperature of 50.85F(10.47C) was 9.35F (5.19C) above the 20th-century normal for March.
That easily passed the old record of 8.9F set in March 2012 as the most abnormally hot month on record – regardless of the month of the year – according to records released on Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa).
Nationals Leader Matt Canavan claims the Labor government is “addicted to the status quo” with their clean energy projects. “We’re losing our country, losing it down the drain,” Mr Canavan told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “They’re not willing to make any changes; they think we should do more of the same, which has got us in this mess.”

And so on, and at this point the reptiles recycled snaps of their bog standard villains ...

Teal MP Allegra Spender Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman; Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Picture: NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

The dog botherer remained all in on fossilised fools...

We are reminded of the centrality of liquid fossil fuels in our lives. Remedies bandied about by the likes of teal MP Allegra Spender and Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen are alarming in their green inanity.
If we all drove electric cars, they suggest, none of this would be a problem. Except we would also need to electrify delivery trucks, long-distance transport, combine harvesters, aviation, tractors, our defence forces, pumps, excavators, cranes and you name it, even SA’s back-up generators.
Like all modern economies, we run on electricity and transport. Two-thirds or more of both come from fossil fuels.
Speaking to true believers at The Guardian last week Bowen wanted everyone to think he was as clever as his own self-assessment. “You know, the sun has to travel 150 million kilometres to get to the Earth but it does not have to travel the 150km that are the Straits of Hormuz,” he said, proving the Seinfeld dictum that smugness is not a good quality.

At this point the reptiles decided to double down, on the basis that you can never have enough dog bothering in a day, so why not an AV featuring yet more dog botherer ...

Sky News host Chris Kenny says the ceasefire between the US and Iran “remains in place”. Mr Kenny said, despite the ceasefire, ships in the Strait of Hormuz are “at a standstill”. “After conflicting reports about the passage reopening and then closing again.”

The dog botherer kept making wiled-eyed claims ... with a tangy hint of the reptiles' war with China by Xmas...

“So it is ours, and the wind can’t be sanctioned, and Vladimir Putin cannot, you know, prohibit the export of renewable energy from his country, because it’s directly ours,” explained Bowen, claiming that renewables deliver “secure” energy. The entire problem with renewable energy (apart from demanding vast expanses of land to host kit and connection) is the lack of security – it is intermittent, unreliable and prohibitively difficult and expensive to store in necessary quantities.
Even Bowen’s point about sovereign independence is ridiculous given we purchase most of our solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, EVs and appliances from China. The communist giant manufactures much of this with our natural resources and could cut us off on a whim.
We have exported our jobs, emissions and self-reliance in pursuit of foolish emissions reduction goals that much larger countries, such as China, are not meeting, which means global emissions are rising and our efforts are redundant. We lose, there is no environmental benefit and China flourishes. Never before has a sovereign nation inflicted so much pain on itself to provide no net benefit, except to rival nations. Green genius.
Climate alarmists have talked up tipping points for decades, points at which the destruction of life as we know it would be unstoppable.

Just to reassure the hive mind, the reptiles introduced snaps of demons who always get it wrong, unlike the infallible dog botherer ... Tipping points predicted by luminaries like King Charles and Greta Thunberg have come and gone. Picture: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images; Greta Thunberg. Picture: Martin Sylvest / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP

Hey ho, on we go ...

Surely our current malaise should be a reverse tipping point. It must be time to conclude that the single worst policy decision in our nation’s history and the most detrimental current setting is the commitment to net zero.
There is no benefit, only huge costs. There is generational pain but no gain.
Our political debate, education system, corporate world and media zeitgeist are caught up in a feedback loop of climate catastrophism, virtue signalling and self-flagellation that has undermined the fundamentals of our economic and intellectual success. This is far broader and deeper than an energy crisis, this is a civilisational crisis – which is unsurprising, I guess, when you consider that it is the provision of reliable and affordable energy that has triggered the prosperity and innovation at the heart of Western civilisation.
Yet we get this from Bowen: “I think potentially that this is an important moment to really double down on the argument that renewable energy is lower emissions, cheap and sovereign and secure.” This is national vandalism.

Relax, there's a new hero for our troubled times, and it's the "coal that batters" man, and he's in congress with the dog botherer on Sky Noise down under (wot, still no rebrand?) ...

Nationals Leader Matt Canavan claims the Labor government is “addicted to the status quo” with their clean energy projects. “We’re losing our country, losing it down the drain,” Mr Canavan told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “They’re not willing to make any changes; they think we should do more of the same, which has got us in this mess.”

It was all the way with the Canavan caravan ...

Nationals leader Matt Canavan addressed reality at the National Press Club on Wednesday: “To recapture our sovereign capability, we’ve got to end this net-zero madness,” he said. “We’ve got to invest again in all types of energy, including coal, oil, gas and nuclear.” That this is viewed as a politically challenging proposition shows how far we have strayed.
If there is one overriding reason our economy, budgets, prosperity, productivity, education, innovation and public debate are in a mess, it is our irrational subservience to pointless UN net-zero goals. It is also a major reason that about half of all Coalition voters have switched to One Nation.
The Liberals need to wake up to this before their polling hits net zero.

The pond at this point would like to note the dog botherer's uncanny resemblance to the worst of MAGA, with this in the Graudian ...

Trump’s EPA chief Zeldin gives keynote speech at climate-denying group’s event
Lee Zeldin opens conference for Heartland Institute, which once compared climate advocates to the Unabomber

“No longer are we going to rely on bad, flawed assumptions instead of accurate, present-day facts, without apology or regret,” Zeldin said at the Heartland Institute’s conference on climate change in Washington DC, referring to well-established climate science.
Zeldin has been widely criticized by climate experts. Last month, more than 160 environmental and public health organizations called for him to resign or be fired, saying no EPA administrator in history “has so brazenly betrayed the agency’s core mission”.
In his speech, Zeldin poked fun at the media for calling him “controversial” for not “following blind obedience to whatever the dire, doom and gloom position of the day is from John Kerry or Al Gore or AOC” – referring to the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“It’s controversial that we won’t sign up for the script that the world is imminently about to end,” he said.
He derided previous administrations’ heeding of climate scientists’ warnings about the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, and for ignoring “what’s good and necessary about carbon dioxide for the life of the planet”.
“What happened for years and decades in this country is that the elite, the ruling class, the people who would run the agencies, the people who have decided that they are in charge of the science, the politicians, the biggest grifters: there would be a cabal that would decide exactly which model is the chosen model, which methodology is the higher methodology,” he said. “And if all of you in this room, if any of you in this room dare to challenge any of that, well shame on you.”

This is where News Corp has helped take the world, to the outer edge of madness and self-inflicted wounds, with one of their favourite denialists featured ...

Another report author, Judith Curry – a climatologist who rails against climate “alarmism” – criticized the “monolithic consensus” on climate science that is “presented to the world”. Though the US government disbanded the group which produced the controversial report on the endangerment finding, Curry said the authors were currently reviewing comments on the report and preparing a new version to release this year.
Earlier on Wednesday morning, the Heartland Institute’s president, James Taylor, kicked off the conference with a rousing speech in which he invoked the debunked climate myth that increased carbon emissions are good for plants: “Restoring CO2 and restoring warmth to our world is … a restoration to more ideal conditions,” he said.
“The truth is clear: there is no climate crisis,” said Taylor. “The science is very clear.”

Many truths seem clearer by the day ...

At this point the pond looked around at the alternatives for a bonus but came up short.

Dame Slap is now faraway on her own planet above the magic faraway tree ...

Lived experience’ – the new CV must-have
Merit is being sidelined. In a new era of identity-driven hiring, a personal diagnosis is becoming more valuable than a professional degree.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

With the intermittent archive briefly working, the pond sent Dame Slap there.

This was such a weird retreat away from her climate-science denialist, MAGA cap donning days that for a minute the pond thought it might have some weird anthropological appeal.

But it was simply too arcane, too fluff-gathering and navel-gazing, too deeply Freudian.

The best the pond could do was a teaser trailer for her offering.

Tonly thing of interest there the way that these days the reptiles often don't credit anyone for the wretched collages at the start of their pieces, perhaps because 'no credit' allows members of the graphics department to walk freely in public:

Dame Slap is now about as far out there as Melania has been these past few days ...

The pond decided it was better to be in for a climate science penny, in for a global warming pound with Lloydie of the Amazon ... and with that immortal Rowe in mind, settled for a good screaming:

What cunning wording, and yet what did "the great climate retreat" mean?

Was the climate in retreat? Or was it simply that News Corp's denialism was ascendant?

The header: NASA cools on Earth’s climate for a new moon shot; The Trump administration is freezing out global warming research and is returning focus to the space race.

The caption for the space ship: Artemis II mission specialist Christina Koch looks back at Earth through the window of the Orion spacecraft on April 2, 2026. Picture: ANSA via AP

Lloydie of the Amazon seemed remarkably pleased at the work of mad King Donald and his minions:

The Trump administration is freezing out global warming research and is returning focus to the space race.
Donald Trump has put NASA back into the space race with the Artemis II flight to the dark side of the moon and back, but NASA scientists focused on planet Earth have found themselves in the climate change deep freeze.
It is all part of a comprehensive shift in priorities for NASA as the US under Trump withdraws from the international co-operations that have spent decades warning of the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the Earth’s climate.
This includes a US exit from the Paris Agreement, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The fruits of Trump’s new priorities are coming into season. Some are sweet, such as the success of Artemis II, while others are delivering a sour punch to scientists around the world.

A sour punch? Oh surely not ... after all, as Uncle Leon has suggested, the 'leets will need to flee a ruined earth for la dolce vita on Mars - the pond understands from the movies that you can terraform a planet in nanoseconds, see Total Recall - and these are just the first baby steps ...

Stunning images captured by NASA’s Artemis II crew on Monday, April 6, show a view of the Earth from the far side of the moon. At 1:57 pm EDT on Monday, the Artemis II crew broke the record set by Apollo 13 in 1970 as their Orion spacecraft reached the far side of the moon, placing them at 252,756 miles from Earth. Credit: NASA via Storyful

It was grand days for News Corp inspired ludditism ...

The Trump administration is dismantling the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, long considered the crown jewel in the US’s Earth science infrastructure but decried by the Trump White House as “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country”. Vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.
With the US turning off the funding tap, the IPCC is in financial crisis. The IPCC secretariat told a meeting of member nations in Thailand in March that in 2024 and 2025 expenditures from the IPCC Trust Fund exceeded contributions.
It said based on the current trajectory, the IPCC’s cash balance will be fully depleted by the end of 2028. And that without a substantial increase in contributions, significant annual deficits will persist and jeopardise the completion of the highly anticipated IPCC update of the state of climate science known as AR7 – Assessment Report Seven.
Turning off the climate funding tap
The most recent document, AR6, was released in 2023 but the IPCC can’t agree on a timeline for when AR7 will be ready for policymakers. Reports typically are released every five to seven years.
A lot of the concerns have to do with funding, made more acute by the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw. According to Politico, the US gave about $US1.8m to the IPCC in 2024, more by far than the other 34 countries and organisations that contributed to the group. Germany, the second largest donor, gave $US383,000.
The Biden administration represented a peak in funding for the IPCC, which is now being forced to ask other donors for more money to replace what has been lost from the US. The secretariat has suggested three options: higher contributions to equal expenditure; contributions at the minimum level to complete AR7; or the status quo, which would result in “severe spending cuts with fully virtual operations and the suspension of multiple activities”.
For advice on what this looks like, climate scientists need go no further than NASA. The impact of NASA’s withdrawal from taking a lead in climate change research and advocacy is on full display. The agency sparked concern in January when it released its benchmark annual report on global temperatures without making any mention of climate change, emissions, fossil fuels or the term global warming.
This compares with earlier reports where NASA explicitly said: “This global warming has been caused by human activities.” Previously, NASA also has linked increased temperatures to extreme weather events such as heatwaves, wildfires, “intense” rainfall and flooding. But not this year.

For some peculiar reason, the reptiles decided to slip in a disaster ... A wildfire in Pumarejo de Tera near Zamora, northern Spain.

Odd, that's the very same snap the Beeb used in noting a link to climate change ...

Never mind, nothing is happening, it's all good, the dog botherer has spoken, and Lloydie of the Amazon is on hand to celebrate News Corp inspired Ludditism ...

The January 2026 release said: “Earth’s global surface temperature in 2025 was slightly warmer than 2023 – but within the margin of error: the two years are effectively tied according to an analysis by NASA scientists.”
The statement in January 2025 quoted former NASA administrator Bill Nelson that 2024 was the hottest year since record-keeping began in 1880.
“Between record-breaking temperatures and wildfires currently threatening our centres and workforce in California, it has never been more important to understand our changing planet,” Nelson said. The NASA statement said scientists had concluded “the warming trend of recent decades is driven by heat-trapping carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases. In 2022 and 2023, Earth saw record increases in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, according to a recent international analysis.”
The retreat from climate
The retreat from climate is causing consternation at NASA. Celebrated climate scientist Kate Marvel told Scientific American on March 25 she had resigned from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences because of the change in priorities for the space agency. According to Marvel, “(GISS) used to have a lease on a building over Tom’s Restaurant at 112th and Broadway in New York City, and that lease was ended. We were kicked out. We were dispersed. We have been kind of couch surfing at various New York City universities and libraries. That was very disruptive. And then, when we apply for grants, we don’t hear about them or we hear, ‘This is a good proposal. Under any other circumstances, we would want to fund it, but we don’t know anything about the money.’
“So it’s just waking up every day not knowing ‘Is this the day that I get fired? Is this the day somebody I work with who I respect gets fired? Could I get this money and plan ahead to do this science or not?’
“I was personally finding that more and more difficult to do.”
Back to space
On the other side, NASA’s astronauts are flying high again. The agency website is again dedicated to space adventure, not wild weather. The Artemis II program has been a global success, putting the US on track to put humans back on the moon in what is being perceived as a race against China.

Back to eternal glory ...

NASA astronaut Christina Koch illuminated by a screen inside the darkened Orion spacecraft on April 3, 2026 as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen (R) peers out of one of Orion's windows. Picture: NASA via AP

All good, in space they can't hear the overheated scream ...

Lloydie of the Amazon seemed pleased...we shouldn't just be nuking Oz, we should be nuking the moon.

What could possibly go wrong?

After the Artemis II astronauts completed their journey around the far side of the moon, Trump told them: “Your mission paves the way for America’s return to the moon. We are going all out, and led by (NASA administrator) Jared Isaacman, we will be on the moon very soon, and we will set up a base on the moon. We’ll plant our flag again. We will push on to Mars.”
The central goal is to land American astronauts on the moon by 2028 and establish a sustainable, long-term presence (base) by 2030.
The administration is pushing for the development and deployment of nuclear reactors on the moon and in orbit. The International Space Station is being phased out in favour of commercial joint ventures.

There came a final celebratory snap ... The Artemis II crewed lunar mission lifts off from Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on April 1, 2026. Picture: AFP

Then Lloydie of the Amazon joined mad King Donald in burying climate science and climate change research, a resounding victory for the dog botherer and all who sail in News Corp's denialist ship ...

Trump told the Artemis II astronauts he had considered closing NASA completely.
“I had a decision to make in my first term, and that decision was what are we going to do with NASA. Are we going to have it be revived, or are we going to close it down?” Trump said.
While NASA may be back in space and heading for a moon landing and possible mission to Mars, the funding cuts have not stopped. Two days after Artemis II’s April 1 blast-off for the moon, Trump delivered his 2027 NASA budget request for a 23 per cent reduction in funding.
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know where, if approved by congress, the bulk of those cuts will land.

Wars of choice, the destruction of the planet, is there no end to the achievements of mad King Donald, Faux Noise and News Corp?

Meanwhile, in an aged care home, serious issues arise ...

Weird days, weird times...

In which Our Henry is legendary, and more than makes up for disappointing outings by Killer and the craven Craven ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:35:00 +0000

Amazing scenes ...

The pond didn't expect to wake up to the lizard Oz breaking the news that the Emperor Penguin and the Antarctic fur seal were in a spot of bother.

Sssh, never disturb the reptiles when they're in their climate denialist slumber.

The reptiles love themselves extinction events and do everything to make them possible. It requires quiet, diligent unostentatious work, and the rewards are in the deeds themselves ...

Nor did the pond expect the reptiles to care about Melania trying to deny any connection to Epstein. (Oh dear, the tabloid Beast video take is here, and it seems the denials are accompanied by the worst poll figures ever).

The reptiles long ago forgot about those files, so who cares if Melania blowing all that smoke hinted at a some hidden fire.

Instead, what with the lizard Oz being the Australian Daily Zionist News, the pond had expected a celebration of the sociopathic current government of Israel, and its current mission to arrive at a greater Israel ...

But when the pond turned eagerly to read Our Henry on a Friday to cop its daily dose of Zionism, the dear lad, the pompous pedant, went one better ...

The header: Why Donald Trump is the bastard son of the Enlightenment; It is an illusion to think that fundamentalists are driven by a rational assessment of interests rather than by their fanaticism.

The caption for the snap of the mad King showing off his tiny hands: President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office. Picture: Alex Brandon / AP Photo

Our Henry this day returned to top form, ably assisted by the lizard Oz graphics department, burrowing through ancient archives to find royalty-free images.

The old humbug modestly admitted to eccentricity and perhaps a touch of blasphemy as he blamed King Donald on ancient nobs.

Yes, King Donald is all the fault of the Enlightenment ...

It may seem eccentric – if not positively blasphemous – to suggest that Donald Trump is a child of the Enlightenment. Voltaire, Hume and Kant would scarcely have recognised him as their progeny; they might have winced, incredulous at history’s cruel irony.
Yet the family resemblance is real. For it was the long 18th century’s great philosophers who advanced one of modernity’s most consequential wagers: that interests would subdue passions. If human beings could be induced to pursue their interests rather than defend dogmas and chase glory, conflict itself might be domesticated – shifted from the battlefield to the bargaining table.
This was, in other words, the intellectual origin of “the art of the deal”: the belief that, in the end, every actor has a price, and that rational self-interest will draw antagonists toward compromise. Strangely, the 19th and 20th centuries – whose wars grew ever more destructive – did not abandon that conviction but entrenched it, even as the evidence mounted that it obscured more than it revealed.
The intellectual genealogy, too complex to detail here, runs from the early modern rehabilitation of self-interest to “Mar-a-Lago on the Gaza shore” – but the crucial moment lies in Duc Henri de Rohan’s 1638 distinction between passion, grounded in impulse, and interest, grounded in calculation. His maxim, rendered in English as “interest will not lie”, eventually became, in JA Gunn’s phrase, “the most fashionable political concept in the 17th century”.
Interests, Rohan maintained, were stable, reasonable and predictable. Passions, by contrast, connoted volatility, irrationality and barbarism. The genius of the moderns was to transform conflicts over values into conflicts over interests – interests that could be divided, negotiated and settled.
What gave this idea its force was the rise of commerce, the domain of calculation par excellence. A powerful chain of reasoning followed: a commercial society would cultivate habits of calculative rationality; those habits would permeate social norms and expectations, and; over time, coolly defined interests would supplant tempestuous passions. The result would not be the disappearance of conflict, but its intelligent management: regularised, negotiated and, above all, contained.

Here's where the reptile graphics department helped out, what with their incessant thirst for free images pillaged from the full to overflowing intertubes ... Immanuel Kant. David Hume.

Inspired, the hole in bucket man plunged on with his thesis, which was a nifty way of distracting from the sociopathic ways of Benji and his minions ...

Montesquieu coined that proposition’s most celebrated formulation in 1748. “The natural effect of commerce,” he wrote in The Spirit of the Laws, “is to bring about peace. Two nations which trade together render themselves reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling.” In this way, “the spirit of commerce unites nations”.
More ambitiously still, commerce offers a “cure for the most destructive prejudices”; for, “wherever there is commerce, there we meet with agreeable manners” – the “mild” (doux) habits that sustain contracts between traders and agreements between states.
In Montesquieu’s thought, this tendency had a providential cast. The 19th and 20th centuries translated it into a secular idiom. It was no longer commerce alone that would inculcate rationality, but the expanding authority of science and, even more, of complex technology – domains whose effective operation seemed to require disciplined, instrumentally rational thought. Although rarely stated so baldly, much of the “modernisation” literature of the 1950s and 1960s implied a simple syllogism: anyone capable of building missiles must reason as the boffins in Langley do – and, sooner or later, will act with similar calculative restraint in both conflict and co-operation.
The consequence was that fanaticism – what David Hume called “enthusiasm” – would gradually recede. Hume argued that disputes “from interest are the most reasonable and the most excusable”, precisely because they admit of bargained resolution; those of religion, by contrast, are “more furious and enraged than the most cruel factions that ever arose from interest”.
But the extinction of “enthusiasm” did not require religion’s disappearance. It was, said Alexis de Tocqueville, enough that religion evolve toward forms that reinforced the mundane virtues of co-operation, moderation, tolerance and self-mastery. And that, the modernisation theorists believed, was precisely the direction the major faiths would take in technologically savvy societies.

Now the pond will concede that Our Henry showed off his Zionist Islamophobia ... never let it be said that his enthusiasm slacks off or recedes ...

Clifford Geertz cast doubt on that optimism. In Islam Observed (1968), synthesising years of fieldwork in Morocco and Indonesia, he argued that modernisation – and the spread of education – could inflame rather than tame religious extremism.
Minds trained to prize analytical coherence had, in his experience, recoiled from the tolerant syncretism of Moroccan Sufism and from Indonesia’s gentle blend of Islam, Hinduism and animism, turning instead toward more rigorous, purified and uncompromising forms of faith.
It was therefore no accident that, as Albert Hourani observed in Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (1983), Jamal al-Din al-Afghani anticipated later currents of Islamic fundamentalism, despite being one of the 19th century’s most influential Muslim advocates of science and technology. “If someone asks: why are Muslims in retreat?”, wrote al-Afghani, “I will answer: when they were truly Muslims, the world bore witness to their excellence.” Nor was it accidental that several of the September 11 terrorists were highly trained engineers.

The pond acknowledges that Our Henry seems incapable of contemplating the worst excesses of rabid Xian fundamentalists and evangelical bigots, or for that matter, the outer reaches of weird fundamentalist Judaism.

But feel the width of all the guilty parties ... Francois Voltaire. John Stuart Mill.

Sock it to 'em ...

Technical mastery did not inevitably advance the spirit of bargaining and moderation. On the contrary, the ability to build missiles could give zealots the means to hasten the apocalypse, dismember the infidels, and honour a compact not with other men but with God – a compact that admits neither compromise nor restraint. Utterly irrational ends could be pursued by eminently rational means.
That conjunction – technical sophistication in the service of fanaticism – is the Iranian regime in miniature. That does not mean the regime will never enter into agreements. But, following the precedent set by the Prophet Muhammad at the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, any such agreement is a “hudna” or temporary armistice at best, a fleeting ceasefire at worst, to be systematically violated whenever possible, and openly repudiated as soon as practicable.
Far from vindicating the Enlightenment’s hopes, those agreements show how readily fanatics can advance their cause by exploiting the West’s illusions, knowing that it lacks the stomach for a prolonged fight. And to make things worse, the agreements’ record is a miserably poor one. As John Stuart Mill – whom no one could plausibly accuse of warmongering – warned, the lesson of the centuries is that “barbarians cannot be depended on for observing any rules,” nor to “reciprocate concessions”.
Time and again, the tiny seed the Due de Rohan planted has therefore borne bitter fruit, as striking deals with fanatics becomes, all too often, an excuse for compromises that turn out to be capitulations.
Yet the “art of the deal”, and the confidence that every conflict is merely a high-stakes version of a real estate negotiation, has a magnetic hold on the Western mind – and on few minds is its grip firmer than on that of America’s 47th president. That his negotiators with Iran have been commercial deal-makers, not hardened experts in handling rogue regimes, should therefore come as no surprise.
Yes, as they look down from on high, Voltaire, Hume and Kant may shake their heads in disbelief. But this much is undeniable: Donald J. Trump is the Enlightenment’s bastard son.

Splendid stuff. That's the way to wrap your bigotry, in a word salad of pretentious bile ...

And so to Killer, and after the hole in bucket man's splendid effort, the pond must confess to being disappointed...

The header: Why more pollies in federal parliament just makes sense; There’s been no significant increase in federal parliamentarians since 1984, despite a near doubling of the population.

The caption for a snap of a den of iniquity: Anthony Albanese during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The pond will always pay attention to Killer, but the heady days of Covid, masks, vaccines and such like are long gone, and this was contrarianism pushed to a stupefying level of dullness ...

When the Institute of Public Affairs and the left-wing Australia Institute agree on a policy, it’s likely a meritorious one that deserves consideration.
It’s a reminder of how broken our political system has become when a proposal to increase the number of members of federal parliament was killed off by the Prime Minister late last month after the Coalition dared the government to publicly support it.
Sensible people in the Labor and Liberal parties have supported an increase, as the number of voters per federal seat – almost 121,000 – has become absurdly large, making a mockery of the idea that MPs share a deep connection with constituents. There’s been no significant increase in federal parliamentarians since 1984, despite a near doubling of the population.
Then Liberal MP James Stevens in 2024 asked the Parliamentary Budget Office to cost an increase of 24 new MPs and 16 senators. Labor minister Don Farrell has been promoting a similar change too.
Representation isn’t the only argument in favour of change. Committees with odd numbers of members are logically able to produce clear majorities, yet our half-Senate elections make only six Senate spots available in every state (and four for the territories).
Whatever the trials and tribulations of individual parties, those of the right and left in Australia enjoy the support of about half the electorate, which tends to produce impotent 3-3 voting blocs. Half-Senate elections of seven or nine senators per state would make the upper house more likely to produce ideological majorities – and more quickly.
Significantly more members and senators would help transform the parliament from a costly rubber stamp for the government into what it was meant to be: a check on power and a forum for a genuine exchange of ideas.

The pond supposes it should quibble.

Why is the Australian Institute dubbed "lefty", while Killer avoids describing the Institute of Public Affairs as an extreme far right organisation in the grip of big tobacco, big mining, and anything else big enough to keep paying their wages?

Is there anything worse than Killer trying to sound normal, mounting staid, tedious arguments for more pollies?

Even the distracting snaps are incredibly dull: Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaking during the weekly session of Prime Minister's Questions. Picture: House of Commons / AFP.

Perhaps Killer means well, but the pond would much rather be off with Melania ...

Section 65 of the Constitution mandates that the number of ministers “should not exceed seven in number … until the parliament otherwise provides”.
It’s a great shame that second part was included, because the number of ministers and hangers-on dependent on government largesse has exploded, ensuring no backbencher dares criticise the government for fear of ruling out a potentially lucrative promotion.
While our question time has become a stage-managed joke, in the UK’s 650-member House of Commons MPs in the cheap seats routinely rise to slam senior members of their own party – the ratio of ministers to backbench MPs is tiny.
Meanwhile, in Canberra, the ratio is ludicrously large. In 2019, for instance, I wrote a column that pointed out how 96 of the 104 Coalition members of the federal parliament were ministers, former ministers, committee chairs or deputy chairs, or holders of some other parliamentary office that bumped up their salary.
Comically, more than 40 per cent of Coalition MPs were ministers given the Morrison government’s previous slim election victory.
Angus Taylor warned that expanding the parliament would cost $620m including all associated staff and travel costs. But that was over eight years, and amounts to a farcically small share of the $786bn the federal government plans to spend this financial year alone.
The National and Liberal parties apparently didn’t think to make their support for any increase strictly conditional on permanent budget savings, a move that doesn’t inspire confidence in their ability to slash the budget by far more than a relatively paltry $78m a year.
Educated proponents of the prevailing number of seats might well quote the great conservative writer Edmund Burke, who famously told voters in the late 18th century in Bristol that their representative in London “owed you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion”.
Naturally, members of parliament should think for themselves and be prepared to persuade their constituents of what he or she believes to be right. But surely Burke assumed MPs would at least know what their constituents’ views were to begin with.

How dull could the distractions get? Why, it's ancient history time ... Canada’s former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Picture: Chris Wattie / Reuters

The pond gets it.

It's incredibly bold and brave for Killer to push back against the likes of the beefy boofhead, or to mock the liar from the shire, but this faux attempt at peace-making is tedious as all get out ...

Rapid population growth in the cities relative to the regions has created numerous vast federal seats larger than most European nations, making it practically impossible, and even dangerous, for MPs to attempt to meet voters. Durack in Western Australia is larger than France and Spain combined.
Moreover, as urban seats become larger and larger, they necessarily become more similar to each other, neutering the whole point of a Westminster system that is meant to give different regions and suburbs a unique voice.
The modest increase currently on the table would still leave the federal parliament critically smaller than its peers. Canada’s federal lower house includes 341 members, for instance, while New Zealand’s has around 30,000 voters per member.
Perhaps fearful of the direct financial impact of One Nation’s rise, the two major parties recently got together to legislate a massive increase in their claim on the public purse. Soon the per vote taxpayer-funded subsidy of political parties will jump from around $3.50 to $5, the biggest increase ever.
The IPA and the Australia Institute probably would not agree on that outrageous gouge. If only the two parties had chosen instead to conspire on something that would both benefit them as well as the voting public.
Alas, for now that seems too much to ask.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Quick, back to scribbling about masks, vaccines, and the ways to score a FIFA peace prize...

As for the rest, the reptiles over on the extreme far right were focussed on that upcoming trial.

The meretricious Merritt was busy with his usual serve of FUD.

Why Ben Roberts-Smith may be denied a fair trial
This country needs to come to terms with the fact that there is a real risk that Ben Roberts-Smith will not be given a fair trial.
By Chris Merritt
Legal Affairs Contributor

The pond was forced to send this to the intermittent archive, always a dodgy thing to do.

It was barely working this morning, but at least a teaser trailer would show the cut of his jib and give correspondents the chance to think about whether they really needed to read the rest of the FUD ...

Yeah, yeah, FUD ...

The pond had to toss the rest ofthe meretricious Merritt FUD into the void to make room for the craven Craven.

Not that there's anything interesting to read in the outing, save that it's a chance to see the craven Craven sailing against the meretricious tide ... and just like Killer, the craven Craven will always find a home in the pond, no matter how tedious or righteous he manages to sound ...

Say what? Jail the meretricious Merritt for contempt of court?

Well if being a baying commentator is the crime, then he's guilty as hell.

After those opening flourishes - surely the reference to Charles I keeps the spirit of Our Henry alive? - the craven Craven began to sound righteous in a most un-reptile way ...

....Fundamentally, he cannot be found guilty unless a rigorously selected jury finds him so beyond reasonable doubt. This is the appropriately high bar for the punishment of any Australian citizen, particularly on charges as dreadful as these.
So the rule of law both holds Roberts-Smith to account – and protects him. He is bound by the law, but cannot be convicted without due process against a prodigious standard of proof, before a rigorously selected jury.
This is what his extra-legal supporters have to understand. You cannot have one without the other. If you ditch the law of criminal responsibility, you necessarily ditch the corresponding principle of the presumption of innocence. Of course, rule of law is pretty easy when you are dealing with common burglary or embezzlement. But put it in the context of a national hero fighting a dirty war against treacherous opponents and fault lines emerge.
Add to this a large evidential cast of fellow soldiers, friends, detractors and even potentially actual Afghan enemies and you have a legal witch’s brew.
Then stir in the evidence and outcomes of Roberts-Smith’s utterly ill-advised defamation action to produce a quagmire of confusion. In principle, these civil outcomes should not affect the criminal trial, but they will identify plenty of bushes for the prosecution to look under. Certainly, they will influence public opinion.
There is a natural temptation – even a commonsense intuition – to assess the alleged actions of Roberts-Smith exclusively in the context of the Afghan War. What are you meant to do when everyone is a potential armed enemy?
There also is the siren’s song of rampant pragmatism. How can we expect Australians to enlist as soldiers for horrific wars if they know they’ll be legally abandoned at the first sustained legal volley?
These arguments have been put forward by my friend, Tony Abbott, and my very much non-friend, Pauline Hanson. But they are wrong, both in terms of the legal process and legal principle.

What was in the water this day? Killer calling for more pollies, the craven Craven renouncing the onion muncher?

Luckily the reptiles blurred this snap so the pond didn't have the foggiest idea who it was ... Ben Roberts-Smith arrested at Sydney Airport over alleged war crimes. Picture: Australian Federal Police

Perhaps a snap featuring tatts would have helped ...

Extraordinary hidden meaning of Ben Roberts-Smith's 'Crusader' tattoos - as he removes one forever

The pond took the chance to provide a little balance to Our Henry's wise words ...

On his right side, there is a Spartan helmet emblazoned across his ribcage, in a nod to the fearsome warriors of Ancient Greece...
...The father of twin girls also has a Jerusalem Cross across the right side of his chest, with what appears to be a knight on a horse inset into the centre of the motif.
The Jerusalem Cross is also known as the Crusader's Cross.
The cross is rooted in the Crusades of 1095-1291, when European Christians fought Muslims for control of Jerusalem, which Muslims ultimately won.
Donald Trump's US Secretary of War and ex-Fox News host Pete Hegseth also sports a Crusader's Cross tattoo over his heart.
The former National Guard member claims he was pulled from duty on the day of Joe Biden's 2021 presidential inauguration because his cross tattoo 'unfairly' identified him as an extremist.
The Crusader's Cross can also be seen on the national flag of Georgia.
Above Roberts-Smith's cross are the words 'I shall never fail my brothers', written in cursive script...
...On left side of the soldiers's body, there is a small cross with a loop at the top, visible underneath the start of his intricate dragon sleeve.
The crucifix-like image is an Ankh, or the ancient Egyptian 'key of life' symbol.
Inside Roberts-Smith's left-arm sleeve, along his inner forearm, are the Latin words Decus Prosapia Tellus, roughly translated as 'Glory/honour of the family's land'.

And so on, and now back to the craven Craven ...

On process, now is not the time to be ventilating material that either hurts or harms Roberts-Smith. It is indispensable to a fair trial that no jury be potentially contaminated by speculation or contumely. Anybody who tries it will be guilty of contempt.
This applies particularly to investigative journalists inclined to bask publicly in their triumph. A prison cell is a cold place to receive a Walkley. As a matter of principle, the presumption of innocence requires trial by law, not media. Evidence is to be formally sifted and tested, not advanced by irrefutable innuendo.
But these cannot be used as arguments that Roberts-Smith should be “let off” because he is a war hero, was in a rotten war, faced a corrupt and deceptive foe or simply had no choice in the matter.
We should remember that the situation alleged did not actually amount to an impossible choice, as sometimes happens in war. Roberts-Smith and his men did not face certain death – or even capture – without a field execution. The survival of a plausible enemy in their vicinity certainly elevated risk in an already dire situation of a small group of men stuck in hostile territory against a background of almost unimaginable stress.
But the fundamental question is stark. Are we really Nazis or Stalinist commissars who see death as a transactional calculation? Do we believe the killing of ostensibly unarmed prisoners is merely a question of circumstance, to be argued away by what our legal system traditionally has referred to as “necessity, the devil’s plea”.
There are philosophers who have argued the point. But no philosophical formula can ever argue away the proposition of common human decency that even a besieged soldier cannot kill outside actual, deadly combat.

In a rotten war?

Dear sweet long absent lord, the pond's world is falling apart, what a relief that the reptiles offered a couple of snaps of genuine heroes ... Senator Pauline Hanson. Senator Pauline Hanson. Former prime minister Tony Abbott.

And so the final gobbet ...

Ironically, this is a pungent expression of the same basic value that must protect Roberts-Smith. Just as an enemy operative cannot be slaughtered as a matter of calculated tactical advantage, neither can an accused Australian soldier be locked up for the edification of hostile journalists or army-hating progressives.
In these sorts of awful matters, there is indeed a point at which the pressures of surrounding horror, uncertainty and homicidal hostility become relevant. But hard as it is to say, that is at the point of sentencing and punishment, not trial.
If we accept that Australian soldiers can execute as well as kill, we can have no argument against our enemies doing the same to us. Moral equivalence cuts both ways.
I have no idea what I would do if I were trapped in a hostile country with every stone, tree and person an enemy. Probably, I would hide under a rock or run screaming away, coward that I am.
But admiration for the brave can never excuse atrocity. Otherwise, the difference between us and the war criminals of WWII is merely one of great degree, not difference.
Greg Craven is a former vice- chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.

He even invoked the Nuremberg clause?!

Is it time for the ICC to make a move, because clearly senility, dementia, sundowning or infancy is no defence ...

And so to a brief mention of some thoughts that could be found in Anne Applebaum's latest open letter...

As the onion muncher has been mentioned, it's worth remembering that he has been a lickspittle fellow traveller, a worshipper at the feet of Orbán ...

...The re-election of Orbán would be bad for Hungarians and bad for Europe. Inside the EU, Orbán functions as a Russian puppet, blocking European aid to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia. In telephone conversations with the Russian president, leaked to Bloomberg, the Hungarian prime minister can be heard telling the Russian president that he is a “mouse” to Putin’s “lion.” The Hungarian foreign minister also makes regular calls to his Russian counterpart after EU meetings. Given that Russian missiles are still killing Ukrainians every day, that Russian cyberattacks and sabotage continue to destablize Europe and that Russian propaganda still seeks to undermine European democracies, Vance’s mere presence in Budapest was deeply offensive to millions of Europeans.
It was also very strange. Vance, while interfering in Hungary’s election, baselessly condemned the EU for allegedly interfering in Hungary’s election. He talked about “faceless bureaucrats” from Brussels, a phrase borrowed from British politics that illustrates real ignorance. Important decisions in Brussels are taken by the political leaders of the 27 member states. During his speech, which you can watch here, Vance also peddled a myth that Hungary is under threat from “a small band of radicals” who hate Western civilization. But Peter Magyar, leader of Tisza, the large Hungarian opposition party, waves Hungarian flags and used to be a member of Orbán’s own party. Tisza is not some kind of revolutionary Marxist cell.
In truth, Vance knows little or nothing about the country he is visiting, and in this sense he resembles Trump. Like Trump, Vance is using American foreign policy for personal self-promotion. He knows that Orbán has symbolic importance to the autocratic far-right, especially in the US. Project 2025 was heavily influenced by the Hungarian example, as was the Trump administration’s assault on American universities. By paying homage to Europe’s leading autocratic populist, Vance is symbolically supporting those American projects. He has no more interest in the people of Hungary, their prosperity and well-being, than Trump has in the people of Iran. If he did, he would not be there at all.

Well yes, and now this is just to troll Our Henry ...

In which the bromancer and Joe are gloomy, but the Lynch mob arrives in the nick of time to save the day ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 21:40:00 +0000

On the downside, every so often the pond looks outside the incestuous hive mind of the lizard Oz, and discovers there are even worse possibilities out there ...

No, Iran Isn’t Winning the War aka The Iranian Advantage Is an Illusion (*archive link, no guarantee it's working)

Bret Stephens is a doofus of the first water, and therefore in the perfect position to serve as an NY Times columnist ... the rag always has both siderist needs, and Stephens offers the side that's all in on stupidity.

The target for this particular set of insights, and the existential despair they should be feeling, the loss of comfort they're suffering?

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a gifted midcareer intelligence officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

But only imagine that if you can fit it into the complacent mindset of a triumphalist American scribbler ...

Right now, there’s no telling what will happen. But as you survey where Iran stands now compared with where it stood just three years ago, you are overwhelmed with a sense of loss. Your once-powerful proxies in Gaza, Beirut, Damascus: decimated, deposed or dead. The Arab states: increasingly on side with the Americans and Zionists. Your nuclear program: set back for years or decades, if not forever. Your economy: in even deeper crisis than it was before the war, with no turnaround in sight. Your most capable leaders: dead. Your own people: waiting for the war and the state of emergency to end so they can rise against you again.
It’s a solace of sorts that sophisticated Western commentators think you’re winning this thing. From wherever you are now hiding — since it’s not safe to go to work — it doesn’t feel that way.

This is a man ostensibly writing informed commentary for one of the United States' alleged great newspapers.

Yet somehow his take got old really quick.

As any number of Stephens' readers pointed out - why they subscribe remains a mystery - the Iranian regime's main aim was to survive the war intact. Anything else would be a bonus. They never had a chance to win militarily, but if they get sanctions lifted and get to impose an excise tax on tankers, they'll have an unexpected form of revenue.

Stephens offers the sort of stupidity that allows some Americans to still go around boasting about the many ways they won the 'Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars ...

For a moment it almost seemed like he got intimations of his own stupidity:

For all the damage the United States and Israel have inflicted on Iran’s leadership ranks and war-making capabilities, the regime remains intact, unbowed, functional. There has been no mass uprising, thanks to the brutal crackdown that followed protests in early January. Closing the Strait of Hormuz, which required minimal military effort by Iran, has exercised maximum leverage over the global economy while boosting your oil revenues. The war is even more unpopular in the United States today than it was at the start; it is also causing more Americans to rethink the wisdom of their reflexive support for Israel. President Trump’s expletive-laden social media posts increasingly sound more desperate than they do fierce. And the I.R.G.C. is more powerful than ever.
One insight, repeatedly cited by Western pundits as evidence that Iran has the upper hand in the current war, has led you to its source, a 1969 critique of U.S. policy in Vietnam from none other than Henry Kissinger.
“We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process, we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.”
This should bring you comfort. It doesn’t.

Imagine you're a completely whacked out opinion columnist for the NY Times, so clueless they can't even take on war criminal Henry's advice

Meanwhile, over in that other place which the pond rarely visits...

Why Trump may have changed the world’s oil markets forever (*archive link)
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist

Inter alia ...

...Iran’s response to the war has been to attack US allies in the region, damaging their energy infrastructure in retaliation for the devastation the US and Israel have wrought. That damage, and production in the region that has been shut in because the oil couldn’t be shipped, will take time to be restored.
Qatar’s massive Ras Laffan LNG facility has for instance, suffered significant damage that it says will take two to five years to be repaired. In the meantime, Qatar, which supplies about 20 per cent of the world’s LNG, has lost about 17 per cent of its LNG capacity.
That, like the spike in WTI prices, is good for US shale oil and gas producers, but not so good for US domestic gas consumers– or companies and consumers elsewhere in the world.
It is, of course, conceivable that the ceasefire doesn’t hold and Iran closes the strait again. In any event, the world of oil will never be the same again because Iran has done what it has threatened but never done before and demonstrated its ability to take out a material chunk of the world’s oil supply.
The premium at which WTI traded over Brent could easily become a permanent feature of the market, with oil industry customers, having experienced a deliverability crisis, looking for the security of sourcing their supplies from places other than the now even more volatile Middle East.
Trump, thanks to a war he started, but has yet to provide a coherent rationale for, may have structurally increased, not just global oil prices but US domestic energy prices, raising inflation rates and lowering global and US economic growth rates in the process.

But enough Tootling off the rails and wandering into forbidden pastures.

It's a matter of national and professional pride to make sure a reptile at the lizard Oz can match Stephens' rampant idiocy ... and look who turned up at the bottom of the "news" early this morning ...

The bromancer!

How could the pond turn away the bromancer, especially as he's always been inclined to the triumphalism of a Stephens?

The proud warrior has always been up for a war with China, preferably by Xmas, and is always willing to contemplate bunging on a do, what with war just being a natural extension of politics.

Uh oh ...

The header: Scepticism aside, it’s difficult to see a strategic triumph here for the West; Iran may gain control of the Strait of Hormuz and charge ships $US2m tolls under Donald Trump’s ceasefire deal, despite his claims of achieving ‘total victory’ against Tehran.

The caption for the snap of the mad King: US President Donald Trump has agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran. Picture: AFP

The bromancer sounded surprisingly gloomy.

Has his Weltanschauung taken a turn for the worse?:

If the two-week ceasefire announced by Donald Trump means Iran gains effective control of the Strait of Hormuz, that’s a significant strategic win for Iran, and a tremendous setback for the US, its allies and, in the long run, the global economy.
At first blush, this looks like a good deal for Iran.
Of course it’s impossible to know at this stage how the ceasefire will actually play out because the deal Trump describes, and the deal the Iranian government describes, seem to inhabit wholly different universes.
Trump says the US has won “a total victory, no question”. Iran says it has comprehensively defeated the US and that’s why it’s willing to talk.
One disturbing element is that Trump has said the ceasefire came about because Iran submitted a 10-point plant that is a “workable basis” for negotiation.
Trump didn’t release this
10-point plan. (sic)
Iran did release a version, and it’s full of provisions the Americans couldn’t possibly agree to, such as the withdrawal of all US troops from the region, acceptance of Iran’s uranium enrichment program and payment of reparations to Iran for its war damage.
No one in Iran thinks any of that could ever happen. In the best light, those are just declaratory negotiating positions, but Iranian foreign ministry and national security statements say ships will travel through the Strait of Hormuz under the supervision of the Iranian military.

Even worse, the bromancer talked with petulant Peta and remained resolutely gloomy ... The Australian Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan says if the Iranians control the Strait of Hormuz, they have “won an enormous victory”. “They have withstood the worst that Trump can give, and they haven’t buckled,” Mr Sheridan told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “The Islamic Revolutionary Guard is still in control in Iran. “That is a big victory.”

Despite his desire to disclaim scepticism, the bromancer found a little scepticism went a long way ...

There are widespread international reports that Iran expects to levy a toll, putatively of $US2m a ship, for container vessels passing through the Strait. If the Iranians are bluffing and in fact plan to let ships through unhindered, without any toll, Trump has secured a reasonable deal. Even if the US doesn’t get the 400kg of uranium enriched to 60 per cent, Trump can claim he’s degraded Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities, as he said he would, and re-established free movement through the Strait of Hormuz.
If the Iranians get to charge a toll, they’ve had a huge victory.
We should know what’s happening on that fairly soon.
Trump’s people have briefed the US media that Iran has agreed to give up all its nuclear enrichment activities, including the enriched uranium, agreed to allow fully and free passage through the Strait of Hormuz and so on.
It is not evidence of Trump Derangement Syndrome to treat these claims with extreme caution, if not outright scepticism. During his first term, Trump declared he’d solved the problem of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, that Kim Jong-un had agreed to denuclearise.
That was just flat-out wrong and Pyongyang has continued enlarging its nuclear weapons arsenal and long range missiles.
More recently, Trump announced a detailed peace “agreement” for the Gaza Strip, including Hamas voluntarily disarming, the establishment of a technocratic government for Gaza, a new police force, international peacekeepers and much else.
Almost nothing of that has come to pass.

The reptiles were so desperate to cheer up the bromancer that they flung in a serve of the Bolter ... Sky News host Andrew Bolt discusses the US and Iran agreeing to a two-week ceasefire, which has led to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. “Well, shock and surprise, there’s a ceasefire in the Iran war, after just five weeks. Both the US and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire while they talk peace. And the Strait of Hormuz is meanwhile open to oil tankers again,” Mr Bolt said. “Fact is, this ceasefire puts the lie to so much of what you were told by Trump-hating journalists, and politicians, and activists, and assorted experts. Remember how you were told this would be the forever war, how this was a quagmire, how it was Trump’s Vietnam War, with Trump having no plan or offramp, all those predictions which have now been proved wrong.”

There, exactly the sort of triumphalism designed to put the bromancer in a cheery mood - victory is ours Mein Herr... but for some reason the bromancer remained perversely, obstinately in a depressive state.

Was it that heart attack that made him aware of the fragilities of life?

So far, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps remains in control within Iran, the enriched uranium hasn’t been handed over, Tehran has maintained missile and drone attacks on Israel and Gulf Arab states, it’s getting strong support from China and Russia, it’s making more money from its own oil exports than it did before the war began and it may keep control of the Strait of Hormuz.
So while Iran has sustained severe damage, it’s difficult to see a strategic triumph for the West.
Trump has damaged the US alliance structure. A more considered president would have brought US allies with him, at least in some measure.
Trump’s rhetoric has been self-contradictory and increasingly verbally bizarre. Apart from the juvenile scatological references, he threatened that “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”, presumably by sustained strategic bombing of Iran.
This follows earlier threats to bomb desalination plants.

Quick, a serve of the dog botherer boasting of significant wins.

That should fix up the bromancer ... Sky News host Chris Kenny gives his opinion on the Iran ceasefire. “The ceasefire is due to last two weeks while a permanent settlement is negotiated. Iran has undertaken to open the Strait of Hormuz to shipping,” Mr Kenny said. “So, all in all, with much left to unfold, it appears to be a significant win for Trump and for Middle East security, and the global economy. “We are all used to Trump's wild rhetoric, and we all knew he was attempting to threaten Iran into accepting a deal, but still, the words used by the President, the leader of the free world, yesterday, well, they were shocking.”

Nothing worked, as the bromancer stayed mired in the gloomy mud ...

These comments were widely condemned, including by many who usually support Washington.
Anthony Albanese was right to describe them as “inappropriate”. The Prime Minister joined Nationals’ leader Matt Canavan and Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie in condemning Trump’s language.
It’s right for political leaders to be careful to avoid needlessly provoking Trump but they are obliged to deal with reality.
Australia is one of the most pro-American countries, yet polls show more than 70 per cent of Australians believe Trump has handled the war badly. A majority of Americans concur.
Previous presidents understood the need to gain public support, at home and among allied countries. Apart from Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, any allied leader who backs Trump now does so in the face of settled hostility from their own publics.
It’s good that the fighting in Iran has stopped for the moment. But this whole saga still has a long way to run.

Come on bro, it's a new age ... rediscover your inner Cro-Magnon man...

And now for a quick survey of what's lurking in the lizard Oz outside the war in coverage.

Luckily the intermittent archive was working - no guarantee it still is - and that allowed the pond to send off a number of reptiles to that swamp-infested land.

State Liberals’ biggest woe? Their own president Phil Davis
Criticism of Victorian Liberal leadership highlights deeper tensions over strategy, identity and voter drift to One Nation.
By Peta Credlin

The pond usually avoids petulant Peta, and this day it was a good thing, what with it being a bout of navel gazing about Vic Liberals, compleat with the notion that bigoted transphobe Moira Deeming was the way forward.

The pond also had no time for this attempt to lather up EV fear ...

EVs could power the grid — but at what cost to owners?
Electric vehicles promise cheaper, cleaner energy and grid support, but hidden costs and unanswered legal questions pose risks.
By Mark Le Grand

It was a pile of alarmist, hysterical tosh, and the pond had to wander down to the credit to work out why ... Mark Le Grand has served for five decades in the law and with various law enforcement bodies.

Arrest those vehicles, seize that grid, come out with your hands up.

The pond also gave this short shrift ...

Ditching ACON first step in reclaiming truth over ideology
After ending funding for ACON’s Pride in Diversity, the ABC faces scrutiny over media coverage and ideological influence on reporting.
By Sall Grover

Again the credit gave the game away ...

Sall Grover is the founder of Giggle, a women-only social app, and is a women’s rights advocate.

The pond knows what that code means .. and couldn't even raise a chuckle.

The pond also had to send away Yoni, grinding out a different brand of hysteria, fear and panic ...

Why the Taiwan Strait could eclipse the Middle East crisis
Could China deploy Iran’s playbook in the Taiwan Strait? A new report warns the consequences would be catastrophic, especially for Australia.
By Yoni Bashan
North Asia Correspondent

The pond could at least allow this Yoni a teaser trailer ...

Not content with one disaster?

Imagine another ... but don't worry Yoni, the pond is sure the bromancer will start feeling his oats again, and be up for that war with China by Xmas.

Then it was back to the war with a lesser member of the Kelly gang...

Back from the brink into fragile uncertainty
The Strait of Hormuz is reopening and markets are cheering. But the Iranian regime is unbroken and its list of demands maximalist.
By Joe Kelly
Washington correspondent

While the pond found a home for Joe at the intermittent archive, the pond found his gloom piquant, down there with the bromancer's, and so worthy of proper treatment ...

Joe was as determined as the bromancer to be gloomy ...

...Yes, Trump has avoided a dangerous escalation in the war and the globe has dodged an economic catastrophe and humanitarian crisis in the Middle East but the hardest part is to come. And Trump has incurred a high cost to arrive at this point.
His threats to kill off Iranian civilisation were shocking public remarks unbefitting a US president. They will be remembered as a symbol of the changed character of American leadership in the world.
A large grouping of Democrats have used the threat to call for the removal of Trump from office; the MAGA base has fractured.
Trump has also alienated America’s closest allies and taken NATO to breaking point.
Key Iranian figures are already framing the shift towards diplomacy as a major victory.
On Monday, the US President said the Iranian plan was “not good enough”. But as his 8pm deadline shifted closer into view on Tuesday, he seized on it as an opportunity after the intervention by Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
Iran’s push for a new protocol in the Strait allowing the regime to charge ships up to $2m for safe passage must not be accepted.
It would accede to Iranian extortion in the Strait and see the regime emerge in a stronger financial position with a valuable revenue stream worth billions of dollars each month.
A strong argument can be made that this is a far worse outcome than what existed before the war.
Trump will also need to impose restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program if he is to convince Americans the intervention was worth it.
Preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear bomb has become the central justification for and objective of the military campaign.
It is hard to see how Washington and Tehran can bridge their differences on these issues, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has consistently played down the likelihood of progress being made through diplomacy.
Both sides are now back to where they were before Trump launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28 – the negotiating table.
The progress of talks over the next two weeks will determine how Operation Epic Fury will be seen.
At this stage, there can be no certainty the final outcome will leave the US – and its allies – any better off.

Sheesh, but all our wars have gone incredibly well, and shown how good it is to be manly in battle ...

The pond was determined to lift the reptile spirits, and then a miracle happened.

The Lynch mob came along to set things right ...

The header: If Iran is not our foe, then what’s the point in having enemies? Too much of the global left want Iran to represent some brave resistance to Western imperialism.

The caption for the lickspittle surrender monkey who lacks the Lynch mob's spine: A demonstrator holds a sign during a protest against US military action in Iran in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Picture: Charly Triballeau / AFP

Huzzah, and in due course the pond will be able to demonstrate that it can match King Donald at doing a weave.

But first please allow the Lynch mob to contemplate the joys of nuking those bloody Islamics ...

On July 16, 1945, president Harry Truman learned of the first successful explosion of a nuclear bomb. Nine days later, he authorised its use against Japan. On August 6, that attack took place. A second followed three days later.
The decision to use the A-bomb was not a vexed one. Instead, how to use it consumed the president and his advisers. It was only after Japan’s surrender that Truman wrestled with the ethical implications. The “thought of wiping out another 100,000 people is horrible”, he said. “Killing all those kids” repelled him. “You have got to understand that this is not a military weapon … It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses.”
Donald Trump’s moral struggle over means and ends probably doesn’t match Truman’s. There is nothing in the Democrat’s rhetoric to suggest he wanted to end Japanese civilisation. Indeed, he began its rebuilding. But, like him, the incumbent President has relied on hard power against civilians to force his opponents’ capitulation.
OK, we have a ceasefire with Iran’s depleted leaders rather than their total surrender. But we would be historically myopic not to see how the threat of destruction has resulted in behaviour modification. We would need a deep cynicism to not discern a better future for all those afflicted by Iranian power.

At this point the reptiles flung in snaps of two presidential giants ... President Donald Trump; President Harry Truman

The Lynch mob was all in on history lessons, what with breathtaking comparisons between a world war and a regional carry on ...

Nuke 'em, nuke 'em all, the long, the short and the tall...

Neither Imperial Japan nor Islamist Iran prioritised civilians in their warmaking. Both displayed a criminal disregard for the lives of their citizens. No democracy could countenance losing so many in pursuit of its survival.
In the history of war there is no perfect analogy. Scholars of the Cold War will recoil at a favourable comparison between Truman and Trump. But I think the Iran war is replete with similarities.
An uncouth Trump and pious Truman does not render the 33rd president superior to the 45 and 47th in his transformational power. Indeed, Trump’s war (even if this ceasefire doesn’t hold) almost certainly will not entail the slaughter of Truman’s.
I understand why Trump’s rhetoric has confirmed for many his unfitness for the office he holds. But speaking coarsely while carrying a little stick has resulted in the severe weakening of Iran’s power.
Trump has set back the cause of Iran’s sharia supremacy – the constitutional principle that Islamic law (sharia) has ultimate authority over all state laws, institutions and political decisions in the Islamic Republic. He did this while fighting a war with the goodwill of more Arab allies than any in US history. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pushed Trump to make war with Iran, framing the US-Israeli offensive as a “historic opportunity” to reshape the region.
International lawyers have complained at the death of Iranian civilians. We should mourn the loss of innocent lives in any war. But Trump’s violence has killed a fraction of those killed by the regime’s own security forces – more than 40,000 by some estimates.

Dammit, kill all the innocents, it's the only way forward. (And maybe borrow Pontius Pilate's bowl of water and towel, for the washing and wiping of hands thereof)

Then the reptiles had to produce a downer in the form of Rita, lovely meter maid ... Centre of the American Experiment President John Hinderaker says the US “can’t trust” any agreement with Iran. Mr Hinderaker told Sky News host Rita Panahi Iran will “promise,” which cannot be trusted. “They might promise not to seek nuclear weapons or to stop supporting terrorism, but as long as the regime remains in place, they’re going to abandon those promises as soon as they are able.”

Trust the mad mullahs?

Nah, but it goes without saying that everyone can absolutely trust every word that comes out of King Donald's mouth ...has there ever been a more consummate and convincing con artist?

Crusader Lynch mob carried on with his crusading ..

Trump has made a 47-year experiment in theocratic repression seem temporary, toppleable. No amount of UN resolutions and Obama-Biden nuclear deals had this effect. The loss of US military lives in pursuit of this transformational objective – a Middle East denuded of its chief terrorist exporter – is tiny. A Ballarat tradie who needs cheaper diesel may demure. I do feel his pain and have seen my superannuation fall. But, again, what price was worth paying to hasten the demise of Ali Khamenei?
Trump chose a nemesis that surely meets every definition of just war. Khamenei made misogyny basic to his rule. His regime denied homosexuality existed, while murdering more than 5000 gay men. His HHH axis – made up of Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis – targeted civilians in Israel and across the Gulf. Hamas made rape a weapon of war.
If the Iranian regime is not our enemy, we are no longer capable of having an enemy. Too much of the global left want Iran to represent some brave resistance to Western imperialism. The mullahs are not that. Rather than Che Guevara-style guerrillas, these theocrats have controlled for nearly a half-century a state of ancient lineage, to minimal strategic or ideological gain. Their co-religionists deplore them. The Great and Little Satan have combined to assassinate their supreme leader.

Um, so theocracy is the issue?

How about Israel?

If madness while in possession of nukes is a problem, when do we launch a war on North Korea?

The reptiles interrupted with another snap designed to agitate the Lynch mob ... A demonstrator holds a picture of Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei in Tehran. Picture: Francisco Seco / AP Photo

And this is where the pond can show the power of the weave ...

The regime’s own bureaucrats, who keep the wheels of the state turning, are surely questioning the wisdom of their political leaders. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps promised to safeguard a proud, nuclear-armed Iran. Instead, Trump has made them the organisers of human shields.
Bret Stephens at The New York Times imagined what lower-level officials in Tehran and Mashhad must be thinking: “Your economy: in even deeper crisis than it was before the war, with no turnaround in sight. Your most capable leaders: dead. Your own people: waiting for the war and the state of emergency to end so they can rise against you again.”

You see?

There was the monstrous stupidity and triumphalism of Stephens replicated by the Lynch mob.

The reptiles can produce commentary as dumb as a stick, and more than a match for anything as silly as that emanating from Stephens of the NY Times...

Trump failed to predict, let alone pre-empt, Iranian shenanigans in the Strait of Hormuz. Voters will punish him in the November midterms. I do wonder, however, if history will record a more enduring turning point, one that matches the collapse of Imperial Japan in global significance: the ending of a failed experiment in political Islam and the building of a better Middle East.
The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the rebirth of Japan. That enemy went on to become one of the freest, wealthiest and closest allies America has ever enjoyed. This was the inauspicious but necessary beginning of a regional transformation. Trump has started his own – at a fraction of the civilian lives lost.

Yes, nuke 'em, nuke 'em all, it's the only way forward to an enduring civilisation.

And so cheap in terms of lives lost. Bargain basement transformation.

Credit where credit is due, because the pond can never resist defaming the University of Melbourne's tattered reputation:

Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne.

The long absent lord help his students ...

And so to a footnote and a commendation, though Geoff really should have chambered a larger round ...

That's the best the reptiles could do in their attempt to inflate the tyres of the Canavan caravan?

So much winning.

Dark days indeed ...

And so to turn to the immortal Rowe for the closer ...

It's always in the details, and the pond did like these ...nice tatt ...

Could it get any weirder?

Of course it could ...JD Vance Confronted With Report the Pentagon Allegedly Threatened Vatican with Military Foce.

No couch or pope can feel safe ...

In which the swishing Switzer does some bog standard fossil fuel worship and Our Henry makes a non-canonical appearance ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 21:40:00 +0000

All - as a correspondent recently noted - is a sour mash of slop, feculence, and slime, not to mention sociopathy and war crimes - and amazing scenes where even Marge and gravel-voiced Alex are in a dither:

Oh yes ...

How are the reptiles coping with this Emeritus Chairman, Faux Noise production?

Well Dame Slap did the wise and sensible thing.

Ignore it all together, forget the night she donned her MAGA cap and walked out into the streets of New York in a state of ecstatic triumph, and return to the ancient and noble reptile sport of black bashing ...

Why aren’t Indigenous leaders demanding an audit?
We should never forget the bullet we dodged when this country rejected a constitutionally entrenched voice.
Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Moi don a MAGA cap? Can't remember, everything's hazy ...

Sadly the intermittent archive was in yet another of its funks, so the best the pond could do was offer a link in the hope that it might come in handy down the track

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Fwhy-arent-indigenous-leaders-demanding-an-audit%2Fnews-story%2F6a2c46c434abbd376aac5b034323c7bf?amp

The pond had to do the same for Jihad Jack, as Jack the Insider cheerfully joined in the current reptile jihad.

There are some who think that Jack is better than your average reptile, but he's just your average jihadist, happy to toil away in the belly of the beast.

Get hold of a keffiyeh. Make a big noise … and let the dollars roll in
Abdel-Fattah’s hypocrisy knows no bounds. From the comfort of academia, she fights against racism by fomenting a lot of it.
By Jack the Insider
Columnist

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Fget-hold-of-a-keffiyeh-make-a-big-noise-and-let-the-dollars-roll-in%2Fnews-story%2Ffd59ab5c355ac380825a8c6e613e77af?amp

Jack, doing a Boris, was just joining Natasha as she indulged in another bit a Bita bitterness ...

EXCLUSIVE
C-grade review yet ARC gave grant ‘OK’
Confidential documents reveal stark divisions among peer reviewers over anti-Israel activist Randa Abdel-Fattah’s $889,000 taxpayer-funded research grant.
By Natasha Bita

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/education%2Franda-abdelfattahs-889000-grant-awarded-by-arc-despite-cgrade-review-and-formal-warnings%2Fnews-story%2Fa391ec5a8f239b34be9a476e8bc78bb8?amp

None of them had any appeal to the pond.

What a pity then that the intermittent archive spluttered and conked out, so that the pond couldn't personally send these efforts to that dank, dark cornfield.

But that left the pond with very little to do today.

It's already been established on the probabilities that BRS (as the reptiles call him) is a war criminal guilty of appalling war crimes, and the news that Pauline launched a fierce defence of him only made his guilt more plausible.

Marvel at the way that in the midst of King Donald acting as god and promising a genocide, the reptiles still found space to highlight not just BRS, but their current jihad ...

On the BRS matter, over on the extreme far right a soggy Rice attempted to do a little cooking to save the day...

War crimes prosecutors will face challenges convicting BRS
The VC recipient’s defamation case was an own goal, but war crimes prosecutors will have a much more challenging time proving their case beyond reasonable doubt.
By Stephen Rice
Sydney Bureau Chief

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Fwar-crimes-prosecutors-will-face-challenges-convicting-ben-robertssmith%2Fnews-story%2F96fc1de3f4164781ea35c21bd4ffdaf8?amp

In the end, the pond settled for a standard serve of renewables bashing and climate science denialism, served up by the swishing Switzer, still on his never ending rehabilitation tour ...

The header: The era of climate policy consensus is dead. So why are we digging in? The Iran crisis has performed an unintended service: it has exposed, with brutal clarity, the folly of Australia’s energy policy.

The caption for Frank's inimitable effort, Anthony Albanese. Artwork by Frank Ling.

That image of Albo, emerging once again from the lizard Oz's antediluvian swamp, reminded the pond of previous Frank efforts...

Sure enough, it wasn't new and fresh, it was as stale as week-old reptile bread.

It had been recycled, no doubt to help save the planet...

Good old Lloydie of the Amazon, just the right company for the swishing Switzer.

Frank's unifying artwork spread far and wide, with another member of the Kelly gang also entranced ...

Haven't thought about Craig for yonks, but what a relief to see he's landed on his FEE feet ...

Oh wait, it's not that one, it's this mysterious one, see Crikey ...(paywall)

Sheesh, how did the pond end up there, amidst cranks and kooks?

Truth to tell, the pond just wanted to establish that the swishing Switzer and the lizard Oz hive mind were still keeping the right sort of company, and all thanks to Frank's incredible artwork.

As for the swishing Switzer offering, it was short weight, just three minutes, so the reptiles said...

Anthony Albanese is now our longest-serving prime minister since John Howard – long enough to own, in full, the consequences of his government’s policies. And as we now know, those consequences on energy are becoming impossible to ignore: Australia is exposed, vulnerable and paying the price for a government that prefers ideology to pragmatism.
For several years now, Canberra has layered intervention upon intervention: price caps, market controls, regulatory uncertainty and glacial approval processes for new projects. At the same time, Australia has failed to reinvigorate exploration for gas and oil and allowed domestic refining capacity to erode – with only two refineries now operational.
As this newspaper’s Chris Uhlmann has argued, energy is not just another commodity but the foundation of economic life and national security. Australia now sits at the end of long supply chains, reliant on imported liquid fuels to keep the economy functioning. With more than 90 per cent of our energy still derived from coal, oil and gas – and diesel the indispensable fuel of industry, transport agriculture and mining – any serious disruption was bound to bring the country to a standstill.

Here the pond should note that the reptiles, at the mention of his name, provided a link to the Ughmann ... and though it's already been featured in the pond, here's a reminder of the company the swishing Switzer likes to keep...

Enough of that, the Ughmann features regularly in the pond, as the swishing Switzer got down and dirty with the climate science denying dog botherer ... The Australian’s Columnist Tom Switzer says the US President Donald Trump has made a “monumental mistake” with his attack on Iran. Mr Switzer told Sky News host Chris Kenny that Donald Trump most likely assumes striking Iran would “be enough”. “To bring down the regime, he probably in hindsight, should’ve followed the advice of his America first instincts.”

There's nothing new to see here ...

To be sure, this predicament did not begin with the Albanese government. As far back as 2019, The Wall Street Journal captured the absurdity with a stark headline: “Australia, a Top Natural-Gas Exporter, Considers Imports to Stop Blackouts.”
A popular online parody of Albanese captures the same contradiction: an Australia that boasts of climate leadership while exporting vast quantities of coal and gas, importing refined energy at home, and relying on China to process the minerals it claims are strategic. The joke lands because it is so close to the truth.
But this is no longer a laughing matter. Against the backdrop of the Iran crisis and tightening global supply, our vulnerability is being exposed.
And the consequences are increasingly grave: disruptions to petrol supply, renewed inflationary pressure, higher interest rates, weak growth and rising business failures – all pointing to the spectre of stagflation.
A serious government would use this moment to reset policy – acknowledging that fossil fuels will remain central to Australia’s economy for decades and acting accordingly.

Uh huh, and so to a snap of the chief villain, Chris Bowen pictured speaking at a press conference outside his electorate office in Fairfield West. Picture: NewsWire

The pond didn't have the heart to interrupt the swishing Switzer with another tale of the planet going downhill fast...

That would require difficult but necessary decisions: opening new gas fields, encouraging oil exploration, revisiting refining capacity, removing barriers to investment and broadening the energy mix to include options such as nuclear power. It would also mean recognising that energy security is inseparable from national security, requiring greater investment in defence capability and industrial resilience.
The question, as Graham Lloyd recently put it, is whether this government is capable of such a shift. Albanese and Labor remain wedded to the belief that climate change represents such an overriding threat that the world will unite to phase out fossil fuels. And much of the mainstream media encourages the government: now is the moment, we are told, to accelerate moves to renewable energy.
But this is not how the world is behaving. Electricity demand is rising and emissions continue to hit record highs as fossil fuels remain the surest path out of poverty in the developing world.
Even in advanced economies, political resolve is weakening – as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has conceded, the consensus on climate policy has gone.
Yet Canberra persists with an approach that risks making energy more expensive and less reliable, with little measurable impact on global emissions. In doing so, it is not only placing pressure on living standards but also increasing our dependence on imported technologies and supply chains.

Yes, why do anything, when you can do nothing, or perhaps trot out a snap of Sir Keir, Keir Starmer speaks during a press conference at Downing Street. Picture: Getty Images

And that was pretty much it, with the swishing Switzer nobly battling the activist establishment ...

None of this is to deny that the Trump administration has created turmoil in the Persian Gulf, with consequences that are proving difficult to contain. The longer the Strait of Hormuz remains closed or the more damage is done to Middle Eastern oil infrastructure, the more the war will roil the global economy.
But the crisis has performed an unintended service: it has exposed, with brutal clarity, the folly of Australia’s own energy policy.
We are a country that could be far closer to energy self-sufficiency. Instead we have chosen dependence – on imports, on fragile supply chains and on the goodwill of others in a tightening world. The Coalition is right to reject Labor’s net-zero agenda. It now has an opportunity – and an obligation – to press the case relentlessly and unapologetically: for supply, for sovereignty and for a policy framework grounded in economic and strategic reality.
Such a course would be fiercely contested by Labor, the Greens and much of the activist establishment. But if the Coalition – alongside One Nation – is prepared to prosecute the argument, it may yet force a long-overdue reckoning and give Australia a fighting chance of securing our energy future and, with it, our economic potential and national security.

Oh yes, let Pauline and the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way get together and help destroy the planet.

Thanks for that astonishing insight and credit where credit is due ...

Tom Switzer is presenter of Switzerland, a podcast about politics, modern history and international relations.

Why does the pond feel like it's running on empty?

As a little coda, the lizard Oz editorialist was also out and about today, no doubt alarmed by news of the recent surge in EV sales figures...

Not a clue - EVs already do things better and at a lower cost for consumers and trust the pond, the Hume highway is a doddle except for those whale-killing windmills in the beefy boofhead's home turf - and luckily the infallible Pope was on hand to help out ...

The pond has been insufferable lately asking the extended family about how their infernal diesel machines are going.

And so to the bonus, and here a fierce dispute broke out in the pond's editorial offices.

Our Henry had made a rare mid-week appearance, but was it non-canonical?

There was much argument, but consider the Cambridge university dictionary definition ...

not part of a set of works or subjects that are generally agreed to be good, important, and worth studying:

non-canonical texts can still be very influential.
non-canonical book The Bible translators did not believe the Apocrypha were inspired, but translated these non-canonical books because of their historical significance.
non-canonical literature The ruling party viewed noncanonical literature with suspicion.

For starters, how could this outing in the lizard Oz be good, important and worth studying?

How could it be looked at without harbouring a deep suspicion?

The pond contended that the presence of Pincus made it non-canonical, and a fey reference to Pride and Prejudice proved this was not authentic 'hole in the bucket' man musings.

This wasn't the stuff of Our Henry's ponderous, portentous, pompous Friday outings.

Sure it was back in the days of the industrial revolution, but Darcy? Bingley? Why it was no better than chique chick lit.

Accordingly it could be tossed off in a few screen grabs, because who would want to do a cut and paste, merely so that they could comment on Our Henry referencing Our Jane, as if he was some kind of brooding, introverted Matthew Macfadyen?

Even that distraction seemed non-canonical - Petey boy as the distraction?! - and the final gobbet was equally dismal, as it failed to mention Thucydides once!

The pond might have reconsidered if there'd been a reference to ancient Greece or Rome or the 300 Spartans or Xerxes, or even better, a medieval theologian or philosopher, but it was just a heap of blather about the dismal art. (Well you could hardly do a Carlyle and call it a dismal science)

That might appeal to some cultists, but only in a non-canonical way ...

Boring!

If only Our Henry had mouthed off some theological and philosophical platitudes, but that pesky Pincus got in the way. Vulgar youff will have to search for alternatives to lead them into the future.

And now, with the bromancer resting, it was left to the lizard Oz editorialist to deal with King Donald ...

His objectives in Iran remain estimable?

Apart from annihilating a civilisation, what exactly are those those objectives?

Never mind ... it's all going well ...

Weird times ...

In which the bro, Joe and Jack try to cope with mad King Donald, and Dame Groan does her standard oil junkie schtick ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:24:00 +0000

It seems the pond's main duty these days is to try to cope with the bromancer trying to cope with mad King Donald.

The bro has always been Trump curious.

Lately he seems to have become increasingly disenchanted, yet still feels compelled to both siderist his suffering.

His latest headline is a classic of the both siderist art form perfected by the NY Times.

The header: Triumph or tragedy? Does Donald Trump have any options left in Iran? The case for acting against Iran was strong, but Trump made many miscalculations and was not prepared for easily foreseen contingencies.

The caption: President Donald J. Trump delivers a message on Holy Week. Picture: Supplied

What on earth is the message King Donald delivered on Holy Week? Obscenity, blasphemy, and the pagan rantings of an ancient Moloch?

Mad King Donald is way less Xian than the pond, and that's saying something.

As for the bro, it's amazing really that anyone could find any hope of a "triumph" in what King Donald has done to the United States and to the planet, yet there it was in the headline, taking up as much room as "tragedy" as the way into the bro's four minute ramble.

The bromancer diligently ferreted through the tea leaves and the chicken's entrails, hoping against hope that he'd see signs of the triumph ...

Donald Trump has two options and one hope in Iran. The options: escalate or leave. The hope: a deal with Tehran that allows him to claim victory and go home. He’s probably happy to leave the Iranian regime intact provided it opens the Strait of Hormuz, and makes at least a pro forma commitment to end its nuclear program.
One Trump tragedy is that he gives many good things a bad name. The case for acting against Iran was strong, but Trump and his administration have made many miscalculations and not prepared for easily foreseen contingencies.
Much worse, the way the President talks, his wild language, endless self-contradictions, and contempt and humiliation for US allies, is doing serious strategic harm to the US and its allies.
Trump’s most recent threat bears repeating. On Truth Social he posted: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F..kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
This is both an astonishing and contemptible social media post from Trump. It also almost certainly indicates a failure of analysis of the nature of the Iranian regime.
One of the reasons America is so friendless in this military campaign, which is inherently defensible if done properly, is because no one can sign up to Trump’s rhetorical instability, his reversals day by day (only a few days ago, in a formal address to the American people, he said the US had no concerns about the Strait of Hormuz).
The Iranian regime is defined by its activist hatreds of America and Israel, and its social practices of pietistic fundamentalist Shia Islamism. That is a toxic and evil mixture. Trump thinks that every time he threatens Iran, he’s putting its leaders under pressure. The Iranians apparently regard Trump’s wild declarations as a sign of desperation.

You see?

Somehow "inherently defensible" creeps into the narrative, accompanied by a small billy goat butt - "if done properly", which is the sort of thing that happens when the pond attempts a triple pike into the pool and ends up doing a belly flop.

In what possible way could it be "inherently defensible" when in reality that sort of attempt to bomb into submission is inherently stupid and ineffectual, as Vlad the sociopath has discovered to his cost in his long and inherently indefensible monstering of Ukraine.

Even the both siderist NY Times gets this ...

Bombing Kyiv Into Submission? History Says It Won’t Work.
Even though it creates misery and loss, the methodical bombing of civilian centers has more often been shown to rally support for resistance. (*intermittent archive, and you know what that means)

...The victorious allies in World War II did emphasize a strategy of heavily bombing cities, which is part of why countries have come to repeat this so many times since. Cities including Dresden and Tokyo were devastated, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and forcing millions into homelessness.
Still, historians generally now argue that, even if that did play some role in exhausting those countries, it was largely because of damage to German and Japanese industrial output rather than the terror it caused. Axis countries were also aggressive in bombing enemy cities, casting further doubt on notions that the strategy could be a decisive factor on its own.
And any World War II lessons may be of limited utility in understanding the wars that came after, as countries quickly learned from that conflict to move military production away from city centers. Tellingly, such bombing has seldom worked since.
American war planners discovered this in the Korean War, when bombing Pyongyang only hardened the North’s commitment. A decade later, they tried it again in Vietnam. But an internal Pentagon report concluded that striking Hanoi, the North Vietnamese capital, had been “in retrospect, a colossal misjudgment.”
Iran and Iraq struck each other’s capitals during their 1980s conflict to try to force one side to back down. Instead, both nations were rallied by watching foreign bombs fall on civilian neighborhoods, helping to stretch the war to nearly a decade.
Insurgent groups have likewise adapted this tactic, to little more success.
Northern Irish groups struck repeatedly in London, hoping to dispel British commitment to the territory. Instead, the bombings led to more severe measures by British authorities in Northern Ireland. Palestinian groups that ignited bus and cafe bombs in Israeli cities during a period of conflict in the 2000s found much the same result.
Al Qaeda’s justification for the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks has shifted, but the group has said that one aim was to compel American withdrawal from the Middle East. But Americans, rather than rising up against their country’s overseas deployments as Al Qaeda leaders had hoped, rallied in support of invading Afghanistan and then Iraq.
Though each conflict is different, this pattern is not a coincidence, but is explained by the politics as well as the psychology of warfare. And both appear to apply in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Capital strikes intended to push a government toward conciliation or retreat instead do much to close off those options.
In practice, such attacks tell targeted leaders that they, and perhaps the very existence of their government, will not be secure until they eliminate the threat through outright victory. They will tend to escalate in response, rather than back down as their attackers hope.
And a negotiated peace, like the one Mr. Putin has urged, becomes harder for those leaders to enter because it means accepting that the threat to the capital will remain.
The public will often reach the same calculus, coming to see their attacker as an implacable threat that can only be neutralized through defeat.
The stiffening resolve inspired by such strikes can be equal parts strategic and emotional.
German rocket and air attacks on British cities during World War II, known as the Blitz, aimed to degrade British production as well as public support for the war, so that Britain would agree to withdraw from the conflict.
Instead, the attacks led to a drastic reduction in British support for peace talks with Germany, polls at the time found, raising pressure on British leaders to uphold the fight.
And German leaders had hoped that turning whole blocks of London into rubble would inspire Britons to turn against the leaders who insisted on staying in the war. But British approval of their government rose to near 90 percent.
The United States has stumbled on this effect several times, but perhaps most powerfully in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, when it sought to force back its Communist adversaries by bombing their towns and cities. Instead, the campaigns convinced those governments, as well as their populations, that they could only be safe by defeating the Americans for good, whatever the cost.

And here we go again, and what a regime to help, as at this point the reptiles flung in a visual distraction ... Demonstrators attend a pro-government gathering in a square in Tehran, Iran. Picture: AP

The pond does like the way that the bromancer consistently side steps around the way that Benji's fundamentalist theocratic government, campaigning for a greater Israel, managed to lure mad King Donald into the war ...

Trump may for the first time in his life have met a foe not motivated by money, self-interest or even national interest, but by ideological, and in this case theocratic, conviction. It’s overwhelmingly to be hoped that the US and Israel succeed in Iran. Nothing would be better for the Middle East, and the world, than for the odious Tehran regime to disappear.
But analytically, we must deal with reality. The Iranian regime is tough and is built for war. It doesn’t care about suffering endured by its society. It has decentralised decision-making. A big chunk of society gets paid by the regime, and a big chunk has committed violence and murder on behalf of the regime. These folks won’t give up control.
The US has degraded Iran’s military capabilities. But Tehran is still firing missiles and drones, and controls the Strait of Hormuz.
It’s now clear Tehran is getting some help from both Russia and China, without any major pushback from Washington, which has its hands full. In the past few days, notwithstanding the devastation of Iran’s air defences, it has shot down a number of US aircraft.
It targets US bases, and Gulf Arab infrastructure, with some precision. Chinese and Russian help not only benefits it materially, but boosts the morale and self-belief of Iran’s rulers.
Any Trump escalation in Iran will lead to further disruption in the global economy and rising oil prices. This is disastrous politically for Trump and Republicans. It’s now all but certain Republicans lose the House in November’s midterm elections. They could well lose the Senate.

What's another bomb? Cars drive on the highway in front of a plume of smoke rising from the Dahieh neighbourhood after an Israeli airstrike on April 5 in Beirut. Picture: Getty Images

Put it another way, as they did in The Times ...

At this point, the bromancer began to waver, to have saucy doubts and fears ...

That provides a disincentive to escalation, but Trump may go that route anyway. He can’t run for re-election, and can’t accept defeat from Iran. But Iran won’t accept defeat either. While Tehran is weakened militarily, it’s earning about twice the revenue from oil sales that it earnt before the war. It’s letting tankers from “friendly” nations, such as China, pass through the Strait of Hormuz and charging a toll.
Geo-strategically, the big winner so far is Russia, earning billions and billions more for its oil, while the missiles and missile interceptors needed by Ukraine are expended and can’t be replaced at the rate they’re being used.
Trump is abusing allies, NATO especially, for not offering military support especially in the Strait of Hormuz. But this Trump demand is again literally incoherent. The US itself is not escorting any tankers through the Strait. It has not proposed a specific operation to clear the Strait. The Strait itself is so narrow, and drones now so cheap and plentiful, that it’s quite likely no operation to clear the Strait, short of invading Iran, is physically possible.
So why is Trump so wilfully mismanaging US allies, at such detriment to the US? US Studies Centre scholar Jared Mondschein offers one insight: “Trump has always seen NATO as something that entangles the US, rather than as a force multiplier as previous presidents did.”
If the Iranian regime survives this war and emerges with control of the Strait of Hormuz, it will likely earn enough revenue to rebuild its military, and it will have more influence on the global economy, and on the Middle East economy, than ever before.

Uh huh, that sounds like ending up way more tragedy than triumph, as the reptiles slipped in a final visual distraction: A protester waves the pre-Islamic Revolution Iranian flag and the Free France flag from World War II during a march against the Islamic Republic of Iran in Paris on April 5. Picture: AFP

But just as soon as the bro sees a little darkness, he turns around and discovers that mad King Donald has been "astonishingly effective":

Trump has often been astonishingly effective at overturning popular wisdom and winning politically – his two presidential victories, surviving all the legal charges thrown at him, decapitating the Venezuelan government, instituting a vast tariff regime without tanking the US or global economies.
This has made him overconfident. The tariffs didn’t work in policy terms. They didn’t cut the US trade deficit, didn’t create massive numbers of new manufacturing jobs, and led to China working out its far more powerful critical minerals weapon. Even to build the replacements to the weapons it’s using in Iran, the US needs Chinese critical minerals.
Trump is becoming more erratic even by his own standards. There is no one in this administration who talks back to him, gives him bad news, cautions him.
The near mass sackings of senior US generals are intensely disturbing. Senior military folks are not warmongers, but instinctively prudent, realistic. They also obey the law. In this most critical conflict, Trump’s hubris may well have led to severe, dangerous miscalculation. Then again, anything is possible, even a good outcome.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

And there you have it.

After all that, still the bromancer holds out hope, even for "even a good outcome".

What can you say, except that he's almost as barking mad as King Donald ...

At this point, the pond should note that the current reptile jihad continues, thanks to a bit of bitter Bita ...

Once they get their teeth into a victim, the vampire reptiles never let go of their jihads, not until the last drop of blood is sucked dry...

Nothing will stop them, not garlic, silver bullets, stakes in the heart, holy water or crucifixes in hand.

As an aside, the pond can't help but immediately think of Boris and Natasha whenever Natasha's name bobs up. (They even scored their own live-action movie)

To note the crusade isn't to endorse or join it and in the normal course of things, the pond would have sent Natasha's hit piece to the intermittent archive ... but the archive is acting kinda funny at the moment, and the pond had trouble saving a link.

For those who care and want to try at some point ...

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation%2Ftaxpayerfunded-academic-cited-romance-novels-as-research-to-secure-900000-grant%2Fnews-story%2Fc3b530ba38957bf4a633ffb20f45077b?amp

(Hang on a mo', it came to life. Hopefully it will stop working again soon and save a stray correspondent from the jihad)

The pond was left wondering what it must feel like to hack away daily at hit pieces for the lizard Oz, with seemingly the sole purpose to generate fear, hate and loathing in the hive mind.

What an empty life ... it's not as if there aren't more obvious targets...

And that brings the pond to that lesser member of the Kelly gang, a certain Joe, who earlier had also tried to sort out mad King Donald for the reptiles ...

The header: Donald Trump faces blowback whether he strikes Iran’s infrastructure or backs down; Striking Iranian power plants risks punishing civilians and handing Tehran a propaganda win.

The caption for a man imitating a cane toad: US President Donald Trump has extended his deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Picture: AFP

The good thing about Joe's piece was that it was just two minutes long, and could be swallowed in a bite, with Joe showing signs of a little more concern than the bromancer:

Donald Trump needs to urgently land a deal with Tehran given his threats to target civilian infrastructure – a step which risks punishing the Iranian people in his ongoing military campaign against the Islamic regime.
The US President has now extended his deadline for the regime to reopen the Strait of Hormuz until Tuesday at 8pm local time (10am Wednesday AEST) before he begins destroying Iran’s power plants and other infrastructure.
If Trump makes good on his threat, Iran will undoubtedly use the strikes for propaganda purposes to try to galvanise popular support against Washington and strengthen its own domestic position.
Doubts are already being raised over the extent to which US attacks on energy plants and other infrastructure will advance the key objectives set out by the administration at the start of the war.
Questions over the legality of potential strikes on civilian infrastructure will also risk staining the legitimacy of the US campaign against an oppressive regime.
More broadly, it may further isolate Washington and draw criticism from trusted allies and partners.
None of the options is good.
The US President faces blowback if he follows through on his threat. But if he continues to extend the deadline, his threats lose credibility.
Another option is the deployment of ground troops, with more than 50,000 US forces now in the Middle East that could be used to help secure the Strait by force, seize the regime’s enriched uranium or capture the oil terminal on Kharg Island to use as leverage – all options fraught with the risk of US casualties.
Six weeks after launching Operation Epic Fury, the frustration of the US President boiled over in his Truth Social post on Easter Sunday where he called on the regime to “open the f..kin’ strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in hell”.
An eleventh-hour deal would give Trump an offramp from the cycle of escalation he now finds himself in, although both sides remain far apart.
The terms of any agreement and what happens to the Strait of Hormuz would be seen as the crucial measure of who holds the upper hand.
Iran is demanding that it retain control over the waterway – an unacceptable outcome for Washington and the world.
A new front has also emerged in the conflict in the form of a deeper and profound rift between the US and Europe. This threatens to be one of the most consequential developments of the conflict so far.
Already Trump’s position on NATO has shifted decisively.
His previous complaint was that the alliance wasn’t working given the free-riding of European partners. But now he has adopted a more confronting and existential position: he no longer believes in NATO at all.

The debate is no longer about European nations paying more.
Trump is now publicly canvassing a withdrawal and making clear that the trust underpinning the alliance has been killed off by the refusal of US allies and partners to secure the Strait of Hormuz.
White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told The Australian that “President Trump has made his disappointment with NATO and other allies clear, and as the President emphasised, ‘the United States will remember’.”
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is due to meet with Trump on Wednesday, an opportunity to try to repair the damage in the transatlantic partnership.
In practical terms, Trump’s disenchantment may have meaningful consequences for Europe and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, including the diversion of US military resources and munitions intended for Ukraine to assist the Iranian war campaign.
A key risk is Trump washing his hands of the conflict in Eastern Europe given his belief the US was abandoned by its allies in the Middle East.

A key risk?

Oh Joe, Joe, mad King Donald abandoned the Ukrainians long ago, and has done everything in his power to help out and enable Vlad the sociopath, and now keeps boasting about how he can emulate Vlad's war criminal behaviour by bombing Iran back to the stone age ...

And now thanks to mad King Donald and the reptiles, the pond comes to a genuine curiosity ...

The header: Donald Trump using the F-word is the least of our problems with the President; There is a bit of General George Patton in Trump, in the way he bullies through with little concern for consequences.

The caption for that snap of a maniacal grin: This is not US President Donald Trump’s first excursion into obscenity. Picture: AFP

The pond confesses to not having thought of Jack Marx for years, and so was completely surprised to see him bob up in the hive mind.

His wiki listing is out of date, and his Facebook page has just 121 followers ... with his last post a couple of years old and about his struggles in rehab.

His return would have been interesting if he'd had something remotely interesting to say ...

It has been said that taboo slang is the last bastion of the intellectually bankrupt. But outrage in the face of it – hand-to-bosom shock at an F-word – is surely the Alamo of the morally fraudulent.
Such impostors are living large this week, on the back of Donald Trump having used the notorious “doing word” in a post on Truth Social. (Those easily offended should be assured, however, that they can approach the following paragraph with confidence.)
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran,” the American President wrote. “There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F..kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Actually that's not what he said ... this is what he said ...

Yes, he used the "f" word in full, he didn't slip in dots or asterisks or dashes or some other tomfoolery, which is why the reptiles diluting it was full of rich irony - as if they were being run by the google bot overlord who takes a view on what turns up in this blog.

Suddenly Jack's attempt at being a hard hitting takedown artist looked pretty feeble ...

The post was directed at Iran, whose leaders really should have been more offended by Trump’s obviously ironic abuse of the Prophet’s name. But Seyyed Mehdi Tabatabaei, deputy for communications at the Iranian President’s office, seemed more alarmed by the swearing, declaring Trump had “resorted to obscenities and nonsense out of sheer desperation and anger”.
Also deeply hurt was Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene – the devout Christian who was banned from Twitter for “multiple violations of our civic integrity policy” – who called fellow Republican Lauren Boebert a “little bitch” and recommended the then Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, be executed. Greene said everyone in Trump’s administration needed to “beg forgiveness from God” for Donald’s vulgarity. God, it seems, has no problem with corruption, infidelity or homicidal wrath, but really gets upset when confronted by a bit of the old bad language.

Jack decided to dress this latest example of dementia in action as a form of "plain speaking" ... US President Donald Trump is a plain speaker. Picture: AFP

Actually like a lot of swearing, it's merely a sign of impotence, frustration and a limited vocabulary.

When you get down to basics, it's deeply pathetic.

Jack was all in on being naughty, except he still couldn't be properly naughty, at least when it came to the dreaded "f" word (the pond could also sense the evil google bot hovering, ready to strike, but Jack and the reptiles of Oz saved the pond's bacon):

Everyone seems to have forgotten this is not Donald Trump’s first excursion into obscenity. In 2018, he referred to African countries as “shitholes”. In 2020, on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, he told the Islamic Republic there would be trouble “if you f..k around with us”. And last year he referred to Israel and Iran as two countries that “don’t know what the f..k they’re doing”. When it comes to scandalous utterances, Donald Trump is no Pat Boone.
And then there’s the word itself, irrespective of who is using it. It’s quite bizarre that it’s deemed offensive, considering what it represents. It describes an act of creation – the privatisation of The Big Bang – which is the reason we are all here. We should be more offended by “death”, “murder”, “cancer”, “lack of air”.
My father died last week. I watched him take his last breath. It fell to me to deliver his eulogy, and the choice of words has never been heavier. I felt bossed about by that odd aversion to crude absolutes, like “death”, “dead” and “died”, some pansy voice inside me suggesting “passed”, “passed away” and “no longer with us” instead. I ignored that voice. I’m glad I did. My dad was a plain speaker.
Donald Trump is a plain speaker, too. The unwise do not have the luxury to be manipulative. He says whatever comes into his head, and it’s left to his handlers to clean up the mess. He might be the first politician in history whose words can be absolutely trusted, even if his motives cannot.

Stupid is as stupid scribbles, and the reptiles blessed us with another snap of a man whose words apparently can absolutely be trusted ... except in the many ways he lies and tells porkies and invents alternative realities... US President Donald Trump gestures after speaking at a televised address on the conflict in the Middle East. Picture: AFP

Perhaps with Jack's guidance, the pond might learn to trust King Donald's words in due course ... possibly the process might only take those immortal two weeks the mad king keeps talking about ...

It’s a very American thing to speak with recklessness and discourtesy. General George Patton was good at it, got pounded for saying “the wrong thing”, and for that was forever loved. There’s a bit of Patton in Trump, in the way he bullies through with little concern for consequences.
Patton was no strategist – he believed in charging ahead at full speed, using profane language to inspire his men to follow him (those who recall Franklin Schaffner’s film from 1970 will remember it well). Trump does the same; his army of followers willing to go with him, die with him. They will, too. But they won’t do so because Donald Trump uses bad language. Rude words never hurt anyone. It’s Donald Trump’s mind, the thing with which he sleeps, that is the danger. We should be thankful, I guess, that the window to his mind is yawning open. Even if there are rude words in there, I think we can handle it.
Those focusing on Trump’s profanity are like people beating up fleas in a catfight. The administration he captains is guilty of many things, but ribald language is the least of them. It’s hardly surprising – those in an argument who’ve run out of ammunition always pick on the bad language of their adversary, as if piety is more important than acumen. F..k that.

Oh dear. An attempt at a final flourish, and still the dots got in the way.

That saved the pond from its omniscient overlord, the google bot, but it didn't help Jack maintain his hard-swearing tough guy pose ...

And so to Dame Groan, and the reason the pond dilly-dallied and delayed with Joe and Jack was that it would make the arrival at the Tuesday groaning all the sweeter and more rewarding ...

The header: Our war on fossil fuels is ending in a battle for energy; The so-called ‘experts’ simply did not accept the possibility renewable energy would not replace fossil fuels.

The caption for the wildly exciting snap of gas guzzlers in a queue: Lining up at the bowser for petrol at Costco service station in Kilburn, South Australia. Picture: Brett Hartwig

The trouble with delaying Dame Groan's arrival is that instead of a cosmic explosion, an ecstatic eruption, it's more likely to be just the usual onanisms about renewables and climate science spilling to the ground ...

Dame Groan is an oil and gas junkie.

Always has been, always will be ...and how she hurts at the cruel way they've been treated ...

Australia has been waging a war against fossil fuels for nearly two decades. While Labor governments have fought this battle with the most aggression, Coalition governments have contributed as well. Recall here Morrison’s commitment to net zero 2050 made in 2021 on the eve of the COP climate meeting in Glasgow.
Working on the assumption that the net-zero transition is an economic prize – an assumption that is immediately refuted by dint of the necessary compulsion and large subsidies required to achieve it – Australia has put up multiple barriers to any fossil fuel-based developments.
Add in the false proposition that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy and we have been led down a path of economic harm and insecurity.
We are now witnessing the consequences of our overdependence on imported fossil fuels – think petrol, diesel, aviation fuel, helium, fertilisers, plastics – and an inability to remedy the situation in an acceptable time frame.
There was always an astonishing naivety – nay, complete ignorance – about the consequences of blocking the use and development of fossil fuels. Far too much attention was given to the electricity grid and the scope for turbines and solar panels to generate electrons to replace ageing coal-fired plants.
The external environmental costs of turbines, solar panels and large-scale batteries have essentially been ignored. True environmentalists should hang their collective heads in shame. As a less dense form of power than coal/gas/nuclear, renewable energy would always require vastly larger land masses, with much larger environmental footprints.
The need for extraordinarily expensive transmission lines has simply added to the catastrophe. There is also the important point that the turbines, solar panels and batteries have relatively short lives relative to coal-fired and nuclear plants, with the associated need for expensive replacement. But here’s the thing: notwithstanding the billions of dollars expended to spur the expansion of renewable energy, there hasn’t been a significant decline in the overall use of fossil fuels here. According to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, “fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) accounted for 91 per cent of Australia’s primary energy mix in 2023-24”. In energy terms, Australians consume twice as much in liquid fuels as in electricity.

Okay, so we've read it all before, and the pond is sure we'll read it all again, and as usual, the reptiles will parade the villains who have treated Dame Groan so vilely ... Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen pictured speaking at a press conference outside his electorate office in Fairfield West. Picture: NewsWire / Monique Harmer

Usually the pond would be inclined to slip in another story about how stuffed the planet is ... but not having the intermittent archive to hand means paywalls can get in the way.

What the heck ...

How to Poison an Ocean
Trump envisions a new era of offshore oil drilling. Scientists know all too well how that story ends.
By Jeffrey Marlow (*intermittent archive, still working?)

A teaser trailer ...

Meanwhile, the groaning carried on ...

The so-called “experts” simply didn’t accept the possibility renewable energy wouldn’t replace fossil fuels but would add to it. With the prospect of new data centres and their need for constant power (and water), there is a good chance that the proportion of our energy mix accounted for by fossil fuels could increase.
Far too much emphasis has been placed on the scope for electrification while ignoring the vital and largely uncontested role of fossil fuels in primary iron, cement, fertilisers and plastics. This naivety has been clearly demonstrated by recent events. It’s worth outlining how the war against fossil fuels has been waged by governments across many fronts to understand our current predicament.
To take a recent example, the mandate of the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation had been altered to prevent any investments in fossil fuels. To ensure ongoing oil delivery, however, the Albanese government has had to reverse this mandate.
Then there are the recent amendments to the Environmental Protection and Biosecurity Act, which explicitly exclude fossil fuel projects from using the streamlined assessment pathway.
They cannot obtain the benefit of being classified a “national interest proposal” or be granted an exemption from being a “restricted action” in a conservation zone. The likely effect is to thwart new fossil fuel developments, including drilling for oil.

There followed another snap of assorted villains ... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Treasurer Jim Chalmers, and Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen hold a joint press conference at Parliament House on the national fuel security crisis and emergency economic measures. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Dame Groan's lust for oil was worse than a meth addict looking for a fix ...

The mandate of the Future Fund was changed in 2024 to include support for the energy transition as one of three priorities, effectively ruling out large-scale investment in fossil fuels. The federal government funds anti-fossil fuel groups such as the Environmental Defenders Office to pursue legal action against fossil fuel developments. The recently concluded Australia-EU Free Trade Agreement contains “a binding commitment to implement obligations under the Paris Agreement on climate change”.
The point is that the federal government executes its anti-fossil fuel stance in many ways in addition to the massive subsidies made available to the transition of the electricity grid. It is hardly surprising therefore that exploration for oil, for example, has effectively dried up, notwithstanding the fact that there are a number of highly prospective areas in this country.
It was only two decades ago that we were nearly self-sufficient in oil; we are now down to 20 per cent and falling. We no longer have a large-scale urea factory – the Gibson Island plant closed two years ago – and Qenos, the country’s largest producer of polyethylene and polymers, has also shut up shop. Mind you, state governments, including Coalition ones, have also demonstrated hostility to fossil fuels by facilitating the rollout of renewable energy and refusing to green-light any new or replacement coal-fired power plants. They have blocked or significantly delayed fossil fuel exploration and extraction. They have also wasted money on unachievable pipedreams – green hydrogen in South Australia, anyone?
It’s worth noting the economic effects of this intransigent opposition to fossil fuels. According to CBA Economics, “the closure of critical air and shipping routes, especially the Strait of Hormuz, is rupturing fragile global supply chains, slowing down the passage and pushing up prices of a variety of products, including oil, gas, chemicals, resins, fertilisers, cement and grains”.

A last snap of the villain in chief, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen speaking to an Endeavour Energy employee in Bidwill, Western Sydney launching a local community battery. Picture: Jane Dempster / The Australian

... followed by a last groaning and a sighing, and Dame Groan's despair at the way that we still haven't sufficiently f*cked the earth, the sky and the oceans (*you see Jack, we all end up wimps under the iron rule of the google bot overlord):

The further point is that “the elongated supply chain disruption in the Middle East has exposed vulnerabilities in Australian fuel markets, with the country heavily reliant on importation of liquid fuels such as refined petroleum, diesel and jet fuel to power our domestic energy-intensive industries”. The industries singled out as being particularly vulnerable include agriculture, transport, construction and mining.
The idea of running a “just in time” economy has a certain appeal until consideration is given to the large adverse consequences of disruptions to vital supply chains. It might look cheaper at the time, but the real costs become apparent when the flows of vital inputs to economic activity are impeded and their price skyrockets. We should have learned that lesson from the Covid experience, but it was essentially ignored.
A reserve of petrol/diesel/aviation fuel of around 30 days was always insufficient. It also puts us at significant odds with many other countries. Australia needs to remove immediately the impediments to increasing the domestic availability of liquid fuels lest we find ourselves in this position time and time again.

The pond has said it before and will say it again. If we don't get off being oil and gas and coal junkies, there won't be much of a future ...

The old biddy has done a lot of her time already, but the pond quaintly imagined that white Xian nationalists in the lizard Oz wanted children to inherit an earth.

Instead we're in the last chance theatre watching Godot's last stand or Krapp's last tape ...

It's always in the details ... especially that shadowy figure lurking in the wings that the bromancer never manages to see ...

Good old Sky (no rebrand yet?), good old Covid Sharri, good old war mongering Faux Noise, good old Jesse and his mum ...

Crazy times ... crazy people ...

In which Lord Downer goes biblical, the Caterist goes Ming, and Major Mitchell goes full Pauline ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 21:42:00 +0000

The pond had hoped to be able to put aside friendly atheist Easter banter and get back to the main sociopathic extreme far right lizard Oz reptile business - ruining the fragile condition of the planet even more than it is at the moment.

After all, if you happen to read the whole bible - which to its eternal shame, the pond has done a couple of times - after you've got past the begats and the dystopian vision of the old testament, there's only so long you can try to ignore the socialistic, almost full commie, fully woke talk in Christ's new testament teachings (especially if you ignore misogynistic late comers like St Paul, and note that Christ was even prepared to give hookers a fair go, and had not a word to say about teh gaze).

But then Lord Downer had to come along on Easter feria secunda and ruin it all...

The header: Why we must resist the progressive push to abolish our core Australian traditions; An ABC announcer’s reluctance to mention Good Friday while discussing fish sales has highlighted progressive efforts to diminish Christian traditions in Australian society.

The caption for the flag-waving snap: A Royal Australian Navy MH-60R Seahawk flies the flag on Australia Day. The progressive left has taken aim at the national flag and many of our traditions.

The pond was tempted to send this nonsensical blather straight to the intermittent archive - his effort was there early in the Mōnandæg morning - but it's been acting kinda funny lately, and how could the pond deprive others of the chance to plunge into a dose of white Xian nationalism, His Lordship style, especially as it's all the fault of the ABC:

Last Friday morning an ABC announcer told us there was a big upsurge in sales of fish at the new Sydney Fish Market. When she was speculating as to why, she thought it was because last Friday was a public holiday.
She couldn’t bring herself to remind us that Friday was Good Friday, a day of huge significance to the large number of Australians who are Christians. It is the tradition for Christians on Good Friday to eat fish. That an ABC announcer should avoid any reference to Good Friday should come as no surprise. The ABC, particularly in Sydney, is run by the progressive left.

Dear sweet long absent lord, are we all tykes now?

Back in the day, the pond can remember proddie swine giving tykes a terribly hard time about eating fish on Friday:

It sounds like the plot of a Dan Brown thriller: A powerful medieval pope makes a secret pact to prop up the fishing industry that ultimately alters global economics. The result: Millions of Catholics around the world end up eating fish on Fridays as part of a religious observance.
This "realpolitik" explanation of why Catholics eat fish on Friday has circulated for so long, many people grew up believing it as fact. Some, myself included, even learned it in Catholic school. It's a humdinger of a tale — the kind conspiracy theorists can really sink their teeth into. But is it true?

The answer at NPR here had this annotation ...

...after Henry became smitten with Anne Boleyn, English fish-eating took a nosedive.
You see, Henry was desperate with desire for Anne — but Anne wanted a wedding ring. The problem was, Henry already had a wife, Catherine of Aragon, and the pope refused to annul that decades' long marriage. So Henry broke off from the Roman Catholic Church, declared himself the head of the Church of England and divorced Catherine so he could marry Anne.
Suddenly, eating fish became political. Fish was seen as a " 'popish flesh' that lost favour as fast as Anglicism took root," as Kate Colquhoun recounts in her book Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking.

Well yes, they were still carrying on that way about fish-eating in the tykes v proddy wars in Tamworth in the twentieth century, but do go on ...

Fishermen were hurting. So much so that when Henry's young son, Edward VI, took over in 1547, fast days were reinstated by law — "for worldly and civil policy, to spare flesh, and use fish, for the benefit of the commonwealth, where many be fishers, and use the trade of living."
In fact, fish fasting remained surprisingly influential in global economics well into the 20th century.
As one economic analysis noted, U.S. fish prices plummeted soon after Pope Paul VI loosened fasting rules in the 1960s. The Friday meat ban, by the way, still applies to the 40 days of the Lenten fast.
A few years before the Vatican relaxed the rules, Lou Groen, an enterprising McDonald's franchise owner in a largely Catholic part of Cincinnati, found himself struggling to sell burgers on Fridays. His solution? The Filet-O-Fish.
While not exactly the miracle of loaves and fishes, Groen's little battered sandwich has fed millions around the world.

So there's the answer. Food that passingly resembles fish, but tastes like cardboard.

A treatise on fish eating was the last place the pond had expected His Lordship to take his readers, and yet here we are.

The pond decided to let His Lordship have the rest of his say without any theological niceties intruding on the rant ...

Oh sheesh, not the whole bloody war on Xmas thingie again, in bloody April!

Let’s understand what members of the progressive left are trying to achieve. They want to deconstruct existing society and replace it with their conception of a utopian society. To achieve this quiet revolution they not only aim to direct control over the private lives of individuals but they want to destroy many of our traditions, be they public or private.
Some of the traditions they want to abolish are relatively minor and some are significant. Where once we happily sent cards in December wishing people a Merry Christmas, the progressive left just says “Happy Holidays”. Let’s abolish Christmas. In the progressive world, Christianity and Christian celebrations should be downgraded.
That applies to Easter as well. The Easter holidays are just an excuse to have two extra days off. The progressives wouldn’t want to mention why or the origins of these celebrations.
Progressives want to get rid of as many links as we have with Britain, despite the fact modern Australia has its roots in the UK. King’s Counsels are to become senior counsels. Judges should abandon their robes. The monarchy is to be abolished. The national flag should be changed or, if that’s too difficult, other symbolic flags should also be flown alongside it to reduce its status as a symbol of the nation. Australia Day should be replaced altogether. The list is a long one.
Interestingly, while progressives want to abolish most of the traditions of modern Australia, they nevertheless worship the traditions of other cultures. Our progressive Prime Minister acknowledged the beginning of Ramadan but totally ignored Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Indeed they don’t object to those non-European traditions being injected into our society as long as our more familiar traditions are abolished, such is the incoherence of the ideology of progressives. They are more defined by what they dislike rather than what they like.
This progressive agenda, which has increasingly gained traction in Australia, should be resisted. It needs to be resisted for two reasons. First, deconstructing existing society and trying to reconstruct it along the lines of some utopian model always fails. You don’t have to go back far in history to see that Robespierre’s France, Lenin’s plans for Russia, Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Hitler and Mussolini’s visions in Europe all ended in disaster. In every case they tried to build a model society, tearing down institutions and traditions to build something completely new in their place. To do that they had to compel people to abandon their way of life, and that involved brutal coercion.
Second, the societies that have thrived have been ones that have maintained strong traditions while embracing modernity and change to ensure society remains workable and prosperous. As circumstances and technology change, so too should institutions and traditions evolve.
Being open to modernity and evolution is common sense. Traditions are the important foundation for the durability and coherence of society.
In a world of constant and rapid change, traditions provide a sense of stability. Traditions anchor people. They connect the past, the present and the future so life doesn’t feel like a random sequence of events. Looked at another way, in a world where modernisation is inevitable and technological change is largely welcome, traditions provide continuity and grounding for society.
Traditions are more than that. They are also about identity. They tell you what group you belong to, whether that’s a family, a nation, or a culture. Without them, a country is just a group of taxpayers who happen to share physical space.

As befits a spray of white Xian nationalism (to hell with the Jews and the Islamics and the secularists), the reptiles featured a foreshadowing of later Anzac action as the sole remaining visual interruption... Abolishing Anzac Day would attack the heart of our national self-image. Picture: Evan Morgan

Perhaps Lord Downer is right, perhaps this tendency to modernity is ruining everything, perhaps people should look to traditional pursuits, which would place them in the mainstream of modern American 'looning ...

Oh you sly old devil, you eye-catching rogue ...

As for the rest, you've heard it a zillion times, and here it is for the zillionth and once time ...

Modern Australia has developed its own traditions across the past 238 years. We honour Anzac Day as the day when we remember those who have sacrificed for the nation. Abolishing Anzac Day would attack the heart of our national self-image.
Australia Day celebrates the founding of modern Australia. To abolish Australia Day is seen by many as a strike against our pride in our nation and its history.
We celebrate Christmas and Easter as Christian holidays because modern Australia was founded as a Christian society. In the last census 43 per cent of Australians identified as Christians, yet only 3.1 per cent identified as Muslims and fewer still as Hindus and Buddhists. While we respect traditions of other societies, we expect our traditions to be properly respected too and our traditions are steeped in history.
As a society we may not be as Christian as we once were – 39 per cent say they have no religion. But Christianity forms the foundation of our modern society; our morality, our human rights, our commitment to the equal value of all individuals regardless of their gender and ethnicity. In our society all these things are derived from Christian teaching.
Then there are the rites of passage: at birth there are everything from baptisms to baby showers. There are weddings and funerals. The format of these traditions has gradually changed. There are fewer weddings in churches and more at the beach. You’re likelier to hear a welcome to country than the Lord‘s Prayer at a wedding! But the institution of marriage has remained because it helps to provide continuity and certainty in relationships that may bring children into the world.
Members of the progressive left mock our traditions. They want to get rid of them. Some recognise politically that such changes will take a great deal of time but the ambition is there to get rid of our traditions. If they succeed they will hollow out our society and we will be nothing more than millions of individuals living on our vast island, disconnected from our past and disconnected from each other.

Ah, it's all the fault of those deviant uppity blacks, carrying on as if they were first in country.

Thank you Lord Downer ...

Before proceeding further, the pond should note a splendid new bit of visual cleverness in the reptile's "news" coverage.

A bifurcated, loosely animated set of rotating images! Look, AI magic, an AI marvel ...

Oh dear, not One Nation again, as Geoff chambered a round and Brownie was so desperate he turned to comrade Bill ... (what next, comrade Dan makes a comeback? Desperate times)

Sorry, the pond had to send them to the intermittent archive, because the Caterist was loose in a quarry and inspecting the flow of floodwaters again ...

The header: Political leaders trade clarity for data-driven clicks in digital era; In an interconnected world in which we rely on a global energy market, the idea we can stand apart is a comforting fiction.

The caption for that sneering man: The messaging of the Prime Minister made a persuasive case for nothing. Picture: Martin Ollman

At the moment, the pond would settle for nothing, with nobody a close second ... but go on, do the Ming the Merciless trick we love so well ...

In the era of TikTokification, political leaders seldom talk to people. They talk to the algorithm, the invisible hand of the digital communications market that rewards not what is true or important but what is likeliest to hold attention.
Anyone who expected Anthony Albanese’s address to the nation last week to be imbued with the gravity of, say, Robert Menzies’ 1939 declaration of war was bound to be disappointed.
Menzies’ radio broadcast was delivered live as an unskippable, unclippable speech, marshalling facts in logical sequence to make a persuasive case for war.
Albanese’s speech, by contrast, was a grab-bag of brief, search engine-optimised statements, making a persuasive case for nothing while failing to resolve competing propositions.
The Prime Minister’s insistence that Australia is “not a participant” in the conflict is not so much wrong as beside the point.
In an interconnected world in which we rely on a global energy market, the idea we can stand apart is a comforting fiction.

The reptiles made sure to note where the fault lay, and a grievous fault it was ... Anthony Albanese failed to spark the nation with his address. Picture: David Beach

That snap of the downcast man inspired the quarry cultist to new heights ...

More important, it avoids the more difficult question: where, in strategic and moral terms, does Australia stand?
Iran is not a distant or neutral actor. Its conduct, including hostile activity on Australian soil, is that of an enemy. A government with a clear strategic compass would recognise the war against Iran is in Australia’s interests. It would acknowledge without equivocation the longstanding basis of its support for Israel.
While the analog era rewarded clarity and conviction, the digital world encourages content banks of safe, repeatable and context-free fragments.
The trend towards data-driven, emotionally calibrated messaging, accelerated by artificial intelligence, helps explain why political language often feels formulaic, repetitive and risk-averse. At consequential moments such as this, that becomes a problem, particularly in the democratic world, where leaders require consent for sacrifice.
In his televised address at the start of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, John F. Kennedy delivered one of the finest and most persuasive speeches of his presidency. The build-up of Soviet missiles had been secret, swift and extraordinary, he said. The US didn’t seek conflict but it had been taught a clear lesson in the 1930s: aggressive conduct, if left unchecked, ultimately leads to war.

Hmm, the pond is getting more than a faint whiff of war mongering, backed by this interrupting snap, and Xian messaging from a notorious flogger of Chinese-manufactured bibles ... US President Donald Trump delivers a message on Holy Week – ‘Happy Easter to all, may God bless you, may God bless the United States of America’. Picture: X/WhiteHouse

Some faint sense of reality about the mad King finally entered the flood-water divining Caterist picture ...

Contrast that with Donald Trump’s eight-minute video posted on Truth Social announcing the start of hostilities against Iran on February 28.
The underlying reason for action – to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons – was the same yet the tone was different. Trump promised “a massive and ongoing operation” against “a very wicked, radical dictatorship”. It would raze Iran’s missile industry to the ground, annihilate its navy.
Unlike JFK, Trump has failed to convince nonpartisan Americans to rally around the flag. In 1962, the administration’s action had broad support among Republicans and Democrats. In 2026, support for US action falls mainly along party political lines.
Almost alone among democratic leaders, Trump has embraced social media boldly and provocatively.
His predecessor, Joe Biden, took the more common path of cautious and repetitive framing, using words that would remain safe when clipped and were therefore insufferably bland. His platform-friendly statement to Americans that “we’re going to be OK … making progress … building back better” were easy to remember and even easier to forget.

Boldly and provocatively?

The pond is always impressed by the Caterist's way with words. Others might call it Batshyte Crazy ...

Trump Triggers 25th Amendment Calls With Unhinged Easter Meltdown (intermittent archive)

Oh dear, and then we'd get JD ... out of the battered fish frying pan into the battered fish griller.

But the pond gets the Caterist point.

Why not join this sundowning weirdo on a little excursion, a little journey, even if the Poms are a tad reluctant and yearning to overturn Brexit? British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has also taken a risk-averse approach. Picture: Getty Images

Talk about scaredy cats ...get down with the bold, brave Caterist, always up for risk-taking and bunging on a do ...

Britain’s Keir Starmer has taken the same safe path and is now widely considered to be in his death throes as Prime Minister: bloodless, managerial, risk-averse to the point of opacity.
Like Starmer, Albanese keeps his animating vision, if he has one, close to his chest. Last week’s National Press Club speech bore the hallmarks of modern industrial political communication: modular construction, repetition and emotional calibration. It cycles through the empathetic settings of concern (“I understand”), reassurance (“commonsense approach”) and communal obligation (“looking after people”, “working together”), hiding its moral vagueness under a blanket of emotional warmth.
Albanese’s lips were moving but what was he saying? Was it a war speech? A fuel crisis and national resilience speech? Was it a Future Made in Australia speech, a gambling reform speech or a budget preview? It was all of them and none of them at once. Its core weakness was its failure to answer the hard questions it raises.
Albanese says the degrading of Iran’s military capacity is “a good thing” but doesn’t explain why when Australia is not an active participant, as we have been in other major wars in which the US has engaged. He calls for de-escalation but it is not clear whether Australia supports continuation of the campaign and Trump’s threat to “rain hell” on Iran or if he believes action is strategically justified beyond its original objectives.
Crucially, he does not say what costs Australians should be prepared to bear in return for a noble victory, if there can be one.
Instead the Prime Minister finds himself wedged, like Shakespeare’s Prince of Denmark, caught between passive suffering of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and taking arms in the war it entails.

A noble victory? That's what they're calling war crimes these days? The reported wreckage and remains of targeted and crashed US aircraft in central Iran on Sunday. Picture: Sepah News/AFP

For some reason, at that moment the careening Caterist careered off into the digital era...

If the tech-savvy, smart young things who advise Albanese thought their boss would be basking in adulation by the end of the week, they clearly underestimated popular intelligence. At a moment of genuine consequence – global instability, supply shocks and the risk of inflation tipping into recession – people expect leadership.
Yet the PM had almost nothing to say about the cause of the oil shortages that were the ostensible reason for commanding three minutes and 13 seconds of prime time: the US and Israeli military action against a despotic regime that presents a real and present danger to the peace-loving world.
Instead, he seeks to befog the debate with a checklist of policies that conveys a sense of busyness. His government is acting to keep Australia moving, to make the country stronger and fairer, stronger because it is fairer, recognising there is no security in maintaining a status quo that doesn’t work for people. On and on it goes, the rhetorical equivalent of hotel lobby music: short sentences and simple syntax, heavy in emotional legibility but low in analytical density, full of sound and fury and symbolising nothing.
It’s tempting to arrive at Byung-Chul Han’s dismal conclusion in his 2022 book Infocracy: Digitisation and the Crisis of Democracy, which argues democracy will not be defeated by censorship but by overload of information that fragments attention and dissolves shared meaning.
However much technology may dominate our lives, we must be wary of such deterministic narratives and remind ourselves that the pursuit of freedom that inspires democracy is not an ideological construct but a response to human nature.
The political leadership to navigate a path through the digital era in a way that strengthens rather than erodes democracy will one day emerge, even if it is not immediately apparent among current global leaders.

Thank you quarry meister and the pond will pay attention to all the digital lessons to be learned in the King Donald era ...

Forgotten already, her noble work already just digital fush and chups wrappings?

And here the pond was faced with an agonising choice, a bit like a mother caught between choosing one child over the other, when truly both are blessed...

Cruel, inhuman fiends for forcing the pond to make a choice...

Sadly the pond had to send simpleton Simon to the intermittent archive with a god speed and a teaser trailer ...

What a wondrous snap of a bemused, quizzical, perhaps a tad startled beefy boofhead from down Goulburn.

How the pond was torn, how the pond would have loved to have stayed on with simpleton Simon, and shared the snap that immediately followed...of a man in proper, prayerful, gesticulating Easter form ...

Ye ancient cats and howling dogs, what ghostly figure is that in the background?

But the Major called, and the sacrifice was worth it, because Major Mitchell was dealing with the crisis in his own inimitable way ... by writing a stump speech for Pauline, outlining all the ways she could succeed, if only she followed his Major thoughts ...

The header: How economic decline and voter anger are fuelling the rise of One Nation; Political analysts once dismissed One Nation voters as globalisation’s losers, but the party now threatens to reshape Australian politics.

The caption for that leering Jimbo: Treasurer Jim Chalmers needs backing to use the May 12 budget to stimulate productivity and begin budget repair. Picture: Martin Ollman

The Major was in bigly five minute read form, and for once there wasn't much to appeal to readers of the Australian Daily Zionist News ...but it should produce oodles of converts to the Pauline cause ...

Thirty years ago, political analysts thought One Nation voters were the economic losers of globalisation.
Today globalisation is dead but One Nation is on the rise, polling a quarter of the vote.
Its rise reflects the decline in our nation’s political, media and business culture.
The timidity of both sides of politics since John Howard’s November 2007 election loss is eating away at their electoral support.
This column on February 8 quoted former ABC election analyst Antony Green suggesting Pauline Hanson’s party could win up to 25 federal seats if its support held up. That piece warned Labor might be the big winner as One Nation cannibalised Liberal and National Party seats.
Fast forward to the South Australian election on March 21. One Nation picked up three or four Lower House seats and the Liberals lost 11 to finish with five. Assorted independents won four.
Peter Malinauskas’s Labor government won seven extra seats to finish with 34 in the 47-seat Lower House.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap of that woman, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party has reeped (sic, the pond only records, and never corrects, being in something of a typo glass house without the wonders of a spell checker) the benefit of working class abandoning Labor. Picture: Martin Ollman.

The Major did his very best to make a good stump speech for Pauline and One Nation ... so many Major talking points...

The pattern could be repeated in Victoria on November 28, where One Nation seems certain to win seats and young Liberal leader Jess Wilson is being hurt by her party’s limitless propensity for self-harm, this time over the preselection of pro-women campaigner Moira Deeming.
It would be a travesty were Labor Premier Jacinta Allan to win with what is easily the worst record in government, state or federal, this century.
Former NSW premier Mike Baird in this newspaper on Wednesday said the economy had been growing at an average 2.5 per cent a year since 2011 but debt had been rising 3 per cent a year. This had left all levels of government with a $48bn annual interest bill.
This “is 2½ times what we spend on policing across the country, it is more than we spend on aged care, it is enough money to upgrade the Bruce Highway six times, build three WestConnex motorways or three Melbourne Metros each and every year”, Mr Baird wrote.
Australia is languishing with poor productivity and high population growth.
These problems disproportionately affect lower socio-economic demographics in the outer suburbs of our large cities, regional towns and rural Australia.
These are One Nation hot spots, and federal Labor knows it too could lose seats in places such as the Hunter.
Yet concern about high immigration is treated by much of the left media as a trojan horse for racism. Never mind few leaders in media, business or politics live in areas where new schools, roads, public transport, hospitals and jobs are not keeping up with population growth.
ABC journalists are more interested in non-means-tested welfare handouts than budget repair.
Productivity is treated as a way to squeeze more from the poor. Journalists have forgotten the 30 years of uninterrupted growth the productivity improvements of the 1980s and 90s gave Australia.
Kos Samaras, from the RedBridge polling group, in The Australian Financial Review on March 30, described the rise of One Nation as a “story about what happens when a significant cohort of Australians spends nearly two decades watching its world dismantled, its concerns dismissed and its votes treated as a problem to be managed rather than a signal to be heard”.
Samaras cites the closure of the car industry in Victoria and South Australia as the beginning of the end of Australian manufacturing.
Rapid declines in steelmaking, textiles, abattoirs and canneries shook the faith of “people with TAFE qualifications, trade certificates and decades of embodied knowledge the market, suddenly, had no use for”.
Samaras rejects the idea that One Nation voters are being manipulated.
“They have lived, for nearly two decades, through the managed decline of the world they were promised, and they have watched the institutions charged with their welfare either accelerate that decline or look away.”
For many, the bipartisan commitment to net-zero emissions is as big a threat to jobs as mass immigration is to living standards.
Labor’s primary vote is near historic lows, despite holding 94 of 150 federal seats. Facing an oil shock that will lift inflation past 5 per cent and could dramatically slow growth, our cautious PM needs to give Treasurer Jim Chalmers room to use the May 12 budget to stimulate productivity and begin budget repair.

The reptiles then slipped in a snap of Peter in the sort of head gear you need when taking pot shots of a Glock 9mm kind at writers' festivals ... Re-elected South Australian Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas. Picture: Eleni Tzanos (When I hear 'culture', I release the safety catch on my Browning!)

Then the Major carried on in reliable reptile renewables bashing way ...

It’s a nightmare for a Treasurer who looks like going into a slowdown with the prospect of at least two more interest rate rises this year.
After the GFC and Covid, Labor really should have been squirrelling away money from the mining boom to prepare for the next economic shock. Unfortunately its idea of reform has been about raising more tax and giving away more money.
Last week it signalled it is looking at the capital gains tax discount on investor housing. This may temporarily quiet complaints about housing affordability but is likely to raise much less money than the Greens claim, while investors will ramp up rents to offset the increased costs of tax changes.
The government – like Nationals leader Matt Canavan and Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie – talks about supply chain resilience and making more of what we need here.
Unfortunately, Labor’s Future Made in Australia policies look like an old-fashioned case of picking winners.
We were told last term that Australia was going to lead the world in green hydrogen and green steel. Albanese earmarked a billion taxpayer dollars for the “solar sunshot” plan to make solar panels here but little has happened.
It wold (sic, the pond merely transcribes) be far smarter to boost productivity in things Australia is good at: selling iron ore, coal, gas and uranium.

How about opening gas exploration in places such as Victoria?

Indeed, indeed ...

The fuel crisis shows the energy future3 has arrived. All Barnaby Joyce and One Nation have to offer is bluster ...

From early birds to emerging butterflies: UK shows signs of earliest spring on record ...

See where flowers and leaves arer emerging early after record-warm March ...

What could go wrong?

Trump wants to remake the way we fight wildfires. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
The new Wildland Fire Service will consolidate all Interior Department firefighting efforts as a lacking winter and ongoing drought promises a bad fire season. (Sorry, last two links to intermittent archive)

Well the pond did begin by wondering when we could return to getting back to turning an already dire planet into a worse one, in accordance with the lizard Oz's climate science denying agenda, and here we are, as the Major finishing scribbling his stump speech for Pauline ...

The Australian’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly on March 27 discussed the economic headwinds: inflation – already too high – being further pushed up by oil prices, growth constrained to 2 per cent, and productivity that Chalmers himself says will reach 1.2 per cent annual improvement, but not for another five years. Productivity growth in the Hawke, Keating and Howard years averaged 2.2 per cent.
Albanese and Chalmers have done too little to curb the cost blowout in the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
They encouraged trade union activism in a return to sector-wide industrial bargaining.
Now they plan universal child care rebates for all, up to a family income of $530,000 a year.
They handed out free money in power bill relief and are doing the same with the 50 per cent cut in petrol excise, which will only lift inflation. They used federal money to underwrite wages in aged care and child care, and boosted prices for consumers in the process.
Chalmers tried to hobble the Reserve Bank with a new oversight board: the RBA was then too slow to lift rates and too quick to cut them before last year’s election.
Labor has shored up bulk-billing with a package that delivers doctors $3 for every dollar saved on service delivery to patients.
Australians paying for this folly are moving to a protest party that at least acknowledges their problems.

Oh yes ...

... and the boot stickers were right there for the Major ...

Great days for the far reich ...

In which Polonius, true to breed is incredibly boring, while the bromancer is incredibly zealous...and all the pond wants for Easter is some chocolate.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 22:00:00 +0000

By the way, the pond forgot to mention a few days ago the name of the biblical epic it watched as a build up to taking in the Coen brothers' piece of Hollywood fluff, Hail Caesar.

It was The Silver Chalice, which was honoured by Paul Newman's first feature film appearance and a remarkably silly plot (Newman hated the film).

The pond also took in Howard Hawks' Land of the Pharaohs ...a complete Scorsese cult hoot, featuring a miscast Jack Hawkins and Joan Collins (ah, ancient days)

This one was risible because of the "let my people go" angle assigned to the designer of a mighty secure, mighty keen and peachy pyramid for the Pharaoh, with the architect played by a certain James Robertson Justice - leading to Egypt banning the film because of his allegedly Jewish looking nose.

The pond always enjoyed the way that Roman flicks, sword and sandal romps, and blue eyed white Jesus epics all merged into genre comedy (who could resist Gina and Yul and poor old George in Solomon and Sheba, and Victor Mature was a bible legend, whether The Robe or Samson and Delilah - watch him wrestle lions and Hedy Lamarr, and there's poor old George again).

The pond has always had a soft spot for the biblical genre, though the pond was too young to enjoy DeMille's The Ten Commandments when it first landed in Tamworth.

But for some inexplicable reason it kept coming back on regular Xian seasonal rotation. The only reason the pond could think of? ...Tamworth, oh Tamworth.

The pond credits the film for helping nudge the pond towards atheism.

It features blatant and wretched myth-making of the kind that litters the old testament, much ripped from previous myth-makers, and even at an early age the pond could spot the dodgy special effects.

The parting of the Red Sea? Sublimely silly (though the pond did like all the signs and portents and the plagues and the blood in the water, not to mention all the rampant paganism).

Swallowing that sort of Hollywood hokum is as credible as believing that there was an angry god committing genocide on a huge scale by flooding the world, just so that a select few could crowd onto an ark.

Growing up Catholic, the priests were too canny to go with literalist interpretations of the bible, but they showed other ways to fall.

The pond remembers one bright young priest, handsome and engaging, who briefly rocked into town. His appearance saw many young women suddenly develop an overwhelming desire to turn up to mass.

One moment he was there, the next gone, with the pond's parents muttering about him being naughty.

The pond didn't exactly understand the naughtiness, but would later get there by reading Boccaccio ... you know, priests with a fondness for mortar grinding with pestles. (Eighth day, second story, though a more modern, colloquial translation would help)

Never mind, that's just the pond's seasonal thoughts, and the pond will return to the topic down below, courtesy the bromancer.

But first the pond must get past a brooding Polonius, agitated by Malware and the pasty Hastie:

The header: A Hastie decision may sink the (Liberal) party; Malcolm Turnbull’s praise elevates Andrew Hastie’s profile, yet exposes policy tensions that could unsettle Liberal voters.

The caption for the downcast one:Andrew Hastie’s media performance fuels leadership speculation — and scrutiny of his policy views. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

May sink the Liberal party?

It's not already sunk?

It really is a bit of a sorry story that Polonius should only now be catching up with his prattle, and ignoring the Easter bunny season in the process.

Even more tiresome, this offering was just a standard four minute Polonial rant, with the upside that the reptiles saw no reason to interrupt with snaps or AVs after that opening visual flourish.

This meant the pond could race through it and get to the bromancer more quickly:

It was a somewhat unfortunate accident of timing. On March 27 the news.com.au website carried a story about Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal Party he once led.
Turnbull was quoted as saying: “Australian politics is determined by the centre and unfortunately … the only political party that is operating at the centre of Australian politics is the Labor Party.” This read like a suggestion that Liberal Party voters should vote Labor – delivered on the eve of the South Australian election.
Turnbull criticising the party that made it possible for him to become prime minister is not news. He has been bagging his former political colleagues since August 2018 when he lost the support of his partyroom and was replaced by Scott Morrison.
Last Sunday Andrew Hastie, the Liberal member for the West Australian seat of Canning since September 2015 and opposition industry and sovereign capability spokesman, was interviewed for 22 minutes on ABC TV’s Insiders.
To some viewers, at least, this looked like a pitch for the Liberal Party leadership, although Hastie later distanced himself from this. But it was an impressive performance since the former Special Air Service Regiment officer has the ability to get a message across. The nature of the message was something else.
Not long after the interview, the Australian Financial Review online ran an article by Ronald Mizen, “Andrew Hastie reveals ‘father-son dynamic’ with unlikely mentor Malcolm Turnbull”. Turnbull was quoted as saying about Hastie: “I’m sure he’ll be Liberal leader one day, I’d be amazed if he isn’t.” He said Hastie “spoke from a position of knowledge when it comes to national security and, even if you disagree with him, he is a well read, thoughtful person who didn’t just parrot talking points”.

The pond hates it when the reptiles refuse to provide links ...

Andrew Hastie reveals unlikely friendship with Malcolm Turnbull (why should the pond do all the worrying about intermittent archive links?)

Of course if you listen to 2GB, which the pond never does, it was all a mistake ...

Andrew Hastie has categorically denied having Malcolm Turnbull as a mentor.
The senior Liberal told Clinton Maynard people have “unhelpfully” focused on a story in the Australian Financial Review.
“I’m my own man with my own mind,” he said.

It's not the pond's fault that Polonius is being unhelpful.

It's getting so that the pond has about much faith in Easter bunnies as it does in Polonius ...

For his part, Hastie said he was “glad to have his friendship even if we’ve had our disagreements over the years”. He said Turnbull “was only a few years behind my dad at Sydney Grammar so we have a common link”.
Turnbull told Mizen a key question about Hastie’s leadership prospects was whether he could outgrow the right-wing politics that “destroyed the party” and outline a vision for the country that most voters could get behind.
Turnbull maintains the Liberals’ move to the right “destroyed the party”. But the evidence suggests otherwise. In the past half-century, only three Liberals have led their party to office after prevailing over Labor; namely, Malcolm Fraser (who won office for three terms), John Howard (who was in office for four terms) and Tony Abbott (who won in 2013 but was replaced by Turnbull in 2015).

Uh oh, correspondents know where this is heading: a Polonial history lesson.

On the bright side, no mention of the ABC yet, though the wretches soon get involved, with that interview ...

When they came to office in 1975, 1996 and 2013, respectively, Fraser, Howard and Abbott were political conservatives. It was Turnbull who attempted to move the Liberal Party to the left (what he would call the centre). In the process the party lost 14 seats to Labor at the 2016 election and nearly lost the election; shedding, in the process, the seats Abbott had won from the Gillard-Rudd government in 2010 and 2013.
Turnbull remains embittered at being replaced by Morrison. He will not accept that a leader who determines the timing of an election and the party’s policy program and loses 14 seats is unlikely to prevail until the following election.
It is not clear whether Turnbull’s support for Hastie will do the latter much good among Liberals. Towards the end of his interview with David Speers, Hastie proclaimed: “I think multinationals and big business in this country have lost their social licence.” What – all of them? This sounds like an editorial in, say, the Green Left Weekly.
When asked why he was “so open to negative gearing, capital gains tax changes”, Hastie replied: “I just think we’ve got to – this is a new era.” The official position of the Liberal Party – as provided by leader Angus Taylor, deputy leader Jane Hume and opposition Treasury spokesman Tim Wilson – is that increasing taxes is not the way to increase home ownership.

Ah, the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way. What an inspiration ...

The pond thought that there were never any conservative voices on the ABC, but that's probably because the pasty Hastieis no conservative. Or so Polonius suggests.

Time for the closing gobbet ...

Hastie told Speers he was “open-minded” about government imposing a windfall profit tax on gas exports. His reason? Well, “the Liberal Party is not the first line of defence for corporate Australia”. Perhaps it should be. After all, corporate Australia is responsible for 20 per cent of federal government revenue each year.
Then there is foreign policy. Hastie described the decision of Donald Trump to bomb Iran as “a huge miscalculation”. Some will agree with Hastie, others not so. But the question arises whether this is a wise comment for a senior opposition spokesman to make since the sad fact is that without the US alliance this nation would not be able to protect the sea lanes and air lanes against an aggressor.
Sometimes it makes sense to remain silent. After all, Trump said at the start of hostilities that the US’s intention was to destroy Iran’s ability to produce nuclear weapons. This position was supported at the time by Anthony Albanese and his Labor government. A stance with which the Coalition agreed.
Some of Hastie’s views will appeal to Labor, teals and Greens voters. But this does not mean they will vote for the Coalition. He correctly regards One Nation as a threat to the Liberals. But Hastie, despite his appeal, will not gain votes for the Coalition from One Nation by moving to the left.
According to Turnbull, the Liberal Party ought to be talking about the economy. It is. But Turnbull overlooks the fact that Hastie opposes net-zero emissions by 2050 and advocates the use of coal – positions Turnbull despises.
Hastie’s Insiders interview attracted attention. However, it indicated that the talented opposition spokesman would be advised to give more thought to policy outcomes before he talks at length.

Did the pastie Hastie have a moment of introspection?

"What would it be like to have foreign commandos kicking in our doors at night the way we were kicking in the doors of Pashtun families?" (here)

Good question, but if you think starting up new Holden and Ford plants is the answer, perhaps it's the wrong question.

And that sudden self-awareness noted, the more the likes of Polonius carries on, flogging this dead creationist spawn horse to talk up the beefy boofhead, the more the pond is inclined to start up a lettuce v. prime Angus competition.

And now as a warm up to the bromancer, let the lizard Oz editorialist celebrate the season...

Inspirational stuff ... it's as if the lizard Oz theologian hadn't yet caught up with the divergence between Jewish and Xian definitions of the one long absent lord ...

The essential difference between Jews and Christians is that Christians accept Jesus as messiah and personal savior. Jesus is not part of Jewish theology. Amongst Jews, Jesus is not considered a divine being. Therefore all holidays that have a connection to the life of Jesus are not part of Jewish life and/or practice (Christmas, Easter, Lent, Advent, Palm Sunday, etc.). (here)

In short, one or the other of the two mobs have got it completely wrong, and the losers will be off to hell in due course.

Could it be the Catholics because they're so clueless they've been banned from having a mass at the Pentagon by Pete Kegsbreath? (Oh dear, tykes go to war with war and Hogsbreath, *archive link)

And with introductions over, sound the trumpets, bang the drums wildly, because the pond can now attend - thanks to the bromancer - to seasonal duties:

The header: A heart attack, talk with God and why Easter offers hope this fractured world needs now; In a time of great despair, the resurrection of Jesus after crucifixion – the birth of a new and elevated humanism – remains the greatest source of cheer.

The caption: Greg Sheridan and wife Jessie at home on Friday. Sheridan suffered a heart attack in January and it was Jessie who “brought me back with some CPR”. Picture: Brad Fleet

The bromancer embarked on a cunning strategy to disarm the pond by beginning with sundry personal touches, touching perhaps but not the best way to do theology.

The pond has also had a heart attack, and didn't find it a reason to begin thinking about life in hell.

Instead the pond looked at that opening snap, and wondered what the bromancer made of all those assaults on migrants in the lizard Oz?

It almost looked like an Usha/couch-molesting JD situation.

Never mind ...

It’s funny the things you think, when you think you might be about to die. At Easter, it’s worth considering death and resurrection. In January I suffered a heart attack, which was distressing for my wife, Jessie, less so for me because I was unconscious for the most exciting bits.
Jessie brought me back with some CPR, an ambulance whisked me to Geelong public hospital which, on a weekend night, was a good microcosm of Australian life. The fellow in the next cubicle was handcuffed to his bed, with a solid policeman for company. Nurses and doctors coped superbly with the sometimes chaotic variety of humanity in distress.

Cue an ambulance, because so many have never seen one or can afford one ... Ambulances outside Geelong hospital's emergency department, where Greg Sheridan was taken after a heart attack.

The pond's partner did the same - that's what watching Black Mirror will do - but in the car and to the RPA, wherein were many angels in human, practical and professional form.

But still there was no reason to refer to the long absent lord because the pond didn't spot Her on the way into the operating theatre ...

Next day, for various clinical reasons, I was sent to the Victorian Heart Hospital in Melbourne’s Clayton. It’s a magnificent facility – gleaming, clever machines; careful, competent people. Everyone there – nurses of many backgrounds, folks serving food, cardiologist Rob Gooley – exhibits technical skill and a kind of natural, undramatic human solidarity.
I was first diagnosed with serious heart disease at 37, had quintuple bypass surgery at 56, a stent a year later and now, 12 years after that, a new stent where the old one failed, plus a loop monitor inserted to watch the rhythm (growing older now means becoming a cyborg, with bits of clever metal junk strewn around the body).
There are things wrong with Australia, but it’s a great country to get sick in.
So I’ve had a long time to think these things over. The strangest element of this most recent episode was that while unconscious I had the strongest sense of talking to God; not a transforming feeling of God’s presence, just a clear sense of what I was saying to him. And that was: I’m sorry. I repeated it again and again. I thought I was saying it out loud.
It wasn’t said in despair, it’s just what I urgently wanted to say. I’m not a secret axe murderer and these words had no political content but, of course, there’s a lot to forgive.
There’s a paradox in Christian belief. Christianity hates death. It proclaims the defeat of death. That’s the message of Easter. Paul, in his first letter to the Christians in Corinth, proclaims: “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

The pond gets it.

Fear of death is what motivates all sorts of cults, and leads the bible to advise that the path to hell is to indulge in graven images.

Oops, that needs a lot of theological finessing - paintings allowed, just no worshipping allowed - because then ... Calvary by Andrea Mantegna, depicting the crucifixion of Jesus Christ

Is it too early for a spoiler?

Should the pond note that this is really just another way for the bromancer to flog his book?

Paul is clear about Christianity’s most radical, supernatural (weird?) belief, that all people will live for all eternity in a new version of their physical bodies. Paul: “For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.”
Jesus says, in Mark’s account, that the God of Abraham is “the God not of the dead, but of the living”. This doesn’t mean God forgets about you when you die. Instead, you’ll live forever. Death, which is a profound alienation from the true human condition, the condition in perfect harmony with God, is defeated in Jesus, who rose from the dead and proclaims eternal life for all.
Without God, every human being would stand constantly on the brink of disaster and oblivion. The attitude to death, and the promise of eternal life, was a stark contradiction between early Christians and the pagan Greco-Roman world around them.
Before Jesus’ Easter resurrection, humanity was extraordinarily glum about death, which was thought to be the dismal end of all lives. In Sophocles’s famous play, Oedipus questions: “What’s the use of glory … if in its flow it streams away to nothing?” Marcus Aurelius, newly familiar from the Gladiator movies and momentarily fashionable again, grimly concluded: “Fame after life is no better than oblivion.”
The classical poets weren’t any cheerier. Virgil wrote of “death unpitying sweep them from the scene”. Homer said all human beings ended in “the dark mist of death”. Catullus similarly: “There is one endless night that we must sleep.” In the Iliad, Homer had Zeus declare: “There is nothing alive more agonised than man.”

Ah, it's book flogging time with petulant Peta ...

The Australian’s Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan has discussed his book, ‘Christians: The urgent case for Jesus in our world’, with Sky News host Peta Credlin. “One reason I love writing about Christianity is because I can actually be positive about it,” Mr Sheridan said. “The culture is turning its back on Christianity very comprehensively; one reason for writing this book is that as a result of that, there’s a certain crisis of knowledge, very few people now even really know what the content of Christianity is. “But one of my favourite chapters in the book, one that I had most fun writing was about the treatment of Christianity in popular culture.”

Time to bring in a herd of fellow Xians shouting to the sky ...

Easter revolutionised the human condition. It cheered up the human race. Easter, Christianity, gave birth to a new and elevated humanism. The belief in resurrection and eternal life celebrates transcendent value in the whole human being, body and soul. This tradition began in Judaism, in Genesis, which declares that human beings are made in the likeness and image of God. These traditions are the foundation of universal human rights.
Imago Dei, the image of God, men and women as heirs to eternal life. The early Christians were devoted to this understanding. That made Christians cheerful while pagans were glum, even though Christians also knew they generally had a lot to repent of in their own lives.
Christianity thus has the most elevated view of human nature, of the human being, in all of history. But with this elevated status, this transcendent significance, comes responsibility. Not that you must be perfect but you need to try, and you’re accountable, yet you can be forgiven. The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, at the end of his enthralling book Believe, asks all his readers: “Life is short, and death is certain, and what account will you give of yourself if the believers turn out to have been right all along? That you took pointlessness for granted in a world shot through with signs of meaning and design?”
Jesus also offers love and forgiveness. But the thunderclap of Easter is that the world is transformed by this momentous event. In one of Douthat’s favourite Christian books (and one of mine), The Everlasting Man, GK Chesterton recalls the first Easter: “On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth.”

Um, the pond must have missed theology 101, because how can that be?

Wasn't the trinitarian Christ part of god way back when, in the times when god was committing floodwater genocide? (Where's a Caterist when he's needed?)

Okay, trinitarian theology never made the slightest bit of sense, not helped by GKC being as thick as your average Edwardian brick ... English journalist GK Chesterton. (Sssh, don't mention "the Jewish problem")

At this point the bromancer tries to get serious, but leaves all the heavy lifting to Douthat, a man notably as mad as a both siderist NY Times hatter ...

Humanity frequently needs reminding to take itself seriously. In matters of religious belief, there is, and of course should be, no coercion. Many people without religious belief recognise social and cultural value in the Judeo-Christian tradition. That’s good. But Christians should never make those flimsy, anaemic, utilitarian arguments their main pitch to the world, so to speak, even if confessing belief explicitly can seem a little embarrassing.
Easter only really counts if it’s true, if Jesus actually rose from the dead and lives forever with his father in heaven, waiting to welcome us. If it’s not actually true, if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead in his body, I’d rather be at the races.

He'd rather watch horses go around in a circle, in what is loosely dubbed a "sport"? Now that's weird, the pond hadn't picked the bromancer as a gambling man, because surely gambling and seeing the odd horse die are the best reasons to head off to the track.

Douthat persuasively argues the historical authenticity of the gospels and other New Testament writings. The shift in modern scholarship on this question is overwhelming. He also persuasively advances the sheer, irrefutable, witness quality of the gospel accounts.
JRR Tolkien, the genius who wrote The Lord of the Rings, called the resurrection the “eucatastrophe”, the unexpected, dramatic event leading to the happiest ending, the outbreak of impossible joy. But the resurrection comes only after Jesus’ passion and crucifixion. Resurrection after the suffering of life and death. I challenge anyone to read the crucifixion accounts and not be moved by the visceral immediacy, the graphic impact, of the experience.
Jesus, though himself God, suffers the shocking, terrifying alienation of intense suffering. Tempted to despair, yet he doesn’t despair. He promises the good thief, crucified beside him, that “today you will be with me in paradise”. Almost his last words are to ask his best friend, John, to look after his mother, Mary. Finally, complete surrender to God the father: “Into your hands, I commend my spirit.” Then the resurrection.
Truly, it’s the greatest story ever told. We can all hope in the resurrection. This fractured world has seldom needed Easter’s hope more than now.

Oh he's risen all right, see how he floats in a rapture ...

Shucks, the pond almost forgot the plug, because there are many ways to make sucker Xians part with a shekel or two ...

Greg Sheridan’s latest book, How Christians Can Succeed Today: Reclaiming the Genius of the Early Church, is published by Allen & Unwin.

What else?

Well the tinkling Trinca was out and about this day, though she steered well clear of the white Xian nationalism that frequently litters the lizard Oz pages ...

The pond thought about it, but then looked at the time on the clock.

Seven minutes!

It was unendurable, it was a waste of time better spent hunting for chocolate ...

The pond personally supervised its listing in the intermittent archive ...

Australia: Are we patriots, nationalists or something else entirely?
From Federation to One Nation, historians and commentators debate whether nationalism unites Australians — or risks dividing them.

Just in case the archive fell over, as it often does, the pond thought it would do a spoiler and cut to the conclusion, only because Greg of the 'Gong turned up, a name long absent from the lizard Oz and so from the pond...

“There’s probably not as much consensus as there might be about the symbols of civic identity in Australia,” Bonnell says. “In America, the flag is revered; in Australia, we’re not sure … We have a symbolically weak civic nationalism.”
His students don’t know much about our political institutions: “They struggle with explaining the basics of the Australian Constitution or the federal system. We have a pragmatic version of civic nationalism – we kind of muddle along and get along – but it’s not based on very strong attachment to shared symbols or to a deep knowledge of what the political institutions are.”
Historian Frank Bongiorno of the University of Canberra says our nationalism has not been as distinctive as the American version because of its British Empire origins; the nationalism that emerged after Federation was “a kind of a post-imperial nationalism”. The US broke dramatically with its British past but there was no such defining moment here. Australia may be hard-pressed to date the emergence of a national sensibility. Historians suggest it emerged in the 60s as a response to our distress/anger at being sidelined by the Poms in favour of the European Economic Community. That’s when we began to “craft our own symbols”, Bongiorno says, in what became a major project.
Civic nationalism is clearer in the US. Says Bongiorno: “The US constitution sits at the heart of what it means to be American. In Australia we have not seen civic identity as being at the heart of our identity.” We looked elsewhere – to the landscape and to Anzac, which once may have been encased in military value but increasingly has morphed into softer values around mateship, for example. We lack iconic figures such as George Washington and Abraham Lincoln who serve as symbols of civic nationalism, and settle instead for sport stars or perhaps Simpson and his donkey, or Sir John Monash, Bongiorno says.

Yes, it's on that flag waving level of vacuity ...

Now come on down Greg of the sometime 'Gong ... (the pond isn't sure about this "previously") ...

In the 70s we tried to use multiculturalism as a way to define the country but that concept has lost favour in recent years, under pressure from a much more ethnically diverse population.
Historian Greg Melleuish, previously of the University of Wollongong, says there was a very Australian nationalism articulated in the magazine The Bulletin from the 1880s. It was a “particular type of nationalism, very masculinist, didn’t like religion very much, republican, and it was against the sort of effete English (culture)”. Two world wars helped keep Australia in the British camp despite an education system that focused more on the Australian story, albeit with the message that “we were Australians but members of the empire – an idea that did not start to die out until the 1960s”, says Melleuish.
He points out, too, that a lot of Australian nationalism in the 20th century was about literature and art, and cites publisher Reginald “Inky” Stephensen, who was a leading figure in the rise of radical Australian nationalism in the 30s. Stephensen began by arguing for cultural independence from Britain but ended up espousing far-right ideas.
“He was a rather nasty man,” says Melleuish. “He was an antisemite, among other things, but he had this idea that Australia varied from Britain because the environment was different and therefore Australians wrote about different things, they had different experiences. The kernel of Australian nationalism was the relationship of people to their environment. That’s why a lot of Australian nationalism was literary nationalism.”
He says The Bulletin’s nationalism “was all about autarky, about being self-sufficient” and contemporary economic conditions are pushing us towards a nationalism about “standing on your own two feet”.
“A lot of the criticism of internationalism in the last few weeks is ‘Why did we let industries go? Why aren’t we more self-sufficient? How the hell did we end up with two oil refineries?’ But … whatever happens, Australia will always be dependent on international trade. That’s a reality, and nationalism has to deal with that.
“A lot of the discourse, I suspect, will be about should we build up our own industries or should we continue supplying the rest of the world, which is partly what we’ve done for so long. If you think about it, that comes out of being originally on the periphery of empire – that’s what Australia was set up to do, it was set up to supply raw materials … if you want to see nationalism as a sort of autarkic self-reliance, that’s not possible. We don’t have the capability.”

Wrong message, Greg sometime of the 'Gong.

The reptiles have their saviour to hand, and it's the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth, and we must do our best to Make Australia Awesome Again:

Fear not, thanks to the bromancer and the reptiles, we've always got AUKUS.

And now just to keep the theology thingie going, recently there came news that the couch-molesting JD thinks that UFO aliens are in reality demons ...

It all heads back to that piece featured in Wired, by Laura Bullard, way back in 2025...

The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession(*intermittent archive link)
Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. They’ve been a road map for the billionaire ever since.

With Thiel recently in Rome delivering anti-Christ lectures, what better way to spend an Easter than contemplating the deep weirdness of America?

ABH... always be hustling...

Their tiny church is on the cover of JD Vance’s new book. They don’t know him.

The members of a Methodist church in rural Virginia are excited — if a little confused — that the vice president’s memoir of his path to Catholicism has put them in the spotlight. (*intermittent archive link)

This is the current fallback for the US Presidency, Thiel's lapdog ...

And this is news of the current incumbent ...

In which the Angelic one prays, the Ughmann does shipping, and the long absent lord help us, grating Gemma does furries ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 20:41:00 +0000

The pond should properly open with a tip of the hat to the correspondent who noted silly Hugh Marks attempting to befriend the reptiles, as reported by the venerable Meade yesterday, with a reference to the fable of the frog and the scorpion: Top Marks for cosying up to News Corp – but Hugh knows if it’ll stop constant attacks on the ABC? (as told by prime ham Orson Welles in Mr Akradin)

Sadly, as the pond can personally testify, Marks is one of those snowflakes who has risen to the top to prove that the Peter Principle remains solidly in place and working as well as it's ever done.

Now back to the war ...

As King Donald celebrates the spirit of the season by promising to commit war crimes - attacking power plants in the same way that Vlad the Sociopath has been doing to Ukraine - what could the reptiles do, but send out the Angelic one to lead the county in prayer?

The header: ‘Huge miscalculation’: Easter prayer amid widespread fears of food and medicine shortages;Easter hope takes a hit as war in the Middle East threatens potential shortages of everything from fertiliser to lifesaving medications.

The caption for a sight that has no meaning to EV owners: Cuts to fuel excise have been welcomed as 'better than nothing' but the bigger picture remained surety of supply, said trucking company owners. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman.

Why the Angelic one?

Well, she can cluck and commiserate ...

Easter in the Christian tradition is a time of hope; hope and new life. Yet I’d bet that not many of us are feeling too hopeful right now.
The war in the Middle East may do something few other wars have done to Australia: cause the collapse of our much-vaunted national complacency. The war’s consequences are not short-term, no matter where you live in our country: the city, the suburbs or the bush. People are rightly nervous.
The latest Newspoll is proof of this. Asked whether they approved or disapproved of US military action against Iran, 72 per cent of voters said they disapproved (including 50 per cent who strongly disapproved) compared with 23 per cent who approved and 5 per cent who said they didn’t know.

The reptiles quickly jumped to an AV distraction, and some sign of hope ... Foreign Minister Penny Wong was among ministers from around 40 countries who met virtually overnight to discuss reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The vital shipping lane has been closed to most marine traffic since the outbreak of war in Iran. The meeting was held after Donald Trump's comments that securing the waterway was for others to resolve. The UK is leading the response. Leaders from France, Germany, Canada and the United Arab Emirates were among those who attended the meeting. But France's President Emmanuel Macron told reporters in South Korea it was “unrealistic” to open the Strait by force.

The Angelic one was still stuck on the job of reporting the bad polling ...

On the question of whether Australia should join allied nations in supporting the US to keep the Strait of Hormuz open for international shipping, 63 per cent of voters opposed sending naval vessels.
If you think this is just a leftie position, think again. More than two-thirds of every age group disapproved of the US military action in Iran. However, proving that their focus is the narrowest of any voting group (and heralding a possible decline in the Hanson party’s sudden popularity as the war continues), only One Nation voters were likelier to support the war in Iran.
So, one aspect of the response from the public to this war is that it does not divide into obvious left and right camps, although the media is a different story. It is fairly obvious to most – whether they be average readers and armchair critics or distinguished overseas academic political theorists such as John Mearsheimer – that by closing the strait, Iran holds all the cards.

Uh huh, quick, turn to the pastie Hastie before all this leftie talk radicalises the pond ... Andrew Hastie addresses a press conference at Eze Steel in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

How desperate are the times?

Pretty desperate if you read the Daily Terror ...

Commiserations to the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, as the Angelic one pressed on ...

Opposition industry and sovereign capability spokesman Andrew Hastie is in good company when he says: “We can be critical of bad strategic decisions … I think this was a huge miscalculation. Iran has managed to pretty much hold the whole world economy to ransom, and because we’re at the end of a very long supply chain we’re going to experience pain.”
The Trump administration’s attempts to extricate itself from this expanding imbroglio with a 15-point plan that the Iranians have ignored is widely regarded as nothing more than face-saving grandstanding for the US president. To paraphrase that old saying, you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. The lack of hope, or at least a strong feeling of pessimism, pervades the commentary.
In Australia, the government’s marked lack of preparedness is a big part of that. It is true there was almost no warning about this disastrous war. We’ve had one shock, in the Covid pandemic, which we know will probably happen again, so the lack of preparation of this government for another long-term economic shock infuriates many.
The short-term thinking is stark. A piffling halving of the fuel excise is hardly reassuring and what is galling for most Australians is that we know we have huge untapped resources, especially coal and gas, and gave up drilling for our own oil years ago.

At least there's a chance to remind the hive mind of the real villain ... Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Picture: NewsWire / Damian Shaw

The Angelic one finally remembered her duty and launched an obligatory attack on renewables and cockamamy talk of actual climate science ...

What is more inexplicable is that even if there had been some warning of this crisis, it is unlikely the government would abandon its rigid renewable energy policy to take any firm action. Everyone on Labor’s frontbench is committed to this as an article of faith. The result of the government’s fundamentalist ideology on renewables is to ignore some of the most valuable resources a country could have in a time of crisis, thus doing great harm to the population and our ability to export those resources.
But life goes on and checking out the prices of electric vehicles and cancelling plans to travel to Europe are minor problems caused by the oil shortage.

Throw in a snap of a ship and the reptile terror was complete ...Supply chains are being stifled by the blockade of one of the world’s most important shipping routes, the Strait of Hormuz. Picture: AFP

Please, long absent lord, slake the Angelic one's thirst for oil ...

Petroleum products are our biggest imports. We need diesel for farmers and mining, for road transport across the continent. Plastics manufacture will be affected, but even more serious ramifications of the interruption of supplies are on the horizon. This week it became apparent that farmers are running short of fertiliser, since most of it comes through the Strait of Hormuz. Lack of fertiliser can mean food shortages in the short term and no food in the long term.
In our part of the world, where we are used to having what we need at the local shop, this could be an inconvenience. But Australia exports two-thirds of the food it produces and an irksome difficulty for us is a looming disaster for other parts of the world where disruptions in food supply and distribution have serious consequences, such as famine and wars.

But who could have encouraged this apocalypse? As the fuel crisis deepens, farmers in regional Australia warn that it may bring their businesses to a halt.

On that question, the Angelic one was strangely silent ...

Then there are consequences of interruptions to supply for people who need medical help. It is likely we will have a shortage of medical supplies of all sorts, from equipment to everyday stuff, including medicine.
Britain’s National Health Service is already running out of supplies. Australia imports 90 per cent of our medications. An interruption of these drugs is dire for people who have chronic and life-threatening conditions, as do some of my children whose medicines were sometimes in short supply during the Covid crisis.
Some of us are right to be pessimistic. We are acutely aware that this war is going to have consequences in more ways than petrol prices at the bowser. I may be accused of being a catastrophist – perhaps I am – but this Easter, this suburban mum will do the only thing she or any of us can in the face of this war. Pray – hard.

Prayer?

Hard prayer? Die hard praying?

That's the best the Angelic one can offer?

How about leaving News Corp?

Rupert Murdoch, Netanyahu ‘pressed Trump’ to strike Iran (caution: intermittent archive link)

Washington | Donald Trump’s decision to wage war on Iran was partly motivated by pressure from outside allies while his own White House team stayed more muted – underscoring how in his second term, guardrails have been traded for a green light.
Those privately pressing Trump to strike Iran included Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and some conservative commentators, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The News Corp founder communicated with Trump several times as he urged the president to take on Tehran, according to one person briefed on their interactions.

On what known planet should the pond be forced to agree with Megyn "white Santa, white Jesus" Kelly?

'He'll Be Dead Soon': Megyn Kelly Rages At Ex-Boss Rupert Murdoch Over Iran War Stance
The onetime Fox News headliner ripped Murdoch and other Republicans who've egged on Donald Trump's war against Iran.

And yet here we are ...

The pond really should have saved that one for the bromancer, who will appear tomorrow in the pond for an Easter Sunday homily, but it suits the Angelic one just as well ...

Meanwhile, the reptiles continue to amaze by dodging and ducking and weaving, and who better at that art (or sport) than the Ughmann?

Why he was so hot to trot that the reptiles stuck him at the top of the digital page early on Saturday morning ...

It was a seven minute read, so the reptiles said ...

The header: The ship that proves Australia is losing global fuel security game; A ship from Kuwait on an unprecedented route to Botany Bay exposes a supply chain so fragile it could bring the nation to a standstill. If the fuel stops, Australia stops.

The caption for the uncredited work of art: Australia’s future now hangs on a complex international chess game involving ships carrying liquid fuel from distant refineries across the oceans to our shores.

The pond was delighted to see that the reptiles have at last discovered the sort of service to be found at the likes of Maritime Traffic, and mortified that they didn't feel the need to provide a link. (You can waste hours finding your vessel)

The pond's correspondents know what's coming.

The Ughmann loves the war, loves the chance to celebrate the importance of oil, loves the chance to denigrate renewables and deny climate science yet again ... all the more exciting because he can use arcane new shipping ways to make his points:

It is sobering to track this traffic in real time on a Kpler dashboard, where loaded vessels appear as green arrows inching towards their destination. Touch an arrow and the name of the ship appears, along with its cargo, the port it left and the one it is bound for. That thin green line pointing towards Australia is all that stands between continuity and crisis in this island nation. If it breaks, or even slows, the effects here will be swift and severe.

Quick, another graphic if you please ... The STI Solace’s green-line progress of its fuel shipment to Australia. Picture: Kpler

Time, please, gentlemen, for a plug ...

Kpler is a global trade intelligence company that sits at the nerve centre of the physical economy, stitching together billions of data points to show how energy and commodities are actually moving around the world. It has generously given this column access to its data.

And so to make sundry ponderous points:

Isolate the trade in diesel, petrol and jet fuel to Australia and it shows 36 ships on their way at the time of writing. Twenty-eight are coming from the Asian refineries that usually supply 90 per cent of our fuel. More than two of these ships must off-load at a port here every single day to feed our voracious appetite for liquid fuel, as more than 40 per cent of all the energy consumed in Australia is burned in the engines that drive transport, mining and agriculture.
The notable recent shift in the fuel trade is the emergence of long-haul supply. Four ships have crossed the Panama Canal after loading on the US Gulf coast. Two more have sailed from a refinery in Washington state and another was loading there on Thursday. Historically, fuel imports from the US have been rare, so a distant and more expensive supply line has been tapped to keep Australia moving.
But one cargo now slowly tracking down the west coast of Africa stands out, and its journey here tells the story of a nation scrounging around the world to fill supply gaps at any price.
The STI Solace set sail from Southwold Anchorage, off the Suffolk coast, on March 19 and is due to dock in Sydney on April 29. It is a mid-sized tanker carrying nearly 654,000 barrels of fuel, or about 104 million litres. It sounds like a lot but Australia uses about 173 million litres of refined fuel every day. So the STI Solace has enough fuel in its tanks to keep the country running for little more than half a day.

How about a snap of the ship? Done: The STI Solace – the drude oil oil tanker bound for Botany Bay. Picture: VesselFinder

The proud possessor of arcane knowledge ploughed on ...

On paper, this cargo looks like a shipment from the UK. But the fuel did not originate in Britain. It was transferred there.
Another tanker, the Oslo Star, loaded this cargo from a refinery in Kuwait in mid-February and sailed out of the Gulf before the shooting started. It then tracked west into the Red Sea and up through the Suez Canal, emerging into European waters in early March. As it crossed the Mediterranean and entered the Atlantic, its destination shifted repeatedly, first towards North Africa, then Rotterdam and finally to an anchorage off the Suffolk coast.
When it reached Southwold on the morning of March 19, the cargo was transferred ship-to-ship on to the STI Solace, which set sail that evening and is now carrying it halfway around the world to Australia.
Kpler’s data goes back to 2014, and this is the first time the company has recorded such a trade.
The complex logistical dance was choreographed by the Scorpio Group, a Monaco-based company that operates large fleets of tankers moving fuel between continents. Firms such as this do not produce energy. They move it, trade it and, since the war in the Gulf kicked off, redirect it in response to price and scarcity.
Forgive the blizzard of detail, but it reveals something important. This was not a shipment planned for Australia. It was a cargo looking for a buyer and in the end Australia paid the highest price. So this is not a straight supply chain, it is an expensive relay where each baton change adds costs and complexity.

Enough of all that, bring it home ... Signs cover petrol bowsers at a closed petrol station in Sydney on March 30, 2026. Picture: AFP

And with all that dancing done, the Ughmann could get down to the denialist gritty:

Australia is now engaged in a bewildering and increasingly desperate global scramble for fuel in a deeply fractured market. Our security sits largely in the hands of major producers and international traders who are constantly reshuffling cargoes to meet demand. When supply tightens, the system stretches. Cargoes are rerouted. Ships change hands at sea. Fuel travels farther, costs more and takes longer to arrive.
The world entered this crisis with good supply and a significant volume of oil, including a black fleet of sanctioned Russian cargoes, sitting on the water in tankers. That floating stock is now being rapidly drawn into the market at higher prices. No one is knocking back Russian fuel any more. But this is a limited buffer. As those cargoes are absorbed, the global chessboard will start to lose pieces and supply will tighten further.
In the gap between supply and demand lies the risk. The longer the Strait of Hormuz remains constrained and under the control of Iran, the more precarious this market becomes. It should be noted that Iran is still shipping oil and making a hefty profit on it.
In the supply chain chess game the Albanese government is a bystander.
Band-Aids on supply
That was writ large in the Prime Minister’s address to the nation and his speech at the National Press Club. When asked about the fuel crisis, Anthony Albanese talked about tempering demand by travelling less or lowering costs by cutting the heavy vehicle duty, the fuel excise and the GST.
These are price and demand Band-Aids on a haemorrhage of supply.
The government’s only supply-side moves have been to change rules to allow the limited amount of fuel we refine to stay onshore and to let the Export Finance Corporation underwrite additional fuel shipments. This is to provide comfort to the big energy companies that source the fuel.
The cargo on the STI Solace would have come at a premium. If the price drops in the month it takes to get here, the taxpayer will wear the cost.
When asked about his long-term plans to secure supply, the Prime Minister said everything was on the table but then ran through the usual bureaucrat’s list of reasons that most of it would be too hard, take too long or be too expensive.
It should be self-evident to even a casual observer that our future depends on becoming self-sufficient in liquid fuels as rapidly as we can. It will not be quick, cheap or easy, but contemplate the alternative. If the fuel stops, Australia stops.

If the pond might interrupt at this point, it should be self-evident that becoming self-sufficient in "liquid fuels" is a ludicrous proposition, and that moving towards self-sufficiency in energy might be more to the point, and that the best forms of energy are now coming from the renewables sector, what with King Donald having put the strait in dire straits, and possibly for some considerable time.

But that sort of thinking doesn't sit well with an unreformed seminarian:

That means using conventional and unconventional methods to secure the fuel we need to run the nation. Western Australia and Queensland have oil. NSW has gas and, as Robert Gottliebsen has argued in these pages, Victoria’s vast brown coal reserves should be tapped. Technologies now exist to convert coal into diesel and aviation fuel, turning a stranded resource into a strategic asset.
Energy security is national security and our security is now out of our hands. This was a wilful, catastrophic failure of the political class more than 20 years in the making. This crisis should be the catalyst to fix it but the early signs are not good.
Anyone who says electric cars are the answer is not serious. They have a role, but truck traffic between Sydney and Melbourne on the Hume Highway alone runs at 1900 B-double equivalent trips a day. That is 700,000 trips a year. The technology to rapidly replace all that traffic at the same cost and efficiency as diesel does not exist.

Pond correspondents have already noted that new technologies are rapidly being developed.

The question is whether we want to join King Donald and revert to the1950s, or wake up to the way that China has stolen the renewables and EV race from the United States ... Oil tankers and high speed crafts sit anchored at Muscat Anchorage near the Strait of Hormuz on March 30, 2026 in Muscat, Oman. Picture: Getty Images

King Donald, in his almost infinite fatuity, and his singular failure to understand the way world markets have worked, has dropped the world in it... and the Ughmann, with equal fatuity, thinks he can get away with it.

Just before Albanese addressed the press club, Donald Trump spoke to his people. The American President made the point that the US could walk away from the war in Iran without reopening the Strait of Hormuz because his country did not rely on it for fuel security.
He is right. After decades of declining oil production, something extraordinary happened to US energy supplies from 2010 on. The shale oil revolution turned the US into the world’s biggest producer of oil and natural gas.
Trump can walk away from the war with Iran and his country will absorb the shock. Prices may rise. Consumers will feel it. But the system holds. The US has choices. Europe and Australia do not.

He's right?

No he's not, he's a demented, clueless old king, in the last stages of reign and life.

He can walk away from it, and all will be well?

No, he can't. To paraphrase, no man or country is an island, entire of itself, every country is a piece of the world, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, the United States is the less ...

Right now, the system in the United States is being torn apart, fragmented, destroyed, with the country at war with itself, and no solution to hand.

Every day is spent in speculation about who will next get the knife, as the demented, mad king seeks ever diminishing ways to shift the blame from him.

Who knew that a desire to avoid the Epstein files would lead to all this?

This is a world News Corp has helped shape. This is why the moment is so stark:

That is what makes this moment so stark.
The world is organised around energy. As the world’s best energy analysts at Doomberg argue, power, prosperity and security flow from those who produce it. For decades, globalisation obscured that reality. Oil moved freely, trade routes were protected and supply chains, though complex, were dependable. The Gulf war has exposed how fragile the old system was.
Supply is no longer guaranteed. It is contested, disrupted and increasingly weaponised as the global energy market fragments into competing spheres of influence. That world is breaking and will not return to business as usual.
In the emerging world order, geography and resources matter again.
The US, Russia and China are well placed in the new order. They have energy within their borders or within their reach. Europe does not. Australia has it but has chosen not to use it. Both have come to rely on long supply chains in a world where distance is now a vulnerability. Both have demonised the fuels on which their societies run. This virtue signalling is a vanity we can no longer afford to indulge.
Doomberg’s central insight is that energy systems do not evolve gradually. They appear stable, then shift suddenly when a shock hits. When that happens, the system does not return to what it was. It reorganises around new realities.
For exposed, import-dependent nations such as Australia, the implications are profound. Energy is not just another commodity. It is the foundation of economic life and national security.
We can ignore that truth or we can act on it. Because if we do nothing and that thin green line breaks, so do we.

Oh go yap to the Emeritus Chairman and get him to explain his grand plan, and what he was thinking when he encouraged the mad king in his folly ...

And after all that the pond will only briefly note garrulous Gemma, attempting to take the pond back to the days of "they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs."

Frankly the pond almost ground to a halt the moment that "furries" turned up in the header.

Hasn't Gemma been keeping up?

The new trend is "looning"...(the pond thinks there should be a copyright claim in that, and at least some decent royalties ...

Forget that cornballl cute image of a furry clutching its cheeks, like a zillion football and other sporting mascots around the world.

Dare the pond urge students to go doggies?

Nah, if you're going to have a kink or a fetish, do it in style ...

Besides, the intermittent archive is working at the moment, so correspondents can head off there if they want to be grated by Gemma ...

Hey kid, you’re not a dog’: Italy’s schools can teach us hard lessons
Good luck turning up to class in Italy and barking at classmates. Australia’s education system cossets kids, Italy’s fosters resilience, not furries.
By Gemma Tognini
Columnist

The pond couldn't believe that in a time of war and pending calamity, this was the best that garrulous Gemma could serve up ...

Feelings and furries
In Australia, the education system shields and mollycoddles. Reading lists come with trigger warnings. Feelings take precedence.
I recall a few years ago chatting with a friend whose child was at a private school in which some students were identifying as animals. Furries. Read about it, it’s ridiculous. When I laughed and asked how long they were suspended for, she told me they were being “accommodated”.
An article I found from 2023 quoted an educator who offered this solution: “It is important to build a safe environment for them (the student) based on trust, where they feel comfortable expressing themselves to you.”
‘Hey kid, you’re not a dog’
No, it’s important to say, “Hey kid, you’re not a dog.” This absence of any kind of line in the sand is what I’m talking about.
Good luck rocking up to school in Italy in a pair of ears and barking at your classmates.
Is our system robust and focused on critical thinking or is it about constantly lowering the educational and behavioural bars? Some stats are telling, such as the number of kids being homeschooled.
In Queensland, as of August 2025 just shy of 12,000 students were being homeschooled. Between 2021 and 2025, primary school registrations grew by 110 per cent. In high schoolers, it was 167 per cent. A fraction of the millions of Australian kids in school perhaps but, as they say, it’s about the trend.
Education should be a preparation for life. It should absolutely be hard sometimes. Ditto challenging. Critical thinking, learning, should be valued and prized. Rough edges on young minds should be sloughed off over time, in class, not indulged.
I often wonder what it will take for various things to shift. To recalibrate. This is no exception. Perhaps it’s time for those in charge of the education sector in Australia to look beyond the Hills Hoist and understand what’s at stake. Maybe then something will change.

Read about it?

Alas, there was no link to follow ... but the pond does recall a Media Watch yarn back in May 2025 ...

And the reptiles are still wondering why the world is going to hell in a handbasket, and quik stix at that ...

That's the best garrulous Gemma could offer for an Easter weekend?

Furries when there's a demented mad king still not in his retirement home?

Sheesh, Pam Bondi's already ancient news ... who's next to feel the wrath of the doddery delinquent?

In which the bromancer offers blessedly rational insights, Lloydie of the Amazon is resurrected in a gushing Easter miracle, and Our Henry goes full theologian ...

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 21:04:00 +0000

Some days the pond has to give up a lot to follow the reptiles at the lizard Oz.

Look elsewhere, and you might find news of King Donald giving Pam Bondi the boot.

Or news of him mocking the Macrons' marriage, producing the mild retort that the thuggish one was "neither elegant nor up to standard" in his verbiage.

Or more fun with the ongoing bimbofication sessions saga. (caution, intermittent archive link)

Or the King's retreat from SCOTUS.

And other stories, such as White House Scrambles to Wipe Trump Meltdown Footage never had the ghost of a chance

The White House posted and then rushed to delete an hour-long recording of an event with President Donald Trump that captured him lashing out at the Supreme Court after justices signaled expressed skepticism about his birthright citizenship case.
The president privately hosted a group of MAGA pastors and religious allies Wednesday for an Easter luncheon at the White House. Trump made several bonkers remarks during the event, which was never meant to be seen by the public, as the White House quickly deleted the footage from its official pages.

Instead the pond has to cope with the bromancer trying to decipher the real meaning of the low energy word salad that King Donald fed his base ...

The header: Donald Trump’s clearest Iran pitch was still full of contradictions; The US President’s address contained myriad inconsistencies, and leaves the world not much better informed about his plans for the Middle East.

The caption for the snap of the King: President Donald Trump arrives from the Blue Room to speak about the Iran war. Picture: AP

Usually the sight of the King would immediately inspire a matching cartoon, but the pond didn't have the time or the space.

Worse, the bromancer could only manage a paltry three minutes as he tried to shape something coherent out of a completely incoherent speech.

The pond supposes that it's like that old joke complaining about the lack of quality in the food, and the small portions in the serves:

Donald Trump’s address to America was his most coherent statement of purpose in Iran for many weeks. He offered, at the start of the speech, a good rationale for why action against Iran was justified.
Yet, while Trump is always better when he sticks closer to the teleprompter, the speech still contained myriad contradictions, and leaves the world not much better informed about what he plans to do, or what might happen, in Iran.
One explanation for what Trump has been saying for weeks is a continuing attempt by him to jawbone the markets. Every time Trump says “the war’s nearly finished, I’m going to bring the troops home soon”, the markets respond favourably, the price of oil drops, the prices of stocks rise.
Except that didn’t happen this time. That’s because of the law of diminishing returns, and because whenever Trump says something cheerful and hopeful, he contradicts it a minute later with prophecies of Armageddon.
This speech was no exception. The war’s going great. We’ve nearly achieved all our objectives, nearly finished, it’ll be over soon.
Phew!
But then, actually we’re going to keep bombing for another two or three weeks and we’re going to hit harder than ever.
And, we the US don’t need any access to the Strait of Hormuz. We don’t need any deal from Iran. We don’t get our oil from the Strait of Hormuz. So after we’ve gone that will be someone else’s problem.

It was a feeble effort, already running out of steam.

Even the bromancer, a devotee of nonsensical war mongering, couldn't make sense of it all.

By the time the reptiles offered an AV distraction, the bromancer was getting ready to fall down the rabbit hole, if not with Alice, then certainly with the King ... Donald Trump says ‘never in the history of warfare has an enemy suffered such clear and devastating large-scale losses in a matter of weeks’.

After that point, the bromancer's thinking dissolved into a puddle, like Frosty the snowman caught in a climate science denialist's heatwave...

But, if we don’t get a deal from Iran, then we will bomb it back to the Stone Age. We’ll destroy every single one of their electricity-generating plans. We may well destroy all its oil industry facilities.
So is a deal completely unnecessary to Trump and the US? Or is it so important that Trump will bomb Iran back to the Stone Age and destroy its oil industry if he doesn’t get one? Your guess is as good as mine.
At least this time he didn’t threaten to bomb Iran’s desalination plants. Did someone take it out of the speech? Does even Trump realise there must be some limits to what he threatens?
On regime change, Trump claims, fantastically, that regime change has already happened in Iran. This is preposterous. Trump has long held the view that he has a special power to create reality by just saying something.
It’s astonishing how often that actually works for him. But if Trump truly believes there has been regime change in Iran because the US has killed dozens of its leaders, he’s hallucinating. Of course, he doesn’t really believe that. This is the power of his brazenness, which sometimes serves him well but which, increasingly, people can see simply denies reality.
On the matter of Iran’s 400kg of uranium enriched to 60 per cent, which is near weapons grade, Trump no longer believes it’s necessary for the US to get hold of this, either through Iran surrendering it or US forces taking it.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier said it would be necessary for US forces to take this material. Trump’s special negotiator, Steve Witkoff, said the existence of this stockpile was why the US went to war.
Trump now says US bombing has made a big, dusty mess of the sites where the uranium is believed to be stored and America can simply watch these sites from the air – from satellites, presumably – and if Iranian personnel make any attempt to retrieve the material, the US can hit them again.
But all that could have been achieved with a military operation of a few days.
And, of course, Trump might very well be trying to mislead, while US special forces prepare what would have to be the most daring raid in history.
The tone from Trump this time was blessedly rational. But we still have almost no idea what he plans to do, or what he might do.
That’s our world.

That's what's passes as "blessedly rational" in the bromancer's world?

Roll it around on the tongue, savour the taste of blessedly rational as an Easter treat ...

...we still have almost no idea what he plans to do, or what he might do.
That’s our world.

Put it another way.

Now there's a blessedly rational car wreck for you ...

And now to the reason the pond felt constipated, jammed up, overloaded this Friday.

You see at the top of the page there came the return of Lloydie of the Amazon, a gushing Easter miracle, and the reptiles were all in ...

Lloydie of the Amazon was equally into it, with a bigly eight minutes opus on offer ...

The header: Does Australia - and our PM - have what it takes to drill baby drill?; In just two decades, Australia has gone from energy self-sufficiency to dangerous dependence. Like the US, we can turn it around. The question is, will we?

The caption: What, say what, no caption for that splendid piece of lizard Oz graphic art? 'Tis sad, but true, the way that creative genius goes unrecognised this day...

The pond had almost forgotten that Lloydie of the Amazon existed - thought he might have got lost in the Amazon again as he tried to save the world via tourist resorts - but instead he's back and worse than ever.

All the pond could do was stand back and let him gush his devotion to fossil fuels ...

Like the explosive power of fossil fuels, the global story of energy is shaped by crisis. Australia is no exception. The war in Iran is forcing government to confront our import dependence. Since 2000 Australia’s liquid fuel equation has flipped. We have gone from being self-sufficient in oil and petrol, with eight refineries supplying 98 per cent of consumption, to having two refineries and a reliance on imports for roughly 90 per cent of our fuel needs.
Across the same two-decade period, the US has achieved the reverse and both Japan and Germany have absorbed a bitter lesson in energy vulnerability.
Lessons from the US, Europe and Japan
Two Gulf wars and the ingenuity of a wildcat driller, George Mitchell, transformed the US from being dependent on the Middle East for crude oil to being the world’s biggest producer and an energy export superpower. The transformation is due to Mitchell’s discovery in 1997 of how to drill wells horizontally and liberate oil and gas held deep underground in rock formations.
The energy crisis theory also works in reverse. During the same period, the Japanese tsunami in 2011 and associated Fukushima nuclear disaster up-ended the power equation and energy security of industrial powerhouses Japan and Germany. Both countries swore off nuclear energy as a result of the Fukushima nuclear accident – despite the fact it did not cause any deaths – but both have now changed their minds.

It was nuke the country to save the planet time ... The No. 3 reactor building at Tokyo Electric Power Co's tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in 2010.

When Lloydie gets gushing and nuking like this, there's nothing to do but stand back, or get caught in the geyser ...

Japan has restarted 15 nuclear reactors and another 10 are in the process of restart approval. Energy market disruption caused by the war in Ukraine spurred Japan to further reconsider nuclear because without it Japan must import about 90 per cent of its energy requirements. This is why debate in Australia about changes to gas production, exports and the prospect of super profit taxation is watched closely and of great concern in Tokyo.
The loss of Russian gas because of the invasion of Ukraine also left Europe badly exposed.
Germany had turned to Russia for gas as it shut its last three nuclear power plants in 2023, but German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told business leaders this year it had been a “serious strategic mistake” and the country would rebuild nuclear production.
In 2025, nearly 70 per cent of Germany’s energy needs were met through international imports despite the many billions of dollars that have been spent on a world-leading renewable energy transition. “I want us to eventually have acceptable market prices for energy production again and not have to permanently subsidise energy prices from the federal budget,” Merz said. His answer is nuclear.
Australia’s feat of energy self-harm
It can be argued that, like Germany and Japan, Australia has performed its own feat of energy self-harm. Exploration for oil has been allowed to falter and production of liquid fuels has been sent offshore by a combination of economies of scale, lack of investment and strict environmental mandates from government.
In Australia, climate change has become the crisis that drives energy policy. But, as the war in Iran has shown, energy security is about a lot more than phasing out coal-fired power stations to make electricity. Australia runs on diesel fuel. Fossil fuels produce the fertilisers we need to grow our food and export crops. Fossil fuels make plastics that are ubiquitous to construction and modern life. Diesel-powered cranes unload containers at the wharves and diesel-powered machinery mines the coal and iron ore we export and fuels the trucks that keep our supermarket shelves stocked.
Work is being done on electric-powered trucks but they have their limits. They are more expensive to buy and their small range is not suited to Australia’s long-haul routes. Heavy batteries lessen the payload that can be carried and presumably further increase the cost of freight.
Big miners are exploring ways to shift production to electric diggers and dump trucks, but while Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue is talking a big game about what the future holds, BHP and Rio have slashed spending on green initiatives. This mirrors a global trend to get back to basics.
The evidence is that Australia must work to encourage future investment in the energy and resource projects that pay the bills against strong competition from Canada, the US, South America, Africa and elsewhere. And we must decide if we want to re-establish domestic energy security or remain dependent on extended import supply lines at a time of global upheaval and potential conflict.
There have been plenty of opportunities lost. The failure of the much-hyped hydrogen revolution to work at cost and scale has left us without a clear pathway to replace liquid fuels.

In cases like this, the pond can merely observe and offer for the pleasure of its correspondents, with illustrations... Oil from the Deepwater Horizon wellhead disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The BP-leased oil platform exploded and sank in 2010, leaking an estimated 200,000 gallons of crude oil per day from the broken pipeline.

How Lloydie relished the disaster:

Deepwater Horizon and our last best chance
The failure of the last best chance to replace the dwindling oil reserves from Bass Strait can be traced to another crisis: BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater crisis gave environment groups the leverage they needed to campaign against BP’s ambitions to drill for oil in the deep waters off the Great Australian Bight.
Deepwater Horizon in 2010 was the world’s biggest oil spill in which 800 million litres of oil was spewed into the Gulf of Mexico across 87 days. Only about 25 per cent of the oil was recovered, leaving half a billion litres of oil in the Gulf. BP said economics, not environmental politics, caused it to pull out of the bight project but its own oil spill modelling showed a Deepwater Horizon-style spill in the bight could take more than six months to control, would be certain to hit land and would spread oil for thousands of kilometres. If a spill happened there was a “high probability” it would affect important marine species, including sperm whales and pygmy blue whales.

Yet more disaster footage... The US Coast Guard battles blazing remnants of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

Lloydie gushed on ...

After BP pulled out, Norwegian energy giant Equinor was given permission to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight but it also pulled out in February 2020, citing poor project economics. Equinor said the project did not stack up financially with other global energy projects. This is despite estimates that more than nine billion barrels of oil could be extracted from several fields, making it – despite the much deeper waters – the logical replacement for dwindling reserves in Bass Strait.
The discovery of oil in Bass Strait in the Gippsland Basin off Victoria in 1965 by Esso and BHP fundamentally changed the nation by delivering energy self-sufficiency. More than five billion barrels of oil have been produced from Bass Strait across five decades but production has been in steady decline since peaking in the 1980s.
Export exposure
Rather than being self-sufficient, Australia today is a major exporter of energy, principally coal and gas, but a net importer of liquid fuels. According to the federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, in 2022-23 Australia produced 771 petajoules (equivalent of 131 million barrels) of crude oil, condensate and LPG, of which more than 94 per cent was sent offshore.
In return about 90 per cent of refined products including petrol and diesel were imported, mostly from refineries in South Korea and Singapore. Australia now has only two operating oil refineries – the Lytton Refinery in Brisbane and the Geelong Refinery in Victoria – which provide only about 17 per cent of domestic demand. Australia consistently falls short of the International Energy Agency requirement to hold 90 days of net oil imports, typically maintaining roughly half that amount.
Opting to import our liquid fuel requirements was a conscious decision. The Australian Institute of Petroleum, an industry lobby group set up to promote self-regulation, argued in 2017: “Australia’s transport fuel security depends on flexible supply chains and diversity of product supply, not domestic refining of domestic crude oil.”

Lloydie was wild-eyed with local excitements... Offshore oil and gas production on the North West Shelf off WA.

There's nothing like living the climate science denying, renewables fearing, fossil fuels loving dream ...

Its members were Ampol Limited, BP Australia, Mobil Oil and Viva Energy Australia.
The AIP argument was that Australia did not need to subsidise local refineries or a new nationally owned refinery.
It said if Australia had more refineries to meet domestic fuel demand, this would simply result in more crude imports as domestic crude production was insufficient and unsuitable by itself to achieve “self-sufficiency” in transport fuels.
The AIP said substituting crude oil imports for petroleum product imports would not increase transport fuel security.
It said no new refinery had been constructed in an industrialised/Western nation for more than 20 years. And Australia offered none of the capital or operating cost benefits available in many developing countries.
“Compared to refineries across Asia, Australian refineries suffer from substantial disadvantages in operating and capital costs that preclude Australia from consideration for major new refinery projects,” the AIP said.
“In the context of Australia’s demonstrated efficient and reliable access to large-scale refineries in Asia (and excess Asian supply currently and forecast), it is difficult to see any case for the very significant cost of a taxpayer-funded refinery (for example, at least $US5bn for a minimum efficient scale refinery).
“High coastal shipping costs would make domestic distribution from a ‘central’ refinery uncompetitive against imported cargoes of fuel.”
Many of these things still may be true. But the Iran war crisis has exposed our vulnerability. We are dependent on much more than fuel and if the war continues the economic costs will continue to escalate.
How we can turn this dependency around
Like the US, Australia is well placed to turn around our import dependency.
At present, Australia’s oil production is heavily concentrated in a few offshore regions, with most of the remaining crude resources located in the continent’s northwest and southeast.
According to Geoscience Australia, the Northern Carnarvon Basin in Western Australia is Australia’s most prolific oil-producing region, accounting for nearly 70 per cent of the country’s remaining identified crude oil resources.
The Gippsland Basin, which includes Bass Strait, is in a significant state of decline and transitioning towards decommissioning.
The Cooper-Eromanga Basin in South Australia and Queensland is the largest onshore oil and gas province in Australia.
The Bonaparte and Browse Basins in Western Australia and the Northern Territory are massive gas hubs but produce large quantities of condensate, which is used as a refinery feedstock.
There is renewed interest in Queensland’s Surat and Bowen basins, where the Taroom Trough has been identified as a “new oil frontier”, with major exploration and appraisal drilling under way.
This week Queensland Premier David Crisafulli said the field had the potential to produce “hundreds of millions of barrels” of oil.

What set Lloydie off? What brought him back?

Could this be another terrifying thing to pin on King Donald's Iranian excursion folly?

It's perhaps not down there with murdering 150+ schoolgirls, but it's a goodly firestorm, An oil tanker burns after being hit by an Iranian strike in the ship-to-ship transfer zone at Khor al-Zubair port near Basra, Iraq, on March 11.

Lloydie stayed all in, until the final frenzied gush of oil-fuelled madness ...

“There’s potential for a veritable sea of domestic oil right here in Queensland,” he told the Liberal National Party’s annual State Council. “We must promise ourselves, as a nation, never again will we be vulnerable entirely to foreign conflicts injuring our energy security. For too long, the national conversation about mining has treated the industry as something we should be embarrassed about.”
The Iran war is a wake-up call and a chance to rethink national priorities.
To succeed, however, it would be necessary to match crude oil production with refining capacity, create large stockpile reserves and to develop an efficient way to distribute product around the country. And, as in the US, this might involve leaning into unconventional technologies such as fracking that have proved highly controversial.
There is still work to do to prove up reserves in the Taroom Trough in Queensland. And there are bitter fights to be had about the environmental risks of deep-sea drilling in the Great Australian Bight.
But, as in the US, shale oil could be our big untapped potential. The Beetaloo Basin is a massive, highly prospective shale gas field in the Northern Territory that is transitioning from exploration to commercial production, with first gas sales to the NT domestic market targeted for mid to late 2026. Several key wells in the Beetaloo Basin have confirmed the presence of liquid hydrocarbons with estimates of hundreds of millions of barrels.
The same is true for the Canning Basin in Western Australia.
The question is whether Australia still has the institutional and political wherewithal to drill baby drill.

Phew, please allow the pond to pause to celebrate what war can produce ...

At this point, the pond had no alternative but to do a hard cut on Killer of the IPA, a scandalous sacrilege for a Good Friday...

At best, the pond could offer a teaser trailer ...

And the pond could offer a fragile link to Killer in the intermittent archive, working early this day ...

PM’s fuel excise cut just ignores our real energy problems
For weeks people have put up with being accused of irrationality for ‘hoarding’ petrol when such behaviour is a perfectly rational response.
By Adam Creighton
Adam Creighton
Contributor

But the pond had to rule against full coverage, on the grounds of space and redundancy.

What could Killer add to what Lloydie of the Amazon had already gushed about?

Not much ...

...The sad transition from having among the cheapest energy in the world to the most expensive rests mainly on the government’s obsession with replacing cheap fossil fuel with unreliable wind and solar energy. Barely 6 per cent of the workforce was employed in manufacturing last year, around half the level it was two decades ago.
Albanese also extolled the wonders of removing the lower minimum pay rates for 18, 19 and 20 year olds. After returning from the US last year, where there are no such concessional pay rates, I was struck by how many young people worked in retail. These changes won’t be great news for many young Australians who will simply be passed over for a more experienced, older worker.
What new limitations on gambling advertisements, also part of the PM’s speech, has to do with how the government would handle the emerging fuel crisis is anyone’s guess.
Unfortunately, there’s little governments can do to alleviate panic buying once it’s begun. Unless they can convince people their facts were mistaken – very difficult in a crisis when governments are known to lie – formal rationing can only exacerbate the panic. Next week could be interesting.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

So Killer had to be sacrificed, but it was for a good cause - in the spirit of the season.

With Killer of the IPA truncated, neigh crucified, that left room for a full outing with Our Henry, proudly on hand for the Australian Daily Zionist News ...

The header: How the ancient story of the Exodus forged the foundations of Western freedom; What happened at Sinai was not merely a religious revelation. It was the founding moment of a new kind of political order.

The caption for the painting that helps date Our Henry's thinking: ‘The miracle of the Exodus’. Moses and the Children of Israel Crossing the Red Sea, c.1855, by Henri Frédéric Schopin.

The 1850s? Possibly a tad too modern, muh lud.

The hole in bucket man offered a bigly seven minutes of Easter piety, skating around the awkward way that Jews and Jesus lovers and trinitarians have their issues.

The pond was reminded of this recently when it took another look at the Coen brothers' bit of fluff Hail Caesar, about Hollywood making a bible epic ...

Narrator: Ancient Rome. Twelve years into the rule of Tiberius, ruler maximus. Rome's legions are masters of the world, the stomp of its sandals heard from the Iberian peninsula in the west through the halls of the great library of Alexandria in the east. As oppressed people everywhere writhe under the Roman lash, freeman and vassal are united in one compulsory worship. The emperor, Caesar, is Godhead, lord of every man's body and spirit. For those who will not submit, the galleys, the arenas, even crucifixion await. But there is a new wind, blowing from the east, from the dusty streets of Bethlehem, that will soon challenge the vast house of Caesar, that edifice wrought of brick and blood which now seems so secure!

Why, it's almost as good as a Thucydides reference.

Curiously only the week before that the pond had dipped into a really terrible Bible flick from the 1950s and the Coen brothers were true to brand ...

Protestant Clergyman: Who plays Christ?
Eddie Mannix (the studio head trying to get the assembled clergy to give the script a tick of approval): A kid we're all very excited about, Todd Hocheiser, a wonderful young actor we found in Akron, Ohio, after a nationwide talent hunt. But Hocheiser is seen only fleetingly and with extreme taste. Our story is told through the eyes of a Roman tribune, Autochlus Antonius, an ordinary man, skeptical at first, but who comes to a grudging respect for this swell figure from the East.

The film was full of great theology:

Catholic Clergyman: God has children.
Rabbi: What? And a dog? A collie, maybe? God doesn't have children. He's a bachelor. And very angry.
Catholic Clergyman: No! No! He used to be angry!
Rabbi: What? He got over it?
Protestant Clergyman: You worship the god of another age!
Catholic Clergyman: Who has no love!
Rabbi: Not true! He likes Jews.

Our Henry's playing the role of the rabbi ...

At last, the time had come: as they prepared to flee Egypt, the children of Israel stood on the threshold of deliverance. But even before they were freed, they received a commandment that would echo through the ages.
“This day shall be unto you for a memorial,” said the Lord, “and throughout your generations you shall keep it a feast forever.”
That command, given thousands of years ago, was once again observed this week as Jewish families across Australia celebrated Passover. In many homes, the mood will have been sombre – darkened by the hostility that erupted with the massacres of October 7, 2023, and then metastasised into murderous antisemitic violence.
Yet the Passover Seder – the ritual meal in which the Exodus story is recited and retold – is above all a time to remember, to celebrate and to pass on from one generation to the next the miracle of the Exodus.
It would be a mistake to see the narrative of the flight of the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt as simply a gift to the Jewish people. Its themes have shaped the Western tradition itself and, through it, the democratic inheritance Australia received with British settlement.
That inheritance is now increasingly fragile. Understanding the ideas that underpin our liberty is therefore more crucial than ever. The Exodus narrative is, at its core, the story of how they entered our world.
Not conquest, consent
What happened at Sinai was not merely a religious revelation. It was the founding moment of a new kind of political order. When the children of Israel stood at the foot of the mountain, they did not receive a code imposed by a conqueror or a law decreed by a king. They entered into a covenant.
The Hebrew word – berit – describes a binding, bilateral, conditional commitment between God and the people, in which obligations run in both directions. God committed himself to Israel; Israel committed itself to God’s law. The community the covenant created rested not on conquest but consent.
Nothing like this existed in the ancient world. The great empires – Egypt, Assyria, Babylon – understood power as flowing downward from a god-king whose authority was absolute. The Exodus inverted this logic entirely. The God of Israel had heard the cry of slaves and taken their side against the greatest empire on Earth.
Power was no longer self-justifying. Those who wielded it were answerable for its use.
The covenant at Sinai added something more far-reaching still: that even the highest authority was bound by commitments it had made. A ruler who broke the covenant – who governed in his own interest rather than his subjects’ – forfeited the claim to their obedience.

Don't expect the pond to make any sense of this. The pond is a hard core atheist, not of the angry king, but rather the sort that's bemused at the notion of putting the cutlery out in the garden ... Orthodox Jews in New York observe ‘biur chametz,’ a Jewish ritual where leavened food items are burned on the morning ahead of Passover.

There's a bigly sprinkling of theological references of the sort designed to pander to devotees of portentous Henry's ability to parade pompously his book larnin'///

The most just constitution the world had ever seen
For centuries after the fall of Rome, the Exodus’s political implications lay dormant, confined to the small, harshly persecuted Jewish community. It took the Protestant Reformation to recover the Exodus narrative as a political text. The catalytic moment came in Geneva, where John Calvin preached his famous Deuteronomy sermons in the 1550s, devoting fully 22 weeks to Moses’s speeches at the edge of Canaan. For Calvin, Moses was not primarily a wonderworker but a lawgiver: the author of the most just constitution the world had ever seen, in which the subjects’ duty to obey depended on the ruler’s obedience to law.
Calvin’s followers drew conclusions he never dared articulate. They fused the Exodus covenant with older constitutional traditions to argue that a ruler who violated his covenant obligations could be resisted and deposed.
The greatest English voice in this tradition was John Milton. Writing in 1644, he cast England itself as a new Israel – a covenanted people called to bring freedom to the world. If England was the “nation chosen before any other”, it was surely so that “out of her, as out of Sion, should be sounded forth the trumpet of reformation”.
The consequences for the British constitutional tradition were momentous. Magna Carta, sealed in 1215, had played almost no constitutional role for centuries. Then suddenly, between 1581 and 1616, it burst on to the scene, championed by often Puritan lawyers who saw no distinction between freedom of conscience and freedom from arbitrary power.

The reptiles interrupted with a truly bizarre visual distraction, Runnymede in Surrey, where the Magna Carta was signed in 1215.

Couldn't they dig up a meaningful snap of the actual document?

As for the rest, the pond likes to keep its theology and its constitutional arguments simple ...

Catholic Clergyman: It's the foundation of our belief that Christ is most properly referred to as the Son of God. It's the Son of God who takes the sins of the world upon himself, so that the rest of God's children, we imperfect beings, through faith, may enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Eddie Mannix: So, God is - split?
Catholic Clergyman: Yes! And no.
Eastern Orthodox Clergyman: There is unity in division.
Protestant Clergyman: And division in unity.
Eddie Mannix: I'm not sure I follow padre.
Rabbi: Young man, you don't follow for a very simple reason. These men are screwballs.

By this point, Our Henry sounded like he was expecting to be swept up in a constitutional rapture by this Sunday, a kind of new rising from the dead ...

The pre-eminent figure in giving these ideas a coherent intellectual basis was John Selden (1584-1654), simultaneously an outstanding English common lawyer and the foremost political Hebraist in Europe – a Christian scholar who was a magnificent translator of Talmudic commentary.
Selden placed the notion of a covenant between rulers and the ruled at the heart of English political and legal theory. Law was not the command of the sovereign; it was the accumulated wisdom of the community, binding even on kings because it preceded any act of regal will. And the common law was its embodiment and glory.
The Puritan settlers who crossed the Atlantic carried that covenantal vision with them. They saw themselves as a new Israel, their journey an Exodus, the ocean the Red Sea. John Winthrop, addressing his fellow passengers aboard the Arbella in 1630, invoked the Exodus in urging them to discard the corruptions they were leaving behind: “So He carried the Israelites into the wilderness and made them forgette the fleshpotts of Egipt.”
The Mayflower Compact the settlers signed was not a constitution in the modern sense. It was a covenant: a mutual commitment, made in the presence of God, to form “a city upon a hill”, a body politic enacting laws for the general good. Community preceded government, and government derived its authority from the community’s consent.
Those institutions became the experience of self-governance for the makers of the American Revolution. By then the Exodus connection was ubiquitous: asked about the Great Seal of the United States, Benjamin Franklin immediately suggested “Moses lifting up his Wand, and dividing the Red Sea, and Pharaoh, in his Chariot overwhelmed with the Waters.”
On Sinai’s foundations Britain forged the rule of law; the United States infused it with the spirit of democracy.

It wouldn't be a genuine contribution to the Australian Daily Zionist News without the following ...

Remember, Islamophobia is never far from the surface in Our Henry and in The Australian Daily Zionist News ...

By contrast, Islam
Set against that tradition, the Exodus’s Islamic reception is striking. Moses is the most frequently mentioned prophet in the Koran, appearing 136 times, far more than Mohammed himself. Yet Exodus’s significance follows a logic diametrically opposed to its reception in Judaism and post-Reformation Christianity.
In Judaism, the Exodus is the founding event of a people; in Protestantism, it became the template for constitutional liberty. In Islam, by contrast, it serves primarily as a prefiguration of Mohammed’s superior prophethood, before which even Moses recedes.
The result is that the covenant has never possessed, in Islamic political thought, the explosive emancipatory power it acquired in the West. Instead, authority flows downward from God, not upward from a consenting community.
Brilliant 19th-century Islamic reformers – Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad ‘Abduh, the Young Ottomans – and their liberal successors tried to derive a Koranic basis for constitutional government. Al-Afghani himself lamented that Muslim thought had fallen into taqlid – blind deference to inherited authority.
But they were working against the grain. Their tradition had no Reformation recovery of the Sinai covenant, no Puritan-common law alliance, no Mayflower Compact. Precarious and institutionally unrooted, the constitutionalism they promoted collapsed under the onslaught of secular authoritarianism on the one hand and Islamic fundamentalism on the other.
The example of Islam makes plain that what is at stake is not antiquarian curiosity. It is the survival of a distinctly Western political inheritance whose foundations we have largely forgotten – and that is under assault.
The ancient Greeks were right: the antonym for truth is forgetfulness. When it triumphs, truth dies. The truth being lost is this: the Exodus did not merely inspire institutions. It shaped a way of thinking about power – that authority is conditional, that it must answer to law and that citizens are not mere subjects but participants, with rights and duties, sharing a community of tradition and destiny.
Not just remembrance, but education
That way of thinking cannot be assumed. It must be taught, relearnt and defended. That is why Jews treasure the Passover Seder. It is not simply a ritual of remembrance; it is a ritual of education based on a pedagogy that embraces, rather than suppresses, disagreement.
The central ritual obligation in the Seder is triggered not by a priest or a scholar but by a child’s question: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” The adult’s duty is not to answer authoritatively but to respond in a way that generates further inquiry. The narrative must be argued over, not just recited. As the evening ends, the participants must feel that they themselves, not their ancestors centuries ago, had been brought out of Egypt.

Just to rub it in ... Families celebrate the Passover Eve dinner at a festive table in an underground shelter, in Ramat Gan, Israel, on April 1.

Look, we can all come together, we can all agree ...

Eddie Mannix: As for the religious aspect, does the depiction of Christ Jesus cut the mustard?
Catholic Clergyman: Well, the nature of Christ is not quite as simple as your photoplay would have it.
Eddie Mannix: How so, father?
Catholic Clergyman: It's not the case, simply, that Christ is God or God - Christ.
Rabbi: You can say that again! The Nazarene was not God.
Eastern Orthodox Clergyman: He was not not God.
Rabbi: He was a man.
Protestant Clergyman: Part God.
Rabbi: No, sir!
Eddie Mannix: Rabbi, all of us have a little bit of God in us, don't we?

Gentlemen, please...

Protestant Clergyman: God loves everyone!
Catholic Clergyman: God is love!
Eastern Orthodox Clergyman: God is who he is.
Rabbi: This is special? Who isn't who he is?
Catholic Clergyman: But, how should God be rendered in a motion picture?
Rabbi: God isn't in the motion picture!

What about the action?

Eddie Mannix: We don't want to send it to market except in the certainty that it will not offend any reasonable American, regardless of faith or creed. Now that's where you come in. You've read the script; I wanna know if the theological elements of the story are up to snuff.
Eastern Orthodox Clergyman: I thought the chariot scene was fakey. How is he going to jump from one chariot to the other, going full speed?

Final thoughts?

Eddie Mannix: We don't need to agree on the nature of the deity here. If we could focus on the Christ, whatever his parentage. My question is: is our depiction fair?
Eastern Orthodox Clergyman: I have seen worse.
Eddie Mannix: Reverend?
Protestant Clergyman: There's nothing to offend a - reasonable man.
Eddie Mannix: Father?
Catholic Clergyman: The motion picture teleplay was respectful and exhibited tastefulness and class.
Rabbi: Who made you an expert all of the sudden?
Eddie Mannix: And, what do you think, Rabbi?
Rabbi: Eh? I haven't an opinion.

Thank you, Rabbi Henry, but don't be modest, you always have an opinion ...

Sock it to us in a final gobbet of Zionist glory ...

Beneath that insistence lies a deeper truth: freedom is never self-sustaining. It depends on habits that have to be cultivated and preserved. If those habits weaken, the institutions built upon them crumble.
We are living through such a moment. The language of rights is invoked by those who would use them to bury the rights of others. The language of duties is reviled. Authority is dismissed outright. Reasoned disagreement gives way to a cancel culture that masquerades under the banner of freedom of expression.
To remember the Exodus, then, is not merely to honour a distant past. It is to recall the conditions of our own freedom – and to pledge, as we do at the Seder, to cherish and renew its foundations.
There may come a time, God forbid, when children no longer know how to ask why we gather on that night and parents no longer know how to answer. But for so long as Judaism survives – with its love of questions over answers, of debate over conformity, of learning over ignorance – Passover will teach generation after generation the joy of inquiry, the virtue of wisdom and, most of all, humanity’s inextinguishable quest for freedom on this Earth.

And so constitutional democracy carries on its warrior ways, with the full blessing of Rabbi Henry ...

And with that, another oldie, a real test of what the google bot will tolerate ...