Okay, that got boring fast, the lettuce won, and now it's just a matter of observing the funeral rites, always a tedious business, especially given the way the likely chief mourners are the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way and the hastie pastie, plotting to take over the corpse's job.
The reptiles were well into it in a bigly way ...
... but the pond was bored, compounded by the usual reptile carry on about invasion day.
The reptiles dressed up simpleton Simon's 12 minute rant - 12 bloody minutes - with a hideous uncredited graphic featuring some kind of moving aura ...
Off to the intermittent archive with him ...
An existential crisis and palpable despair: inside a conservative implosion
No one appears to have asked the question: How do three competing parties on the right all survive? The answer is they can’t.
Simplistic Simon seemed only dimly aware that the reptiles had played a key role in bringing on the implosion courtesy their latest jihad, a confused and incoherent cry for the suppression of free speech, followed by an incessant yammering about the need for free speech.
Also off to the archive with the bouffant one ...
Chaos has engulfed Canberra as the domestic terror crisis exposes Anthony Albanese’s leadership failures and a fractured opposition falls apart.
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor
The bouffant one managed an astonishing 8 minute read, which for him is Herculean, putting him almost in nodding off nattering "Ned" territory.
The sublime incomprehension of the way that the reptiles contributed to this current folly continued apace in his extended musing.
Meanwhile, the reptiles carried on the jihad ...
Modern antisemitism dispenses with Jews as individuals, blames ‘Zionists’ for everything from global conflict to domestic upheaval
Anti-Zionism fuels Western moral decline, replacing individual responsibility with grievance-based politics.
By Jeremy Leibler
Collectivist thinking is the problem?
Tell that to your local kibbutz (that's collective agricultural settlements) and to your moshavs (cooperative villages) and then go off and read The Collectivist Core of Israel’s Social Fabric.
Here's what's fuelling Western moral decline - the observing of a slow motion genocide and ethnic cleansing and the establishment of a Board of Peace to which the likes of Putin the Sociopath have been invited, alongside the likes of Belarus, Uzbekistan and Hungary...an international body in service to one man’s ego.
Dame Slap didn't provide an alternative.
She was busy blathering away in her court of Dame Slap opinion ...
The Dowling saga: who holds prosecutors to account in order to protect us?
The explosive clash between NSW’s top prosecutor Sally Dowling and District Court Judge Penelope Wass has exposed a disturbing truth: Australia has no meaningful mechanism to hold prosecutors accountable for misconduct.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist
Who holds the MAGA cap-donning Dame Slap to account in order to protect innocent stray readers?
No one, but at least she can be despatched to the intermittent archive.
But that left the pond with an ever diminishing circle of choices.
The pond holds Brendan in such contempt that not even his feeble attempt to do an Our Henry in his header could make the pond interested.
The left ignores censorship and cancel culture — until antisemitic slogans face restriction. Its sudden love of free speech reveals not principle, but a moral double standard.
By Brendan O'Neill
Columnist
Oh FFS, is this the same Brendan that scribbled ...
I’m glad sections of the left find the free-speech crisis so funny. Or ‘free-speech crisis’, as they always put it, those sarky quote marks signalling their scepticism towards the idea that there’s a censorship problem on campus and elsewhere in society. ‘Freeze peach!’, they cry at anyone who thinks it is a bad thing that people can be No Platformed, threatened with death or sacked from their jobs for expressing the ‘wrong’ opinion. Hilarious, isn’t it?
Is this the same loon who turned up at Oxford posing as a free speech fundamentalist, and inspiring this piece in the Oxford Student ...
In a speech in Sydney in 2015, he argued that feminism in its current form amounted to a “war on women”. He criticises the idea that street harassment is widespread: “… there’s catcalling, wolf-whistling, people who might start a conversation with you. And women can’t cope with that, apparently.
Go wolf-whistle yourself into the void ...
Just when are the lizards of Oz going to stop importing these dangerously radicalised Poms intent on radicalising the populace? Isn't there some way to stop these mad furriners from infesting the country? Isn't enough that we have wild-eyed third rate sociology students ranting at us?
Can't Brendan be sent to somewhere else to see where his ranting about freedumb might get him?
Speaking of those disunited states, luckily the bromancer was to hand with a bigly 10 minute read about King Donald ...
The header: A tale of two Trumps: good, bad and bluster; The US President seems to value NATO’s vast security network at nothing. That’s not only insulting, it’s untrue.
There was an actual credit for the artwork, when AI should have copped the blame: Donald Trump, Artwork: Emilia Tortorella
The bromancer continued with his weird Manichaean heresy that there's a good King Donald residing in the same body as the the bad King Donald, when in reality, there's just one barking mad demented narcissistic authoritarian wreaking havoc on the world and on his country.
The best the bromancer could manage was to sound confused ...
The Greenland crisis is over. Phew! Trump, after negotiating with his good friend, NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte, says he’s got an “eternal” deal, or “framework” that gives America “everything we want”.
This is confusing. Trump claimed previously that total US ownership of Greenland was necessary for US and world security. Rutte said sovereignty didn’t come up.
Trump’s reckless threat to attack a NATO ally has damaged NATO. The US and Denmark, under article five of NATO, are committed to come to each other’s defence should one be attacked. The idea of one attacking the other is bizarre, horrific, unbelievable.
Trump’s verbal trashing of NATO, which he continued in his truculent, rambling 72-minute speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, is like a bruise in the soft tissue of an athlete’s arm. It will heal eventually. But if Trump keeps punching the same soft tissue, forever aggravating the bruise, the damage will be permanent. In the politics of every NATO ally, the constituency that thinks the Americans unreliable, bad partners is energised. That damages the whole US alliance system, on which Australia’s security is incidentally dependent.
The reptiles immediately introduced an AV distraction, featuring King Donald with angelic halo ...
US President Donald Trump boasted America was going to build the "Golden Dome" defence system with technology that is "second to none". The president came during an interview with Fox News' Maria Bartiromo. Trump said the system would work better if the US had "access" to Greenland, claiming it was "important strategically". When pressed on whether part of the "Golden Dome" will be on Greenland, the president said a "very important part" would reside there. Trump's comments come as he rolled back his aggressive rhetoric on the acquisition of Greenland.
At least that gave the pond a chance to slip in a 'toon ...
The bromancer began the next gobbet with a compleat furphy ...
Yet Trump has also rightly drawn the world’s attention to Greenland’s increasing strategic significance. He continues to goad Europeans into doing more to secure their own defence.
Really? If King Donald wanted to do down the sociopathic Vlad the Impaler, all he needed to do was give Ukraine a helping hand.
Instead, for reasons not clear but clearly sinsister, he's in thrall to the invader, an inspiration for King Donald's own lust for territorial expansion.
At least the bromancer had the grace to slip in a billy goat butt in the form of an "however":
It would take a Dickens to do justice to the Janus-faced Trump. Perhaps A Tale of Two Presidents, beginning: He was the best of presidents, he was the worst of presidents, a president of wisdom, a president of foolishness, a leader of Light, a leader of Darkness … you get the drift.
Iran Trump vs Greenland Trump
Over the past few weeks as Iranian authorities murdered thousands of their own citizens, Trump supported the protesters. This was moral leadership. He promised support in terms of military action. Urged by US Arab allies not to strike now, Trump elicited a promise from Tehran not to execute protesters. Now he’s moving a US aircraft carrier battle group to the Middle East. This provides a wider range of more powerful military options.
Moral leadership? Call them out into the streets, and then retreat and watch them butchered?
That's a deeply weird form of moral leadership, and pace Iraq and Afghanistan, we've got plenty of examples of how US moral leadership ends up.
At this point the reptiles revived an old tic which the pond thought it had seen the last of some time ago ...
Don't ask the pond what it means, that'd be like asking the bromancer for sensible insights ...
Sometimes Trump creates negotiating leverage with bluff and bluster, but he devalues his own credibility.
Trump has given up the demand for total sovereignty over Greenland but will get a renegotiation of the 1951 treaty between the US and Denmark.
Ah yes, the old 'concept for a plan' routine, with more details in two weeks, as the reptiles slipped in an entirely meaningless Nat Geo style snap, The red rock mountains of Vikinge Bay, Scoresby Sund, in Greenland.
Hang on, hang on, why did they slip that poley bear into the foreground?
And why didn't the reptiles mention the bear?
Did the creature remind them of their climate science denialism, what with things getting warm around here, not to mention there?
So what is Greenland, why is it suddenly so important and what does Trump want with it? Greenland is the world’s biggest island, a landmass roughly a quarter the size of continental US. It sits to the northeast of Canada, mostly covered in ice and mostly all but uninhabitable.
The Inuit and related people have been there, with some gaps, for thousands of years. Europeans – Danes and Norwegians – have also been there for 1000 years, also with some gaps. If you enjoyed the Vikings TV series you would have seen them establish Greenland’s first European settlement.
Eighty per cent of Greenland sits above the Arctic line. Melting ice has opened up greater sea travel possibilities in Arctic waters. The most strategically important such waters is the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska, to the northwest of the US and Canada. The US and Russia, across the Bering Strait, are only 85km apart. The Bering Strait figured in many Cold War novels and movies.
The waters around Greenland are not as important as that but they are hugely important. Looking at two-dimensional maps can obscure the world’s spherical geography. In the age of fast jets, missiles and satellites, the US faces potentially as big a threat from across the North Pole as from east or west. Russian and Chinese ships have appeared increasingly in Arctic waters.
Phew, no mention of the way that climate change is loosening up Arctic waters and denuding Arctic lands of ice. Instead have another Nat Geo snap ...Nuuk, Greenland.
The bromancer carried on with his lecture ...
After the war, in 1946, the legendary president Harry Truman tried unsuccessfully to buy Greenland from Denmark, the offer made and rejected in secret.
But the Danes were happy for the US to have a military presence, and Truman, though more polite than Trump, was not inclined to take no for an answer on military access. In 1951 the US and Denmark signed a treaty for military co-operation on Greenland. The US built a number of military bases. At one stage it had 17 facilities there. After the Cold War, Washington ran down its presence and now has just one base in Greenland.
When Colin Powell was secretary of state, in 2004, the treaty was updated so Washington could expand its military presence only if Denmark and Greenland agreed. Greenland is a self-governing region but still officially part of Denmark, with Copenhagen controlling defence and foreign relations.
One irony of the present kerfuffle is that, outside Britain and Poland, Denmark is the most solidly pro-US nation in Europe, providing military support to virtually every campaign or war the US has led. There was never any prospect Denmark would prevent Washington expanding militarily in Greenland.
Trump’s deal, or framework, provides for an expanded US presence and with US bases to be treated as sovereign US territory. Such an arrangement is not as unusual as it sounds and resembles Britain’s deal with Cyprus.
Trump’s Golden Dome
Trump has said he wants to use Greenland as part of his Golden Dome project. The Golden Dome is a hugely ambitious effort to provide a comprehensive, layered, missile-defence system for the whole of the US. Many boffins are sceptical this could ever be achieved. But missile defence is real. The model is Israel’s Iron Dome.
Highly ambitious?
Well that's one way of putting it ...
Greenland is rich in rare earths and other minerals. But this is a minor factor. It’s extremely difficult to mine in Greenland. There are only two active mines now. It’s too cold, the ice cover too thick, there are no roads, it’s inaccessible, it’s remote.
Trump’s new agreement will involve greater NATO effort generally on Arctic security. Trump was wildly exaggerating when he claimed Russia or China would take Greenland if the US didn’t. This is one of Trump’s most fantastic inventions. Chinese and Russian missile, satellite, submarine and surveillance capabilities are all big factors. But the idea either would directly attack a NATO nation, on the US doorstep, is far-fetched. Nonetheless, it will be a good thing for Greenland, Denmark, NATO, the US and indeed for global security for the US to have a more formidable military presence.
Trump’s speech at Davos repeated his desire to take full control of Greenland even as he was withdrawing his threats. It was needlessly insulting and hostile. Most US presidents stroke allies and speak hard truths bluntly to adversaries. Trump’s brain seems to have got scrambled. He strokes adversaries such as Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and abuses allies.
Then came a snap of the King with the NATO sell-out man, operating under the delusion that he's a Donald whisperer, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte speaks with Trump during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos this week.
Nothing like a NATO clown thinking he can speak for Denmark and Greenlanders, and speaking of clowns ...
Oh come on Horsey, there's good in the clown, you just need a bromancer to find it ...
Similarly: “The problem with NATO is I’m sure we’d be there for them, 100 per cent, but I’m not sure they’d be there for us.”
That’s not only insulting, it’s untrue. Denmark and other NATO members followed the US into Afghanistan, a campaign entirely in response to the 9/11 terror attacks, and later into Iraq. To claim Britain, Poland or Denmark wouldn’t help America if needed is unhistorical, inaccurate, insulting and the surest way to undermine the alliance.
NATO’s contested value
Possibly Trump displayed such bad grace about his climb down because he was genuinely forced into it. If he had tried military action against Greenland there would have been uproar in the US. Even supine congressional Republicans would rebel against attacking a NATO ally.
Further, when Trump was threatening military action in Greenland and punitive tariffs on Europe, stock and bond markets headed south. The bond markets, like the Chinese supply of rare earths, have disclosed themselves before as factors that can force a Trump backdown.
Trump seems to be ignorant or disregarding of the military value NATO adds to the US.
Eek, not the Pope? Will the bromancer have to start trashing this bloody American Pope for not falling in line with Pellism?
On the pond trudged ...
Nobody’s asking Trump to speak like Ronald Reagan or John F. Kennedy, but he could surely do a bit better than this.
As this column has noted before, it’s impossible for the US to lead the creation of an allied economic and supply chain alternative to China if the President spends so much time insulting and belittling US allies.
Another feature of Trump’s obsession with Greenland is that it seems to reflect his relatively new obsession with focusing US foreign and defence policy on the US’s direct region. This could be a disastrous invitation to see the world as three great powers with natural spheres of influence – the US in the Americas, China in the Indo-Pacific and Russia in eastern and central Europe and Eurasia more widely.
Foreign Affairs recently published a piece outlining a strategy for the US eventually, peacefully to draw Greenland into some intimate sovereignty association. Essentially it would be by an excess of economic kindness, supply chain substitution and cultivation of the substantial independence sentiment in Greenland.
Then came a sub-heading that for some reason the pond found peculiarly, hilariously funny ...
Surely King Donald has learned more than enough from the Vikings, with a pillaging here and a pillaging there.
The reptiles, and so perforce the pond, have already been down this path, and now must go there again ...
Trump touts both the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary to this doctrine, and now wants a Trump corollary as well, the Donroe Doctrine. Trump loves the 19th century but seems to misunderstand it a bit. President James Monroe authored his doctrine way back in 1823. It was simple enough: European colonial powers had to recognise the US interest in Latin America.
The greatest practitioner of the Monroe Doctrine was Teddy Roosevelt, president from 1901 to 1909. Roosevelt, for my money the most extraordinary and engaging of all US presidents, announced in 1904 an expansion of the Monroe Doctrine such that the US would reserve the right, open to no European power, to intervene in the internal affairs of any Latin American country guilty of sustained wrongdoing.
TR was the most subtle and ambitious strategic thinker ever to occupy the White House. Far from being a narrow regionalist, he was the first president to conceive of his country as a great global power.
In explaining the Roosevelt Corollary to congress, TR stressed that the US had no “land hunger”. This was not designed to secure any extra territory for the US. Washington would only interfere if a nation’s misdeeds were so gross that they “invited foreign aggression to the detriment of the entire body of American nations”.
Nonetheless, the US acquired a huge amount of territory in the 19th century, with the Louisiana purchase from France, the Alaska purchase from Russia, the establishment of sovereignty over Hawaii, the acquisition after the Spanish-American war of 1898 of Spanish colonies such as Puerto Rico and The Philippines, though the US always understood it would lead The Philippines to independence in due course.
But these methods are simply not applicable in the 21st century. A subtle, clever Washington could one day perhaps see Greenlanders decide by referendum to join a compact of free association with the US or become a US overseas territory. If it happened democratically, no one could object.
But the US doesn’t need sovereignty over Greenland for security purposes. And it can’t proceed undemocratically. Trump’s threats to Greenland have helped Moscow and Beijing as they associate the US with destabilisation. It’s good reality TV. It’s bad statecraft. Greenland Trump should go into hibernation in an Arctic winter. Iran Trump should re-emerge.
So we can have another Iraq war?
Or so he can make vague promises of help, invite people out into the streets and then watch them be butchered, and then do his usual TACO while boasting about how many he'd saved from execution?
Sheesh ... but at least the pond got the chance to slip in a few cartoons, especially as the bromancer forgot about King Donald's ongoing desire to take over Canada ...
Elbows up Canada ...how you must envy our AUKUS wheelbarrow.
And now as it's the weekend, the pond feels obligated to offer a bonus, even if it's the lowest form of trash retrieved from the hive mind bin.
Before going there, the pond wants to remind correspondents of a note by the keen Keane in Crikey ...
When the Coalition and the media used Bondi to attack Anthony Albanese, it meant opening up issues that were always going to risk tearing the Coalition up. And they have.
The keen Keane went on at some length, but opened this way ...
The first was that tighter gun laws would outrage the Nationals and require either urban Liberal MPs to oppose such laws — which have strong support in the community — or risk splitting the Coalition.
The second was that any tightening of hate speech laws, despite the Coalition’s reflexive support for Israel and incessant attempts to brand Labor as the party of antisemitism over the past two years, risked revisiting a deeply divisive issue that the Liberals themselves have struggled with for over a decade: the protection of free speech and religious groups.
The third was that so weak is Ley’s hold on her own partyroom, let alone the Coalition, that any internal divisions would immediately feed into leadership tensions.
By demanding the immediate recall of parliament to rush through tighter laws and implement “in full” antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal’s bizarre set of unlawful and unconstitutional recommendations, including muzzling the press and stronger laws against hate speech, the Coalition was carefully putting in place a series of land mines — not for Anthony Albanese but for itself. And journalists, under the same delusion that this would destabilise Albanese, cheered them on as they did so.
Well yes, and the reptiles of Oz and their endless crusading should take a major share of the blame.
Now watch as the dog botherer tries to wriggle off that Keane hook, by attempting to blame the ABC ...
The header: Politicians, incurious media have failed the terror test; Instead of holding Labor to account for its culpability over Bondi, Coalition parties made themselves the issue. They, and an incurious media have failed the terror test.
The caption for another of those hideous uncredited lizard Oz collages: The Coalition split has seen Sussan Ley, left, and David Littleproud, right take centre stage, allowing Anthony Albanese, centre, to escape proper scrutiny. Pictures: News Corp
The pond doesn't have much to say about the dog botherer's offering. He's always been a contemptible loon, with a second rate fundamentalist one-eyed ideological approach to the world, and nothing herein changes the pond's mind ...
Federal and state governments, law enforcement agencies and most media could not have moved on more quickly from their culpability over the Islamist terror attack at Bondi Beach that killed 15 people at a Jewish Hanukkah event last month. Rather than examine their failings, they have busied themselves with communal mourning and cloaking themselves in the stories of Bondi’s heroes.
Despite more than two years of warnings about rising levels of antisemitism and Islamist extremism, and constant pleas for more decisive action, Anthony Albanese not only did the minimum possible to stand up against this hatred but, encouraged by the ABC and others, he fanned the flames by demonising Israel. Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong even tried to assuage Hamas by recognising the non-existent state of Palestine, a dangerous move that rewarded terrorism and therefore could only encourage extremists.
You see? The relentless reptile jihad forced precipitate action, and now here we are, with the reptiles and the one time coalition in a sorry mess, and the lettuce triumphant ...
Cue an interruption ...Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks during the Light Will Win memorial service at the Sydney Opera House in Sydney on January 22. Picture: AFP
The dog botherer maintained his rage, invoking fellow crow eater Lord Downer ...
Instead of holding the government to account and providing a template for stronger action, the Coalition parties have taken a blunderbuss to their own feet as parliament considered hate speech laws this week. Whatever their differences and the complexities involved, they needed to be united and focused.
The Liberals and Nationals have made themselves the issue, thereby absolving the government of scrutiny. It seems unlikely the Coalition will be re-formed until the Liberals install a new leader.
The pond hates to bring up this interruption, but the reptiles keep bringing it up ...
Why? What's it mean? The pond hasn't held a hard copy the rag in its hands for years, not since they gave it away at airports.
So why put this nonsense in the web version? Have they worked out how to put a URL in a hard copy newspaper?
Never mind, it's more amusing as a mystery than the dog botherer's tiresome musings...
The opposition should have been busy prosecuting Labor’s failures in the public debate rather than pushing for a return to the ALP’s home ground of Parliament House in Canberra, where it has the numbers on the floor and the press gallery running protection in the corridors. The opposition did well to force Albanese’s backflip on a royal commission, then lost sight of what mattered.
The pivotal lines and the arguments had been laid out for the opposition by former deputy Liberal leader Josh Frydenberg when he paid his respects at Bondi last month.
“We, as a Jewish community, have been abandoned, and left alone by our government. Our governments have failed every Australian when it comes to fighting hate and antisemitism,” Frydenberg said. “Our Prime Minister … has allowed Australia to be radicalised on his watch.”
The former treasurer rattled off a list of threats and escalations over two years. “We have seen the doxxing of Jewish creators, the cancelling of Jewish artists, the boycotting of Jewish businesses, the graffiti at our schools, the harassment, the intimidation of Jewish students and staff on our university campuses and, of course, the firebombing of our synagogues and daycare centres, and daily protests of hate in this, the lucky country, which is lucky no more,” he said. “And for 2½ years, as the Australian Jewish community and others have raised the alarm bells, they were told by people who should know better that this was not as significant as they had said.”
Perhaps it's best not to go to Haaretz, and be reminded.
Oh why not ...Olga Cherevko Showed the World What's Happening in Gaza. Israel Won't Let Her Return. (sorry, possible paywall)
Inter alia:
And again...
Back to the lizard Oz, as the reptiles slipped in a snap of domestic suffering ...Liberal leader, Sussan Ley, and Nationals leader, David Littleproud have allowed their own parties’ issues to let Albanese off the hook. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.
And then it was on with the job of pinning it all on the ABC, in a way to be expected of a columnist for the Australian Daily Zionist News ...
This foolish strategy not only delivered unnecessary laws that are bound to have unintended consequences, it also implicitly excused the government of blame because it suggests the missing element here was not leadership and resolve but legislation.
If an identical series of events had unfolded under a Coalition prime minister there is little doubt he or she would have been pushed close to resignation by now. Labor and its media mates, quite rightly, would have piled on the pressure over warnings ignored and pleas denied. Remember Scott Morrison was scarified by Labor and the media for making the obvious point that he could not physically extinguish bushfires: “I don’t hold a hose, mate.” Yet Albanese spent 26 months resisting demands for action against rising levels of antisemitism and Islamist extremism before the Bondi Beach massacre finally jolted him into some sense of urgency.
Here was a study in denial, a tin ear turned to legitimate concerns and a community endangered because a Prime Minister averted his eyes. In the history of our nation no leader has so actively and comprehensively failed their prime duty to protect their citizens – he still struggles to mouth the words “Islamist extremism”.
Complicit journalists’ failures
The reason journalists are not clamouring for Albanese’s scalp is because they have been just as delinquent on Israel and antisemitism. The publicly funded media in particular has spent the past two years demonising Israel, regurgitating Hamas propaganda, underplaying the atrocities of October 7 and downplaying the scourges of antisemitism and Islamist extremism.
If the bloodshed at Bondi exposed the recklessness, misjudgements and indolence of Albanese, it did the same for much of the media. They have spent the past two years running wild and erroneous claims against Israel, censoring the Islamist and extremist elements of endless pro-Palestinian protests and talking down the threat of antisemitism.
Inevitably Josh wangled his way in, what with his desire to wangle his way back into parliament, Former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg reacts at the memorial at Bondi Pavilion for the victims of Sunday's terror attack. Picture: Sky News
What a pity he lacked the ticker ... as the dog botherer ranted on ...
Among the biased and incorrect reports run by the ABC was the false claim early in the war that Israel had fired a missile on Gaza’s Al-Ahli Arab Hospital killing 500 people. (In fact, the rocket came from Palestinian Islamic Jihad and killed a fraction of that number.) The ABC constantly reported Hamas claims and statistics as fact, usually ascribing them to the “Gaza health ministry” or some other source that sounded reliable, and among its many deceptions were reports of the absurdly erroneous claim in May last year that 14,000 babies would die in Gaza within 48 hours.
This is the same public broadcaster whose global affairs editor, Laura Tingle, insists the Bondi Islamist terrorist attack had “nothing to do with religion”. Tingle and other ABC staff, including David Marr and Louise Milligan, joined a boycott of the Adelaide Writers Week in solidarity with Randa Abdel-Fattah, who publicly celebrated the slaughter of Israelis in the October 7 atrocities.
The reptiles then selected Tingle for a snap, The ABC’s Laura Tingle claimed the actions of the Bondi terrorists ‘had nothing to do with religion’. Picture: ABC
And yet insofar as the pond understands religion (admittedly not much), butchering a bunch of innocents in a murderous rampage doesn't have much to do with religion, at least if you avoid the carnage of an Old Testament god always up for a genocide, slavery and such like ...
Back to the keen Keane for a few more thoughts ...
But Australia is the loser from this emerging Victorianisation of the whole country, in which a poor government can glide through debacle after debacle because its opponents are much, much worse.
The Nationals, at least, can now bring all their forces to bear on trying to fend off a surging One Nation in their heartland. That’s likely to see some pretty ugly politics as the rural party embraces some deeply toxic policies, unhindered by having to keep the Liberals onside. Immigration, the tighter gun laws, climate, environmental and economic regulation, social issues — all are now fair game for the Nats.
For Ley, the universal commentary will be that she’s finished. Most likely she is, but she can now get on with her project of trying to make the Liberals relevant to urban electorates, to the extent that mad right-wingers and ultras like Andrew Hastie will let her.
Right from the moment she became leader, Ley has had to craft a credible opposition from a diminished number of mostly talent-free and selfish MPs and senators. At least she’s no longer lumbered now with a bunch of duds imposed on her by the Coalition agreement. If nothing else, it’s a good time to be a Liberal backbencher — as of this morning, their chances of promotion increased sharply.
As for all the journalists, especially at Nine, who weaponised a terrorist massacre to campaign against Albanese, they might reflect on the fact that in politics, things rarely quite pan out how you expect them to. Or, more simply, be careful what you wish for.
Especially Nine?
Oh fair go, keen Keane, show the reptiles, and especially the dog botherer, some respect.
If you want to look at reptiles weaponising a massacre to campaign against the Labor government, no need to look past the lizard Oz.
Who else could invoke silly Sharri (full disrespect) in support of their current jihad?
Former ABC director Joe Gersh has spoken out repeatedly about the ABC’s jaundiced coverage of the Middle East and its reluctance to take antisemitism seriously, long before Bondi.
“It is a matter of deep concern to me as a member of the Jewish community, as a former ABC director and as an Australian citizen, that our national broadcaster has not fully understood and dealt with what I believe has reached a crisis proportion, which is antisemitism in this country,” Gersh told Sharri Markson on Sky News in May 2024.
Then, just seven weeks before the Bondi attack, Gersh spoke on my program about concerns the public broadcaster’s biased Middle East coverage was fuelling resentment in Australia: “The manner in which the ABC and other media outlets treat Israel and the war Gaza reflects directly in action in connection with antisemitism here in Australia.”
Back in June 2024, senator James Paterson was critical of the ABC’s “lack of curiosity” about antisemitism. “When we have Holocaust survivors say they’ve never felt less safe in their own country, in Australia, that’s a national disgrace,” he said. “And the fact that a national broadcaster is so uninterested in that is a great shame.”
This gives us a sense of why Albanese has escaped serious media scrutiny over his shameful handling of Middle East diplomacy, and antisemitism and Islamist extremism at home. The distressing reality is that with the Coalition parties split asunder and the Liberals about to endure another round of leadership turmoil, the dangerous indolence of the Albanese government (and the ABC) is set to run unchecked for some time to come.
Phew, the pond is glad that's over, keeping the dog botherer's company is a bit like tending to King Donald ...
