It's been a long time since the pond has indulged in ego surfing, and since then AI has ruined everything ...
Dammit, post-ironic? Must everything be meta?
What's wrong with good, old-fashioned irony?
Speaking of simple irony, there was something peculiarly ironic about simpleton Simon's headline over on the far right of the digital Oz..
Cut spending? ALP ready with the mother of all scare campaigns The next election will be a test for Australians. Do they think Millennial socialism is the answer or will it have dawned on them that this model may not be working? By Simon Benson Political analyst
"Mother of all scare campaigns"?
The pond supposes on one level it's just game meets game, because this day the reptiles embarked on the mother of all scare campaigns, with productivity the name of the game.
One of the post-ironic things that inspires awe and wonder is the way they have a seemingly inexhaustible series of snaps of Jimbo looking gloomy or acting out head prefect ...
Enough of that, there's more at the intermittent archive, even if the archive is currently being more intermittent than usual ...
With the single-mindedness of jihadi warriors or crusaders, it was a productivity crisis from go to woe, with Geoff and the cranky Cranston tag teaming ...
The pond loves the way that the reptiles label a bog standard lizard Oz jihad as EXCLUSIVE ...
EXCLUSIVE Productivity crisis: nation set for worst decade on record ‘Worst decade ever’: Business’s grim projections for productivity under Jim Chalmers’ policies Australia’s biggest employers have gone to war with Labor over policies strangling the economy, with Jim Chalmers set to deliver the worst decade of productivity since records began in 1960. By Geoff Chambers and Matthew Cranston
Geoff chambered another round ...
COMMENTARY by GEOFF CHAMBERS PM, Chalmers blame everyone but themselves for productivity crisis It is probable Labor will not achieve its politically manufactured renewables and housing targets. But its failure on productivity looms as the Albanese government’s defining legacy.
The reptiles conformed to their Jimbo rule ... see how gloomy and defeated he looks ...
Over on the extreme far right Major Mitchell took up the chant ...
Albo and Jim’s economic blunders squander Hawke-Keating legacy How Albanese and Chalmers are unwinding the economic legacy of Hawke and Keating Treasurer Jim Chalmers wrote his PhD on his Labor hero, Paul Keating, but has absorbed every lesson except the right ones. History will not be kind to this government. By Chris Mitchell Columnist
History won't be kind? Why bother with history when the reptiles are doing the job here and now?
These days the pond will do almost anything to avoid the Major's scribbling, but must note the way that the Jimbo rule was followed, with bonus comical Albo ...
The pond is exceptionally bored by the trick performed over and over by reptiles in search of an angle - the use of Hawke and the French clock devotee to bludgeon the current government, when back in the day the reptiles eagerly conspired to produce the end of that regime.
Just to add to the litany, there was another blackening of the government on productivity over on the extreme far right ...
That was a new name for the pond - the reptiles seem to have an inexhaustible supply - but in the end it turned out to be beyond the predictable ...
Bran Black is chief executive of the Business Council of Australia.
No need to go there in full, but please admire the way that the opening snap conforms to the Jimbo rule ...
Truth to tell, this jihad held little appeal for the pond, what with the pond having woken up to news of mad king Donald denying his own deeds in the middle east, and lumping blame on Ukraine ...
Brownie of the lizard Oz matched this feat with an EXCLUSIVE that didn't mention Iran or Trump.
EXCLUSIVE Labor mulls new fuel excise cut as Mid-East war flares Petrol prices could surge toward their previous $2.60 peak, forcing the Albanese government to weigh another costly fuel excise cut despite economists warning it fuels inflation. By Greg Brown
Any reference to the deeds of Faux Noise's hero came in the first line ...
Anthony Albanese will consider restoring cuts to the fuel excise in the coming weeks amid expectations petrol prices will further increase as the Middle East war escalates.
Thereafter it was Albo did this and Albo might do that all the way ... and even worse, the opening snap broke the Jimbo rule ...
All that sets the tone for yet another bout of triumphalism by the Lynch mob, serial defamer of the reputation of the University of Wollongong ...
Why America’s war on terror worked After a weekend commemorating 9/11, we should reflect how little damage its plotters did to US prospects – and how much they did to their own. By Timothy Lynch
The pond will skip past the Lynch mob's personal reminiscences - most people will remember what they were doing that day, and the pond still has vivid memories of the drama unfolding as it talked with a traumatised New York Jewish man ...
It was the notion of the alleged way the war on terror had worked that intrigued the pond ...just as Iran maintains its threat to the strait and the Houthis have taken over access to the Red Sea coast ...
Here no f*** up, no f*** up here, as the Lynch mob went full triumphalist ...
...Federal power has never really recovered from the failure to interdict this crudely simple plot. While the day itself still throws up amazing tales of bravery, loss and long-term consequences – nearly three times the number killed on 9/11, for example, have since died of diseases caused by the poisonous dust of the fallen towers – the response of the US government to 9/11 is widely condemned. This has made the task of defending the Bush administration’s response to the attack hard to impossible. For sure, the charge sheet is a long one. It begins with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, moves to a global recession, Russian revanchism, Chinese emboldenment, Covid, domestic polarisation, Iranian scheming, October 7, and then into an immigration crisis and the discord woven into attempts to solve it. Even the decline of sex and reproduction in the West gets blamed on the ennui of national failure that al-Qa’ida exposed. Why bring children into such a world? Each, singularly or in combination, gets tied to the dereliction of duty on 9/11 itself: “If we can’t trust the government to protect us from such a simple threat, why should we believe it capable of confronting more serious foes?”
To help with the yarn, the reptiles flung in a triumphalist snap ... US Marine covers the face of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s statue with the US flag in Baghdad’s al-Fardous square. Picture: Ramzi Haidar / AFP
Any notion that the Lynch mob might be sensible collapsed with the next reference to "climate catastrophism".
Such a stupid phrase, by a man who purports to be an academic, but always resorts to the language of the stupid ideologue ...
...The wonder is that climate catastrophism has risen in parallel with a distrust of the national and international action held necessary to appease it. The bizarrely porous southern US border, which Donald Trump won two presidential elections promising to close, was an uncomfortable reminder that it was legal aliens who hijacked the four planes. My problem with this powerful consensus – 9/11 as an omnicause of everything bad that came after – is that it blinds us to what America (and by implication Australia too) got right in the past quarter century. And not just right by accident but got right by design. First of these is the absence not of a second 9/11 but of something worse. We now mock George W. Bush’s war on an abstract noun. But his global war on terror was not an open-ended campaign to rid the world of evil. It was narrow and specific in its objectives. It meant to limit the terrorists’ arsenal to what they could purchase at Bunnings or Home Depot. The focus of the 9/11 response soon moved from Afghanistan to Iraq. Again, this is widely criticised as the original sin of the war on terror. Not so. Iraq mattered because of the fear made real on that morning: that terrorists with hearts so full of hatred only lacked the capacity to inflict carnage consistent with it. Go after the states that might lend them that capacity. This moved the regime of Saddam Hussein inexorably into US sights. Being sure the Iraqi dictator did not have weapons of mass destruction that he could leak to terrorists meant removing him. And that is what the US, Britain, Australia and Poland did in March 2003. Nearly 40 nations took part in the eight years of occupation that followed. The war on terror was driven by a national security logic that commanded a consensus in the US (which Barack Obama joined) and was deeper abroad (especially in, but not limited to, Canberra and London) than we have remembered it.
The reptiles attempted to bolster the case by flinging in a face now largely forgotten by vulgar youff ...Osama bin Laden. Picture: AP.
Then came a final bout of triumphalism ...
America did not squander the goodwill that came its way after the 9/11 attacks; it deployed it. When terrorism has taken place in the past 25 years it has been unnerving but, compared with a nuclear or chemical weapons attack, small fry. The global war on terror did that. It meant to deny to the bad guys the heat, light, shelter and food necessary for their plotting, and it succeeded in keeping those plots limited to bombs, bullets, cars and knives. Second, while the retreat from Afghanistan in 2021 supposedly validated Chinese geostrategic thinking – oh, those wise Sun Tzu-reading communists know how to avoid a quagmire – it also reveals a certain American resilience. The regimes in Moscow and Beijing could not countenance losing a war. Capitulation in Ukraine would be existential for Vladimir Putin. Xi Jinping, likewise, avoids the inherent risk of foreign military adventure because of his domestic weakness rather than his entrenched strength. The South China Sea remains an American lake. China’s only “blood ally” is North Korea. The US, in contrast, has lost nearly every war it has fought since victory over Japan in 1945: Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq (Iran?). The consequence is not Chinese, Russian, let alone Islamist, supremacy. It is a world that still represents an economic, military, cultural and even sporting (ask those 100,000 fans at the MCG on Friday) market for American power. After a weekend commemorating the outrage that was 9/11, we should reflect how little damage its plotters did to US prospects – and how much they did to their own. Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne.
Of the many absurdities in that litany, the one the pond liked both the least and the most ...Capitulation in Ukraine would be existential for Vladimir Putin.
Tell that to the mango Mussolini, and if aviation fuel is in short supply, top up the old truck with with six buck diesel and head off to Washington to celebrate American prospects, as the defamation of the University of Melbourne continues apace ...
On the other hand, it's true that the mad king has taught those terroristic Canucks and their bloody infidel maple syrup and unclean mooses a lesson ...(moose if you must, but the pond was brought up to speak fluent Bullwinkle)...
The pond supposes it should have featured the quarry whispering Caterist ...
But it's just another unsavoury example of reptile black bashing, something the pond has always avoided, along with the transphobia that infests the rag ...
The pond personally saved it to the intermittent archive (more intermittent than usual with a host of bad gateways) and instead decided to feature snappy Tom's weekend outing...
The reptiles pulled their usual fast one, and trotted out the Ughmann and snappy Tom late on the weekend, thereby avoiding the pond's deadline.
Perhaps next week the pond will feature an Ughmann double bill in a special time slot, but for the moment, the pond wanted to applaud snappy Tom for an attempt to do an Our Henry and drag the Odyssey into his tall tale ...
The header: Financial quake looms in age of frenzy and fury; Productivity stuck at 2019 levels, living costs up 30 per cent – Australia’s economic managers are navigating the worst of both worlds with no easy escape.
The caption for the borrowed snap, without a mention of Nolan or the movie: Governments and the RBA monetary policy board are also caught in a Homeric vortex, where debt is piling up, voters are demanding more services and cost relief, inflation is stubborn and investors are demanding more for their at-risk money.
Homeric vortex!
Sure, it was just a precursor to this day's productivity jihad, but snappy Tom was on song, a veritable Siren ...
Like Odysseus in Homer’s epic, the people managing our political and economic affairs are trapped in a narrow, hazardous passage. Sail too close to the sea monster Scylla, and you’ll lose your head; dally with the whirlpool Charybdis and the entire ship is sunk. Market gods are uneasy, there’s a quake in the financial terrain. Voters are in a nasty mood. We’re living in the age of frenzy and fury. The ever-helpful Greeks, ancient and modern, have several distinct words for anger to make sense of these times. From the top, there’s menis, a cosmic rage, which the poet calls forth in the opening line of The Iliad to convey the wrath of the humiliated Achilles. Then there’s thumos, an explosive burst of temper. Think of Jacqui Lambie’s verbal blast about Pauline Hanson after One Nation’s slur on SAS veteran Andrew Hastie. The blood is up among the political warrior class. Civilians must settle for orge, which describes the deep-seated resentment at large in the post-pandemic settlement, conventionally referred to as the cost-of-living crisis. It’s the top issue Australians want governments and monetary officials to address.
Here no hubris, no hubris here, though after that singular outburst snappy Tom settled back down into a banal set of numbers ...
The Big Inflation may have passed but the beast’s tail lingers in our midst. It’s likely we won’t be going back to the long lull in consumer prices growth we enjoyed for decades, while the price level has been ratcheted up forever on most items. A basket of goods and services in the consumer price index valued at $100 five years ago now costs $124. The Australian Bureau of Statistics also measures price changes across population subgroups, which helps to assess whether the disposable incomes of households have kept pace with price changes (the living cost index includes mortgage costs, the CPI does not). Since mid-2021, living costs have increased by 30 per cent for working families and 23 per cent for self-funded retirees. People on pensions and benefits have payments adjusted every six months by the greater of CPI or LCI.
The reptiles provided an AV distraction ... Reserve Bank of Australia Deputy Governor Andrew Hauser says inflation remains too high, after the central bank raised interest rates three times earlier in the year. “We have one big problem, and that’s inflation,” Mr Hauser said. “Inflation is too high, and that’s why we raised interest rates three times at the beginning of this year.”
The pond hungered for more ancient Greek references, but snappy Tom was pretty much done with his venture into Our Henry turf ...
Reserve Bank deputy governor Andrew Hauser spends some of his work time travelling around the country, listening to companies, local authorities and organisations dealing with debt problems and other matters. Everywhere he goes, he hears “cost, cost, cost, inflation, inflation, inflation”. “People are furious about inflation,” he told ABC TV’s 7.30 this week. “I understand why. It’s unfair. It hits people on low incomes. It damages price signals. It makes the job of companies difficult. What they want us to do is our job and bring inflation down.” That’s the cost picture. The income story is more dreadful. Zoom out and consider what we buy and sell in the world. Australia has taken a hefty pay cut. Our terms of trade (the ratio of export to import prices) have fallen by 11 per cent over the past five years. Across the nation, living standards have gone backwards over that period. One measure in last week’s national accounts (for the June quarter) tells the broad story. Real net national disposable income per capita is 3 per cent below its level in June 2021. The main culprit is our wretched productivity performance. The national accounts showed the amount of goods and services we produce (or GDP) per hour of labour is at the same level it was at the end of 2019, before the Covid crisis. Productivity in the non-market sector (which is primarily healthcare and social services, education and public administration) is now below the level it was in early 2007. Given workers are in a pincer of high costs (some homegrown, some not) and stagnant incomes, it’s clear why the consumer mood is glum and voter rage is white hot. The torrent of “bad” news – on tax, the budget, petrol prices, energy costs, interest rates, home prices and dodgy political acts – is also contributing to the despondency.
Wait, there was one final "Homeric vortex" to come...
Governments and the RBA monetary policy board are also caught in a Homeric vortex, where debt is piling up, voters are demanding more services and cost relief, inflation is stubborn and investors are demanding more for their at-risk money.
After that thrill it was back to the hard yards ...
In a note this week, Commonwealth Bank chief economist Luke Yeaman describes a “new economic reality” of hard-to-tame inflation, geopolitical turmoil, skittish global bond markets and the great big sucking sound of artificial intelligence investment as it scoops up vast amounts of capital, materials and skills. He argues interest rates will need to be kept higher than in the past but estimates of so-called neutral interest rates (neither expansionary nor contractionary) are imprecise, increasing the reliance on real-time data and the risk of policy mistakes. Yeaman says the inflation-fighting credibility of central banks is in the spotlight “with bond markets watching closely to see whether authorities will act quickly enough and decisively enough to keep inflation contained or instead drag their feet due to political and public pressure”. “The task is now materially harder and the RBA knows it,” he writes. “As a result, we expect the RBA to remain very cautious and on ‘high alert’ for the foreseeable future. This means the slowing economy will not bring much in the way of immediate or major rate relief for Australian households.”
As is required in these reptile outings, there has to be a comical snap of Jimbo, and sure enough ...Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
The pond pondered in Rodin Le Penseur pose for a moment: where would the lizard Oz's enfeebled graphics department be without a comical Jimbo?
Snappy Tom wound down, but a final reference to the vortex produced a little shiver of delight and reminded the pond of his splendid start ...
As rates remain elevated, governments are feeling the strain. The cost of borrowing is rising, not only for Canberra but also for Washington, Tokyo and the Europeans. Donald Trump’s forlorn Treasury secretary Scott Bessent, trying to buy back bonds in an orderly way while his boss sprays dollars by the trillion, is being rumbled by the markets. Jim Chalmers is running a budget deficit one-sixth the size of Bessent’s and with a much skinnier debt-interest bill. But the Treasurer has got a world of other problems to deal with, not least the hungry beast of universal social benefits. Over the past six years, spending on health, disability services, aged care, childcare and other benefits has almost doubled. Yeaman, previously a Treasury deputy secretary, says with central banks forced to maintain the monetary squeeze, governments will come under more acute pressure to lift productivity and cut government spending to free up private sector capacity. “As we move further into this new economic era, governments will increasingly need to balance pressure from communities for more structural spending and support, with pressure from global debt markets,” he writes. As stewards, elected and unelected, are discovering, it’s a savage crossing between voter furies and the vortex of raging capital.
If only the other reptiles had shown an interest in the movie - naturally without mentioning the movie - the pond might have been able to pay more attention to the productivity jihad ...
Meanwhile the reptiles had gone eerily silent on the topic of the ranga and the pastie Hastie and all that ...
After years of the reptiles introducing a column with a snap at the start, suddenly in this weekend's Polonial outing the snap is down the page a little...
The pond supposes that if this is the worst of the existential crises it faces, then things are looking good.
But why the format change now? And why Polonius?
Was Polonius's sudden addiction to a minor state premier, ruling roost over a minor state, before sallying forth to beard eastern staters, deemed a little unsavoury?
Is it a way of putting the upstart croweater back in the sand box, so he can play with his almost deep west toys?
Whatever, the pond decided to restore world order by treatingPolonius as it always does...
The header: Premier’s warning to the left: lay down your weapons: The SA Labor leader Peter Malinauskas has warned against progressive sanctimony, which he says has fuelled the rise of far-right politics, and urged focus on the issues that mattered.
And then it was straight into the four minute read, and here the pond should note a hint of incest.
For those who've come in late, the pond has highlighted the magnificent CV and snap of Polonius and his partner at the Sydney Institute site.
Intense. Deeply informative.
Now guess where the crow eater made his speech.
I have tended to avoid the term culture wars, partly because it is a misnomer and partly on account of the fact it has become a cliche. In modern-day parlance, the reference to a culture war is invariably used by the left – or “progressives”, as leftists like to be called – who accuse conservatives of fomenting culture war. This despite the fact that conservatives are intent on supporting tradition. That is essentially a defensive position, not a warlike one.
It's an idle game, but if you're going to out-pedant a pedant ...
Here's the bromancer way back in October 2007 bemoaning the way the lying rodent lost the culture wars ... (Trove)
...It (the Howard government) has governed against the relentless opposition of the big institutions in our society: the media, particularly the ABC, the public service and the universities. It has at times out-manoeuvred these institutions; it has not reformed them. The Howard Government has comprehensively lost the culture wars. It has on occasion been clever at arousing a popular backlash against elite opinion on this or that subject. But it has not changed elite opinion. And in the end it appears that it is impossible to govern permanently against elite opinion. Elite opinion shapes popular opinion. Far from ferociously waging the culture wars, the Howard Government has been mostly missing in action.
If the bromancer is a lefty, a progressive as they like to be called, the pond will eat Polonius's culture wars hat.
The pond could play this game all day because the reptiles love the culture wars, in much the same way as they love abusing the 'leets and the woke.
And so to Polonius celebrating the croweater, wandering the eastern states, perhaps unaware of the company he's keeping, or more likely feeling proud and strong that he too can do a Fetterman ...
In a major speech to the Sydney Institute last Wednesday, South Australian Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas delivered a novel twist to the use of the term culture war. A leading member of the Labor Party’s right-wing faction, he had some advice for those whom he called the “far left”. Namely, that the left should lay down its culture war weapons.
A major speech? Only if you value croweaters the way they value themselves.
Dammit, must the pond now insert the caption for the snap? ‘If politics becomes the principal determinant of migration policy and a numerical race to the bottom ensues, it is going to hurt every Australian economically,’ Mr Malinauskas said. Picture: John Feder
What's worse is that this was the only visual distraction in the Polonius outing ...
Back to the small beer man from a small-minded state. Oh Adelaide, Adelaide:
The Premier, whose focus was on immigration, said “people on the far left who are understandably horrified about the extraordinary rise of far-right politics in Australia would do well to engage in a moment of self-reflection”. He added: “Maybe, just maybe, the intense self-righteousness, sanctimony and piety that underpinned the ‘great awokening’ may have tilled the soil for the inevitable countercultural movement on the far right. Now, of course, these countercultural anti-woke warriors have become no less belligerent or self-defeating as those on the far left.” Earlier in his speech, Malinauskas argued that immigration had not become such a flashpoint this year because Australia was a racist country. He said: “There are bigots in any society, in any century. But that doesn’t explain what’s changed in politics and polls so dramatically over the last nine months.” Many on the left these days who have experienced a comfortable life like to depict Australia as a racist nation.
Sorry, a personal moment ...
The wisteria on the back verandah is still blooming And all the great aunts are either insane or dead... ...All the king's horses all the king's men Wouldn't drag me back again To Adelaide, Adelaide, Adelaide, Adelaide...
This is what the doofus Malinauskas gave permission to Polonius to do. Downplay any notion of racism, even as One Nation makes bigotry a fundamental value ...
This does not make sense viewed with respect to empirical data. Australia has a relatively high level of interracial marriage. Some prefer the term “partnership”. And a relatively low level of ethnically motivated crime. A nation with such attributes does not warrant the label “racist”. There is one qualification to this piece of judgment. The recent rise in antisemitism in Australia that started before Hamas’s terrorist war on Israel on October 7, 2023, and found appalling expression in the Bondi Beach massacre on December 14 last year requires some re-examination. Antisemitism exists on the extreme right. But the most damaging current expression of antisemitism in recent years has involved radical Islamists and the radical left. Nevertheless, despite the appalling recent outbreaks of antisemitism, which are among the worst in the Western world, Australia is not a racist country. Malinauskas is correct in stating that opposition to immigration has grown in response to the falling standard of living illustrated by increasing cost of housing, energy, food and the like. Australians have been most welcoming of immigration during times of relative prosperity and rising standards of living. Opposition to immigration has risen in situations such as Malinauskas describes as the moment – when “our people are rightly worried about their economic future”.
So many bald-faced lies, so much distortion, so much pandering to the right.
The point is that many people try to get along, live amiable lives in a multicultural society. From the pond's personal observation, we wouldn't have a healthcare system without migrants.
But that's not to say that there isn't an inclination to be racist...
Then came a familiar routine, but on the upside, for once Polonius wasn't blaming the ABC ...
This was not the case in the post-war mid-1960s. In his recently released book Three Shocks: Who We Are Becoming in the 21st Century (Penguin), George Megalogenis writes that in 1973 Gough Whitlam’s Labor government removed “the last vestiges of the White Australia policy”. This is misleading. The White Australia policy was effectively dismantled on March 9, 1966, in a ministerial statement in the House of Representatives by immigration minister Herbert Opperman. That was at the time of the Harold Holt-led Coalition government. The 1966 announcement followed earlier restrictions of the White Australia policy in 1956, 1957 and 1964. The Whitlam Labor government merely removed some extant legislation. As I recall, former Coalition prime minister John Howard used to say that Australians were most relaxed about immigration when economic times were good. That was not the case during the Whitlam government between December 1972 and November 1975 where there was economic decline accompanied by low migration intake. Australia was never and never can be a monocultural society. It was always multicultural even though the term was first used officially by the Whitlam government in 1973. The original large diversity after 1788 was between a primarily British (and Protestant) majority and primarily Irish (and Catholic) minority. But no one spoke of multiculturalism. When I interviewed Howard in 1995 for a book, he said if multicultural meant there should be respect for everybody’s own individual cultural diversity then he was “totally” supportive. But if “you’re promoting diversity ahead of unity” then the concept was questionable. This position was unfashionable then in many circles. But it makes sense today. In 2011, British prime minister David Cameron, who was no right-wing extremist, distanced himself from multiculturalism. He did so in a speech on radicalisation and Islamic extremism at the Munich Security Conference. Here Cameron followed a view expressed by Christian Democrat German chancellor Angela Merkel who had expressed a similar position the previous October. She was reported to have said that “multikulti”, the German word for multiculturalism, had not worked. Before the statements of Cameron and Merkel, British Labor prime minister Tony Blair had warned of the rise of extremism. In his speech last Wednesday, Malinauskas did not mention multiculturalism. His approach was strictly empirical. He is committed to immigration and maintained that other leaders should speak out in support of its economic benefits. But Malinauskas was pragmatic. He did not state what the net migration intake should be. Rather, he asked questions such as: “Want more affordable and available housing? How about some more sparkies, tilers, roofers, concreters and brickies? Want your Mum and Dad to be able to get an aged care bed? How about more ready-to-go, fully trained care workers?” Malinauskas’s message was essentially to the “progressive” left. They were advised to stop attacking Australians concerned about their declining living standards by calling them racists and to focus on the issues that mattered. Without question, developing immigration policy is a very complex task. Unrelated to what some call culture wars.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.
He couldn't resist a final lie, that migration was just a complex policy issue, and that players weren't motivated by racism, and focus on anything else rather than the racism that litters the lizard Oz and One Nation.
And so the likes of Malinauskas facilitates and enables the canker at the core ... the routine scapegoating of furriners in the lizard Oz on a daily basis, not to mention the regular bouts of black bashing the rag indulges in...
The pond knows where this leads, it knows what Gina aspires to, and has fellow travelled with, and as we're doing topsy-turvy formatting these days, here comes the 'toon usually saved to last ...
As for the bonus, the pond has already discounted many reptile contributors and will discount a few more.
The pond couldn't arouse a flicker of interest, not even with 240 volts to the eyelids, in these yarns ...
‘Off the scale’: Regulator system harming good doctors System to catch bad doctors is causing harm to the good ones The regulator meant to protect patients has no bar on accepting complaints – and its own data shows 16 doctors took their lives while under its scrutiny. By Dr Michael Gannon
And the only thing appealing about this one was the formatting ...
COMMENTARY COMMENTARY: TEACHERS STRUGGLE WITH UNRULY CLASSES Teachers struggle with unruly classes Australian teachers rate their schools as calm and orderly, yet new research reveals nearly one-third of every lesson is lost to student misbehaviour. By Blaise Joseph Contributor
Perhaps the name too ... always shaken and stirred:
And that's how the pond ended up with garrulous, grating Gemma ...
The header: Hey kids, skip the gap year – your country needs you; Eighty countries demand their young people serve. Australia asks nothing – and we are paying the price.
The caption for the genuinely hideous, wisely uncredited artwork: Volunteer programs boost productivity, increase employee engagement and improve hiring and retention.
Perhaps the pond should first introduce Gemma ...
That handily conveys the air of smug self-satisfaction which emanates from the piece ...
It was a warm summer day in Tel Aviv at the start of June in 2023. I was at a laundromat, fumbling my way through the mechanics of trying to work the washing machine with my non-existent Hebrew. A couple of kindly local lads came to my rescue; I handed over my coins and they drove the thing for me. Relieved and slightly flustered, I settled into a plastic chair in the open window to wait. A warm breeze wafted in as we sat there, my fellow travellers and I. A bit of a non-event, isn’t it? Who would suspect a visit to the laundromat might be the beginnings of an idea that has been germinating for three years? Well, it did, and I have a conversation with a stranger to thank for it. Not a lot to do while waiting for the spin cycle to do its thing, other than chat. If you know me, you know I love a chat. Call it a hardwired curiosity about the world around me and the people in it. There was a woman waiting with me, a local. Her washing machine had broken, if I remember correctly. She was curious about Australia, as was I about her life. She had three boys, I think. We got to talking about life, as is my habit. She told me her kids were all adults and one was doing his national service. Oh, in the military? I asked. No, she said, he’s a pacifist so he’s doing his service as a teacher’s aide in a school for children with learning disabilities. At the time I didn’t realise non-military service was an option in Israel and said as much. My new friend told me you could opt out of military service and instead perform another kind of civil service. Serving your country, your community was non-negotiable. I have thought about that conversation a lot in the past three years – in recent months even more so – and I’ve come to a view that no doubt will be unpopular with many.
True dat, all the more because calling conscription "mandated service" is the sort of word salad up with which this blog will not put...
Service, mandated service of our country, is one way in which we can start rebuilding some of what has been lost in our country over recent decades. It’s a powerful way to address the creeping malaise that seems to be at the heart of so many of our societal ills and generational challenges. Hey kids, guess what – it’s not just about you. What a concept.
The pond will ignore that preening condescension.
The way conscription worked is that if you had the right connections you could get out of it (so many bonespurs), and the ones sent off to die in Vietnam were mug punters, working class men (boys? Certainly teens, some were only 19), and rustics from the bush.
The pond lost a couple of friends to that war, and a couple more went to the clink rather than head off to a useless war. They had different reasons, but this will serve...
"Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?" "Man, I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me n*gg*r." "I'm not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over."
The pond always liked Ali, which is more than can be said for grating Gemma ...
The catastrophically ruinous Whitlam government abolished national military service in 1973, the year of my birth. (As an aside, my parents met when my dad was doing his nashos in Brisbane so, in a way, no national service, no Gemma.) And before anyone tries to put words in my mouth, I’m not talking about conscription or only military service, though that certainly should be an option. I’m talking about civil service. Community service. Before you go offshore to volunteer with a non-government organisation, why not invest your time and energy in this country? There may be nowhere near the same level of virtue or street cred, but doesn’t charity start at home?
So is it conscription, or is it voluntary? There are already plenty of ways of volunteering, but if it's mandated, it's conscription, and no word salad offering woke causes deserving of help can disguise it...
When I finished high school several eons ago, nobody really did a gap year. It feels like a recent (as in within the past 10 to 15 years or so) phenomenon. I’m not against gap years; to each their own. But consider what it might look like if, as a society, we asked young people to value the country they lived in and spend some time in service of their community. Military? Sure, if you want to. Working in a remote community? Brilliant. A wildlife project, somewhere? Fantastic idea. And it doesn’t have to be 12 months. National and civil service occurs in varying shapes and durations in the 80 countries that still mandate it for their young people. Countries including Norway, Morocco, Sweden and, of course, Israel.
One moment it's compulsory ...
In Switzerland, men aged 18 to 30 do just 18 weeks of compulsory military service training. For women, serving is voluntary. Don’t get me started on that. Equal opportunity means equal responsibility. Italy abolished national military service in 2005, but most of my cousins completed theirs.
The next moment it's voluntary ...
The French have a voluntary national service program for teenagers aged 15 to 17 that gives the option of serving in the military or civic programs. Nobody would suggest France is the embodiment of social cohesion but at least they have a pathway. Here? We don’t value anything enough to ask young people to serve.
On and on she blathered in an unctuous way ...
The power isn’t in the project; it’s in the act of service itself. It’s in the understanding that Australia is a wonderful country that doesn’t owe us anything, and we all have a responsibility to contribute. You could argue (fairly) that we are being taxed into oblivion by this government and you’d be right. What I’m talking about is intervening with a policy reset of sorts that will help build resilience in generations to come. In his 1961 inaugural address, US president John F. Kennedy encouraged Americans not to ask what their country could do for them but to ask what they could do for their country. That sentiment has been romanticised but not emulated as societies have progressed. We know from myriad studies that service to community, focusing on things outside our own world, delivers incredible outcomes such as social connectivity, cohesion, a sense of shared purpose. Serving helps develop skills in a way that is unique and meaningful.
Haven't we been here before? That green army thingie from the mind of a dingbat ...
Then came a defensive attempt to prove that garrulous Gemma wasn't a true Quad-ranter:
For some young people it may bring clarity around a career path. Set a course for life that previously may not have been clear or accessible. I can think of at least one friend whose decision to enrol in cadets during high school had a profound impact on the direction of their life. I understand some people will have very strong reactions to what I’m suggesting here but I don’t think it’s that controversial. Valuing your country isn’t wrong, it’s not “far right” and it’s not regressive. And none of us serves anything we don’t place value on. I’m also of the view that the most powerful and effective iteration of leadership is servant leadership.
Is there anything stopping Gemma from dropping everything and rushing to serve?
Meanwhile, slash all that talk about it being voluntary. It's back to being mandatory, and it's for younglings, because they need to be whipped into shape, under the stern eye of Nurse Ratched Gemma ...
Many will argue that plenty of people volunteer, so why make it mandatory and why for teenagers? I suppose my thinking is about the deterioration of social norms and a shift towards a culture of self. Add to that the social disconnect that has been a by-product of the digital age. Relationships that exist only in chat rooms, online, and the like. I think back to the woman in that Tel Aviv laundromat. She didn’t care that one of her children was a conscientious objector. She said something along the lines of: I don’t care how he serves but he needs to serve his country. My observation is that this attitude demonstrates an understanding of the value, the price of their freedom. Do we in Australia understand that value or do we take our lifestyle and freedom for granted? I would love to see what kind of impact this idea could have, if the seed might be allowed to germinate. Imagine that.
Have we really moved much past the condescension embodied in that ancient Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch?
Python 2: Luxury! We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!
Python 3: Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox in the middle of the night, and lick road clean with tongues! We had to eat half a handful of freezing-cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at that mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home... our dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down the mill, and pay the mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home... our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."
Python 1: And you try to tell the young people of today that ... they won't believe you.
Python 1: No, They won't.
And now to wrap up proceedings, a serve of what's on the mind of the lizard Oz editorialist, heart of the beast, heart of darkness ...
Naturally there's One Nation, another step in endless reptile agonising ...
What a perfect excuse to interrupt with an old infallible Pope 'toon ...
Quickly, finish up Oz ed with a final wringing of hands...
And where would the pond be without a celebration of the mad King?
That's got to be worth a 'toon or two...
With Simon Marks MIA at time of printing, another source for cult news of cult ...
Call the pond preverted if you like - many do - but the pond decided to skip past all the lizard Oz heavyweights doing the obvious this weekend, and instead mainline a good old fashioned serve of the Bjørn-again one.
These days it's a rarefied experience, with fewer and fewer publishing his thoughts, and more and more caring less and less, what with AI threatening to take out humanity (if a bot wanted to save the rest of the planet's creatures, that might be a fair dinkum strategy).
Do a quick search and those who are paying attention are growing ever more exotic and tragic ...
But the lizards of Oz maintain the faith, and the pond feels a deep nostalgia for the old days of the climate wars.
Who wouldn't marvel at the heroic stance of the Bjørn-again one, still valiantly fighting on after all these years (sssh, don't mention Nepal!)
The header: Burning truth about climate smoke and mirrors; Telling frightened people their houses burned because of fossil fuels is generating propaganda for costly policies and providing an alibi for failed fire protocols.
The caption for the snap: Beachgoers in July, nearby watched the blaze in the northern part of the Arcachon Basin in Gironde, southwest France.
Relax, that opening snap is just the reptiles indulging in a little disaster porn. Everything's fine and under control, trust the Bjørn-again one.
As a further bonus, the Bjørn-again one could only produce a three minute read distorting data, as a way of announcing in his sanguine way that everything's just hunky dory ...
The fires in France and Spain have had devastating impacts. More than 220,000 people fled the flames west of Bordeaux. Outside Madrid, fires scorched an area twice the size of the capital and drove nearly 90,000 people from their homes. The people who lost homes and livelihoods deserve sympathy – and better fire policy. What they do not need is the climate sermon that now follows every plume of smoke. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called the fires a “painful expression” of climate change. The British and Spanish governments rushed out a joint statement declaring “climate change was now a national security emergency” threatening our way of life. The verdict was in even while houses burned: only ending fossil fuels could put out the flames. Here is what makes this so exasperating: the planet is doing the opposite of burning. Satellite data shows that as of September 2, the world’s burned area in 2026 is 40 per cent below the 2012-25 average for this point in the year – on track to becoming the quietest global fire season in a century. On current trends, 2026 could end up burning less than 1.5 per cent of global land area. This would be vastly below the satellite record low in 2022 of 2.2 per cent and likely lower than any year since 1900.
Relax, it's fine, it's under control, the Bjørn-again one has the matter in hand, and must the pond say it again? Please, don't mention Nepal ...
Climate change is a global issue, so it should be assessed using global data. Pointing to horrific fires in one corner of one continent while ignoring a planet that burns phenomenally less is the definition of cherrypicking: keep the observations that fit the story, throw away the rest. Imagine the reverse. If global burned area were running 40 per cent above average, would anyone accept “but the Baltics are quiet this year” as a rebuttal? Of course not. Yet that is precisely the logic deployed in the other direction. The climate lobby has seized on one data quirk; in the European fire surveillance, the satellite data for “Europe” includes the whole of Russia, including Siberia and all, so a quiet Russian year can flatten the continental numbers. But strip Russia out entirely and by September 2 Europe without Russia has burned 22 per cent less than its 2012-25 average this year; nine of the past 14 years saw more fire by September 2. France’s season is record-bad and Spain’s is severe. But two countries having a dreadful summer do not make a continental inferno, let alone a planetary one. Europe as a whole is having a below-average fire year. The same pattern holds everywhere you look.
The reptiles seemed to undercut the message by offering an AV distraction featuring more disaster porn ... Wildfires have ravaged parts of British Columbia, Canada, prompting authorities to declare a state of emergency. A motorist captured footage of flames lighting up the night sky along Highway …
The Bjørn-again one held his nerve. No apocalypse here, here no apocalypse...
Just weeks ago the panic was Canada, whose smoke over New York generated the usual apocalyptic headlines. Yet Canada is having a below-average fire year, as has the US. Both North America and South America as a whole are at all-time satellite lows. Africa, the most burned continent, is at an all-time low, 42 per cent below normal. Oceania (mostly Australia) is 18 per cent below its usual burned area at this time and Asia has recorded its second-lowest burn in 2012-26. Every continent is below normal, far below normal or setting records for how little is burning. How is it possible that in a world burning less on every continent we believe that the entire planet is in unprecedented flames? Because the coverage tells us so. Infernos make the front page; record-quiet fire years make no news at all. Report only the fires and never the absence of fires, and the public will duly conclude the planet is ablaze – even as the data shows the opposite.
Relax, it's always been this way ...
Nor is 2026 a fluke. In the early 1900s, nearly 4 per cent of the planet’s land burned annually, roughly double today’s rate. A century of better agriculture, land management and firefighting has steadily beaten fire back, because people hate fire and have become very good at preventing it. The world’s long-term fire trend is ever downward. None of this means France and Spain don’t have a real problem. They do: a record June heatwave dried out vegetation and decades of accumulated fuel created a monster.
“I see again the forest fires are starting,” he said at a rally in swing-state Pennsylvania. “They’re starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up.” “Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us,” he added. The combination of assigning blame while fires still burn and offering questionable remedies have become as familiar to Californians as the conflagrations that ignite each year. Those fires have spurred a predictable response from the president: blame the Democrat-dominated state and then threaten to punish it by withholding money. He did so as fires burned in 2018, and again in 2019. “I’ve been telling them this now for three years, but they don’t want to listen,” Trump said on Thursday. “‘The environment, the environment,’ but they have massive fires again.”
Wise words, and the Bjørn-again one heeds them ...
The fixes are prosaic and proven: prescribed burns, fuel clearing, fire-resistant building codes and more firefighting capacity. What will not help is the standard prescription of net zero. Even if the entire rich world hit net zero by 2050, at fantastical costs, the temperature difference by century’s end would be too small to measurably change fire risk. Telling frightened people their houses burned because of fossil fuels – and that salvation lies in decades of expensive emissions cuts – is not compassion. It is generating propaganda for extremely costly policies while providing an alibi for failed fire policies. Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus, visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and author of False Alarm and Best Things First.
Remember, do nothing, all is well, though perhaps you might invite AI into your home to help ...
But why did the pond go there first up?
What, you wanted the pond to go with Lachy, doing his bit for the Australian Daily Zionist News?
Bearing witness to the horror of Bondi Bondi Terror remembers and honours all who were injured and lost, and the many heroes who stepped up when it mattered most. By Lachlan Murdoch
The alternative headline? Insightful accounts bear witness to the horror of Bondi as it happened.
Insightful? Pass the pond a chuck bucket.
What was that all about? Flogging Sharri, full disrespect ...
This is an edited extract of a speech delivered by News Corp chairman Lachlan Murdoch at the launch of the book Bondi Terror by Sharri Markson and Alex Ryvchin at Bondi Pavilion in Sydney on Thursday night.
Enablers and amplifiers ...
And damned if the pond wanted to go down the 9/11 road with "Ned" ...
Inside the hour that forged Australia’s alliance with America John Howard and George W. Bush: an alliance forged in the hour of need John Howard’s decision to stand with the US on its darkest day reshaped Australia’s defence future. By Paul Kelly By Editor-At-Large
The pond despises the way politicians always somehow end up front and centre as personal tragedies unfold ...
That image of an heroic shrub is unconscionable.
Note the sublime way that "Ned" skips over an uncomfortable truth ...
...the moral infamy of 9/11 has been largely obliterated by the Iraq war when president George W. Bush determined to depose Saddam Hussein (who had no role in 9/11), provoking much global condemnation and creating furious domestic divisions across Western nations including in Australia, where the Howard government joined the US action. The left in Australia made Iraq, not 9/11, the moral test and the US invasion was mobilised against America, the alliance and John Howard as prime minister. There was, however, a much bigger story – it is the adaptability, endurance and evolution of the ANZUS Treaty. Despite the US blunders, the alliance emerged stronger than ever. Indeed, the legacy of 9/11 delivered a transformation in the alliance from its 1951 origins with increasing advances over the years in US-Australian military interoperability – the culmination being the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine project for Australia, an idea inconceivable in 2001 yet only made possible by the 9/11 legacy in its deepening political trust across the oceans. Howard told Inquirer: “The whole message is the remarkable adaptability of the alliance, the way it has endured for so long. I am sure it will continue to do so.” It is a declaration the alliance will prosper beyond the Trump presidency.
As for that war? It's a never no mind...
...Howard used 9/11 and the terrorist threat as the opportunity to reinvigorate the alliance, branding its condition as “stale” when he came to office in 1996, a description Labor never accepted. Yet Howard’s support for Bush was also a trap – it made him hostage to Bush as a war president, with the Coalition and Labor bitterly split over the Iraq war. Howard’s loyalty to Bush was a domestic negative Howard’s loyalty to Bush and his military decision on Iraq became a domestic negative, but not damaging enough to prevent his re-election in 2004 and, ultimately, not damaging enough to weaken the alliance. Iraq revealed Howard’s complexity as a politician. He never became a pro-American romantic and his Iraq commitment was modest, calibrated and designed to minimise casualties – which it did. But the failure to locate any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – the ostensible justification for the invasion – became a devastating judgment on the entire venture, undermining its moral and strategic rationale.
That and the presence of the disgraced Pezzullo made the pond hasten to send the 11 minute sermon to the malfunctioning intermittent archive, lest the pond end up quoting Tucker ...
Your typical Fox News viewer is likely oblivious to this, but America’s response to 9/11 blew the original attack out of the water. George Bush’s subsequent war in Iraq, which made no sense considering Iraq did not do 9/11, got hundreds of thousands of innocents killed, had tens of thousands of American military casualties, and catalyzed the creation of ISIS. That means the U.S. slaughtered enough civilians to account for dozens and dozens of 9/11s. And that is a conservative estimate.
Oh the irony of Tucker berating typical Faux Noise viewers.
But then watching "Ned" trying to cope is almost as hard as listening to the mad King attempting to be solemn, while politicising a disaster in order justify another folly, his adventure in Iran.
Why go there, why dig that up? We know she's a terrible person, with not a shred of empathy to be found, just vitriol and bile ...
It turns out that it was yet another chance to spend half the piece rehashing Pauline's war with the pasty Hastie ...
That ended up sounding extremely woke ...
...The cartoon has also been slammed by the RSL, Labor and veteran senator Jacqui Lambie, who labelled the One Nation leader “gutless” and “disgusting”. Liberal National MP Garth Hamilton said there was a “mean and distasteful element” to One Nation’s cartoons. “The mocking of Senator Steele-John’s disabilities, using a man to voice Senator Wong’s character and the kernel of misogyny in the depictions of (Labor senator Charlotte) Walker,” he said. “What kind of Prime Minister would she be? “Fight on policy – not on personal issues like disability, sexuality or age.”
Time for a relieving immortal Rowe out on the links ...
For a bonus, the pond had no choice ... especially as the pond was inspired by a yarn in the Graudian ...
...Presented by the AfD’s lead candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, for a photocall in the state capital of Magdeburg on Thursday, some of the members-elect were revealed to have a range of questionable backgrounds, including criminal records, Stasi pasts and connections to far-right networks. German media has revealed that among the 39 parliamentarians who will represent constituencies across Saxony-Anhalt in the state parliament, is a man alleged to have participated in pornography films and falsified academic qualifications; a former officer for the East German secret police, the Stasi; and several members under criminal investigation for their involvement in neo-Nazi organisations. Two MPs are facing investigations into allegations they sought to continue the activities of the banned rightwing extremist organisation Artgemeinschaft, a neopagan group that has embraced nationalist and antisemitic ideas. The younger of the two is also alleged to have violated the law in relation to weapons, according to the public prosecutor’s office. Both reject the allegations. The erstwhile pornography actor was convicted for stealing bedding in bulk from a hotel. A court confirmed he had been a pornography actor after he contested a local newspaper’s claims. He was expelled from a university after being found to have falsified his school leaving certificate, Die Zeit reported. The MP says he was readmitted after a legal challenge. An ex-Stasi officer, aged 78, who won a direct mandate in his constituency, has admitted to having worked for the ministry for state security in the communist GDR, focused on East German citizens who wanted to permanently emigrate. His role as an MP-elect has been criticised by campaign groups on behalf of victims of the former East German dictatorship. Also, an investigation by the broadcaster ZDF revealed that some AfD ministers-elect who were also members of the previous parliamentary group, had ties to rightwing extremist groups. This included some having been members of the subsequently outlawed Homeland-Loyal German Youth group, HDJ. At one stage one of them had led the organisation, while an adviser to the AfD’s parliamentary group wrote a biography described as an “homage to national socialism”. Among the prospective MPs are a number with pro-Kremlin links, as well as some who visited members of the Maga movement in Washington. Asked to respond to the questionable biographies, in particular of the two MPs under criminal investigation, Siegmund, a former fragrance salesman who was unanimously re-elected as the AfD’s parliamentary group leader on Thursday, referred to the men in jest as “the bad guys” and said “we will await the results of the investigations and then discuss them”.
Just so, what a hoot, but that sounds like they might need a bit of spit and polish, a bit of shining up, a little cleansing and dusting.
Who better to do that than the bromancer, long an admirer of authoritarian figures?
The header: Can Germany’s far right clean up the mess Angela Merkel left behind? The AfD election result this week exemplifies the failures of Western politics.
The caption for the snap celebrating a man who looks great and possibly looks even better in a stylish black uniform: AfD state leader, Ulrich Siegmund – young and good-looking, master of memes and gimmicks, with no government experience – dominated the Saxony-Anhalt's state election campaign. Picture: Tobias Schwarz / AFP
Marvel as the bromancer spends a bigly nine minutes spinning out his infatuation with all things AfD.
His philosophical position sounds a tad similar to a German industrialist in the Weimar republic ... the man who dresses up in black and bashes unionists, commies and lefties is my friend. What could go wrong?
Go bromancing ...
German politics broke spectacularly in the small East German state of Saxony-Anhalt as voters screamed out in semi-coherent rage: Enough! Enough! Enough! Three giant policy failures have ruined German politics – mass immigration from the Middle East, net-zero energy commitments and overbearing European regulation. They were all caused, or greatly worsened, by Angela Merkel, chancellor from 2005 to 2021. Despite her electoral success, her record makes her the most destructive German leader since World War II.
The reptiles stacked the outing with visual treats ... International Relations expert Ralph Schoellhammer discusses former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who says she is heartbroken after the AfD’s historic win.
The bromancer was in his usual hysterical form. A result amongst a mob of East Germans heralded end times for lefties, centrists and whatever ...
The Saxony state election result is an earthquake. There’s no sign German politics can return to pre-quake norms. Some 44 per cent of the electorate in a record high turnout voted for the far-right AfD, Alternative for Germany; a staggering victory over the incumbent Christian Democrats, the CDU, whose vote halved to a pitiful 17 per cent. It’s the first far-right win since World War II. AfD state leader Ulrich Siegmund, young and good-looking, master of memes and gimmicks, with no government experience, dominated the campaign. AfD was massively popular on social media (perhaps that’s why so many governments want to censor social media). Chancellor Friedrich Merz, from the CDU, was thrown into immediate crisis. His 13 per cent approval rating makes him the most unpopular leader in modern Germany. Yet he won office just last year. The parallel with Britain’s Keir Starmer is stunning. Merz had promised to halve AfD’s vote and double the CDU’s. He got that back to front. Crisis rolls on. On September 20 there will be regional elections in another small state, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and in Berlin. In Mecklenburg, the AfD is ahead with support in the mid-30s, while in Berlin polls just before the Saxony election had the CDU, AfD and Die Linke (the Left Party) all nearly even.
Quick, an image of him looking downcast ... German Chancellor and leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Friedrich Merz faces the media after state elections in Saxony-Anhalt. Picture: Getty Images
The bromancer was exultant ...
If AfD wins Mecklenburg and does well in Berlin, Merz is finished. The flood tide will be flowing.
If you're going to be an apologist for assorted fruit loops and loons, do it in style ...
There’s a strong case that AfD’s extremism has been exaggerated.
Watch as the bromancer gets wildly excited at the thought that neo-Nazis might not just take Germany, but Europe and the entire global thingie ...
It’s still not clear whether it can form government in Saxony. It fell three seats short of a majority. For it not to govern, every other party would have to join in a bizarre, if not grotesque, losers’ coalition. The CDU has promised never to join AfD in coalition but also promised not to join the Left Party, the direct descendant of the East German communists. The Left Party champions wildly left economics, including property expropriation, and is increasingly accused of harbouring antisemitism. The AfD result provides a crisis for Germany. It also has huge Europe-wide and global repercussions. It exemplifies the failures of Western politics generally, especially Europe’s. In Saxony, some 60 per cent voted for parties that want to end German support for Ukraine. But overwhelmingly they were voting on immigration and the economy, which ought to be a clue to deradicalising AfD. In Germany, the centre cannot hold because the centre cannot govern. The European social, economic and political model has broken. It’s a social democratic model and social democracy is in existential crisis. The AfD’s success represents comprehensive failure for the two great parties of the post-war German success, the CDU and the SDP Social Democrats. This is a humiliation for Germany, which rose from the ashes after World War II. It became the most successful big European state. The arc of German reputational resurrection after the war was long and mostly strong. First came the post-war West German economic miracle, under giants like Konrad Adenauer. Germany confronted morally the unspeakable evil of Nazism. It committed to democracy and civility, to the US alliance. It rebuilt its economy and society.
It was inevitable it would come ... ‘The moment of disaster on immigration came in 2015. Angela Merkel opened Germany’s borders to Syrians, and then virtually to everyone from the Middle East.’ Picture: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Eek, the hordes, the hordes ... the invading, conquering, ruining hordes ...
Then came an advertisement for Nazi virtues ...
It recovered traditional strengths – precision engineering, industrial scale, civic orderliness – while rejecting traditional evils: militarism, decadence, ideological extremes.
As Adolf once said, would there have been a second world war without that war monger and ideological extremist Chamberlain? So much decadence, almost full Weimar republic.
And now here we are ...
West Germany oversaw peaceful reunification with communist East Germany under another giant, the CDU’s Helmut Kohl. When the euro was adopted as a common European currency in 1999, Germany realised fantastic economic benefit. Instead of the deutschmark being so overvalued as to render German industry uncompetitive, Germany enjoyed a permanently undervalued currency. The euro reflected southern Europe’s weakness, not Germany’s strength. In the early 2000s, the SDP’s Gerhard Schroeder introduced pro-market reforms to renovate the economy.
Cue a snap... Helmut Kohl in 2012. Picture: AFP
The bromancer generously allowed a few failings ...
The Germans had their failures, of course. They were deeply penetrated by East German and Soviet spies. The performance of German police at the Munich Olympics massacre of Israeli athletes in 1972 was abysmal. The economy relied on Turkish workers, who were not integrated. And of course there were scandals. By the time of the 2008 global financial crisis the rot had set in to German public policy. It became addicted to a prodigious welfare state. It ducked geo-strategic burdens its size should have mandated. It forgot hard lessons of self-reliance from after World War II. Its smug establishment, intimately involved in the European Union project, defined anything it didn’t like politically as being an echo of Hitlerism, thus ruling opponents out of the national debate. The old German political model had been that the CDU and its Bavarian partner, the Christian Social Union, were as conservative as possible, in part to make sure nothing significant emerged to their right. Merkel did the reverse. She labelled everything to the right of the CDU unacceptable, undemocratic, quasi-Nazi, then moved the CDU relentlessly left. She created the modern German crisis.
Is Caleb still a thing? Apparently ... News24 host Caleb Bond says Germany’s migration backlash which has fuelled an AfD surge “lies at the foot” of former chancellor Angela Merkel.
...The outcome of the meeting was clear: Europe, North America and Australia would not accept significant numbers of these refugees. In the verbatim record, two words were uttered repeatedly: “density” and “saturation.” The European countries were already beset with population “density” and had reached a point of “saturation” — in other words, there was simply no more room at the European inn. It was an absurd thing to say, of course, in 1938, given the size of Europe’s populations today. And it would be an equally ridiculous thing to say now, too. To be sure, the participants in Evian could not have foreseen the Holocaust, or that Europe was being drawn into another devastating war; nonetheless, their lack of moral conscience was breathtaking. Many of the countries that refused to take in suffering refugees were themselves, in due course, occupied and brutalized by the Nazis — and desperate for the compassion that they denied the Jews in July 1938. The Nazis must have reveled in the knowledge that their virulent anti-Semitism found an echo — sometimes not so faint — in the rest of Europe. They also came to realize that if expulsion was not possible, extermination eventually would be. Today, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, racism, xenophobia and anti-migrant sentiment are again rising across Europe, and we must stop now and reassess precisely where we are. A major British tabloid newspaper recently felt it acceptable to allow one of its columnists to liken immigrants to cockroaches. Rwanda’s Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines used the same word to describe Tutsis in the run-up to the 1994 genocide, as did Julius Streicher’s Nazi newspaper Der Stuermer to describe Jews. Political leaders across Europe regularly — and shamefully — blame migrants for their national woes.
Take it away bromancer ...
The moment of disaster on immigration came in 2015. Merkel opened Germany’s borders to Syrians, and then virtually to everyone from the Middle East. She liberalised entry procedures, and once they’d arrived no one left. She famously declared: “Wir schaffen das” (we’ll cope). The German public had not been consulted. Merkel, and Germany, initially won a wave of international admiration. Germans liked this at first. They hated what followed. Perhaps 1.5 million people from the Middle East came into Germany as a result of Merkel’s actions. Within a couple of years it was seen as disastrous and Berlin reversed. But once you turn on a tap like that, it’s almost impossible to shut it off. Nothing better illustrates the awfulness of a conservative turning left to win the plaudits of the zeitgeist. Before Merkel’s blunder, Germany had eight million foreign-born residents. The year after Merkel left office in 2021, the number was nearly 14 million. Much of that increase consisted of people who didn’t speak German and had little education. There was a series of terrible Islamist terror attacks in Germany. The refugee assessment system has a bureaucratic bias in favour of accepting refugee claims, because almost no one leaves as a result of a negative decision. In 2024 Germany deported 22,000 people while more than 220,000 who had been ordered to leave simply stayed. Immigrant crime is a grim reality. Press reports indicate that the government counted 751 gang rapes last year. In more than half of cases the suspects were not German citizens. Because in the wake of its Nazi past there is an understandable hypersensitivity about race in Germany, it was until recently taboo to discuss any of this directly.
Don't expect such reticence from the bromancer when he dons his jackboots ... Right-wing activists gather in front of Hauptbahnhof railway station under the banner ‘We for Berlin – We for Germany’ to protest against Merkel's refugee policy in 2016. Picture: Getty Images
And so on with the nuking of furriners, and just nuking the planet, because why not?
That taboo fuelled AfD’s rise. They were the only people who would address the problem. AfD was founded in 2013. It was nationalist but its first big issue was opposing a German financial bailout for Greece. The huge influx of unregulated immigrants in 2015 changed AfD. Immigration became its No.1 issue. The morality of immigration policy is much more complex than the broad left allows. Pope Leo XIV is a champion of immigrants, yet he acknowledges explicitly that nations have a right to control their borders. Merkel abandoned border control. This huge unassimilated population has had major economic and social consequences for Germany. From 2015 its results in international school testing have been in radical decline. Australians were rightly shocked at how badly Australian students scored in the recent Program for International Student Assessment, PISA. Germany, once renowned for its education, scores well below Australia in reading, maths and science. Merkel’s second great mistake was her embrace of net zero and the nearly insane decision, as early as 2011, to shut down the nuclear power industry (phase-out didn’t begin until 2021). Nuclear once supplied 14 per cent of Germany’s energy. Because of net-zero madness and the cessation of cheap Russian gas, Germans now pay twice as much as Americans for energy, and the highest prices in Europe. The ultra-high energy costs and the ever expanding welfare budget have seen Germany deindustrialise, with hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs lost. Germany has had virtually no economic growth this decade. Industrial production is below its 2019 level. EU regulation makes it difficult for any German government to reverse course on disastrous policies. This mess has seen AfD support soar. But don’t panic. This is not 1933. The AfD is not the Nazi Party. The AfD’s federal parliamentary leader, Alice Weidel, a lesbian, economist and former Goldman Sachs executive whose domestic partner is Sri Lankan, is no Adolf Hitler. A final mistake of Merkel’s was her determination to demonise AfD at every point. A German intelligence agency has determined that AfD in Saxony, where 44 per cent of people just voted for it, is an “extremist right-wing organisation”. AfD furiously contests this and the ruling has been suspended while it’s challenged in court.
Why has the bromancer selected the AfD for two major outings in a week? There's a siren song there, a surging sympathy, a need to revive people wagons ... Germany’s manufacturing output is down about 10 per cent, with thousands of jobs being shed each month. Picture: Getty Images
It's all the fault of leftists, and anyway, these nice chaps have been vilified and demonised, and where's the justice in that?
Merkel is not guilty alone in this demonisation. The broad left in Germany has been its main proponent. All parties, except a small breakaway far-left group, have agreed to implement Brandmauer, or political firewall, against AfD. Brandmauer means no mainstream party will enter a coalition with AfD, nor accept its vote to secure a parliamentary majority, either for government, or even for a single parliamentary motion. The German people plainly resent this arrogance by the political establishment in telling them who they may not vote for. The AfD now leads national polls with 30 per cent support. Yet its election victory in Saxony provoked tens of thousands of left-wing demonstrators. It’s the left, much more than AfD, that threatens democracy.
Oops, perhaps he recognised he was going too far, because the bromancer hastily slipped in a minor billy goat butt ...
Don’t get me wrong. AfD is a very mixed grill and has some unsavoury aspects. There are a number of former neo-Nazis in its ranks. Perhaps the worst element is its pro-Russian outlook.
Don't get alarmed, a bromancer billy goat butt is always followed by the right sort of but ...
But the big issues for AfD voters are immigration and economic stagnation. It wants to deport everybody in Germany who is there illegally. As Donald Trump is finding, mass deportations are very hard to bring about. This will be doubly so for Germany as many of its illegals come from countries that won’t take them back. But wishing to deport people who are in your country illegally is not Nazi, nor even extreme. AfD also talks confusingly of “remigration”, which means encouraging migrants who live on welfare to go back to their countries of origin. AfD leaders are clear that they have in mind only legal means, perhaps even some positive inducements such as grants. It may be wildly unrealistic, it’s not Nazi. If AfD tried to deport people who were German citizens (which it says it won’t do) this would be prevented by the courts and other political parties.
Thank heavens there's a lesbian, so it must be okay, at least if you follow the Bari model ... The AfD’s federal parliamentary leader, Alice Weidel, a lesbian, economist and former Goldman Sachs executive whose domestic partner is Sri Lankan, is no Adolf Hitler. Picture: Michele Tantussi/Getty Images
On with more common sense, because if it's on the far right, it's common sense to the bro ...
AfD is pro-nuclear and wants to revive Germany’s nuclear industry. That sounds like common sense. The pro-Russian stuff means it would be difficult to trust AfD with sensitive intelligence. A more sophisticated German mainstream would be able to wean AfD off its pro-Russian orientation. This is not core business for most AfD voters. AfD wants to enable home schooling and cut back leftist ideology in school and university education. It’s also Eurosceptic. Merz himself didn’t really believe in the firewall policy, though in his desperation to survive he champions it now. In 2025 Merz put a migration crackdown motion to the Bundestag, the German parliament. AfD supported it and it passed, with their votes, 348 to 345. Merkel from retirement immediately denounced Merz for this heresy. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets. The SDP told Merz he was opening the gates to hell. This rhetorical madness is common in Western politics. The left demonises its most dangerous opponents with excessive language. (Malcolm Fraser, before he became a lefty, was once as prime minister portrayed by the Australian left as an incipient dictator.) Certainly the left calls every populist party racist, fascist or Nazi. They rob language of meaning and thereby demean political culture. There’s another way of looking at the rise of European populists, even of Trump and Pauline Hanson. Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Marine LePen in France emerged out of formerly extremist parties but are now thoroughly respectable conservative democrats who favour restricted immigration. Nigel Farage never was extremist. The rise of populists, while indicating failure by mainstream politics, is actually democracy working.
The bro really is more than authoritarian curious, more than far right friendly, he wants to be all in ... German federal police check cars arriving at the German-Polish border in September, 2024. Picture: Getty Images
Parteigenosse, the pond trusts you're leaving the bromancer more aware, more vital, more inclined to protect your precious bodily fluids from vile furriners ...
Germany’s a mess, with a chronic budget deficit and soaring debt. Merz is pushing timid but unpopular welfare reform that his coalition partners may now kybosh. Populists arise when mainstream politics fails. They will either get into government, like Meloni, or force mainstream parties to try something new. In government, they may fail. Democracies sometimes have to change, like Labour replacing the British Liberal Party a century ago. Populists attract some eccentrics, nut cases, chancers and ratbags. But as they get more credible they attract more competent folks too. Look at Mike Newman, One Nation’s NSW leader. It is undemocratic and dangerous to try to outlaw populists or to censor the internet so populists can’t get their message out. As Trump shows, the more you prosecute populists, the more likely they are to get elected. The AfD’s victory in Saxony shattered German politics. But guess what? German politics deserved to be shattered. The contest for Germany’s future is joined in earnest. So long as it’s conducted through the ballot box, that’s no bad thing.
Much as it was a good thing that Herr Adolf did well at the ballot box ...
At this point, the pond supposes even the most diligent correspondent might be exhausted, but the pond wants to offer a bonus to the bonus, the sight of Gerard having a nervous breakdown in The Times ...
This appeared in yesterday's lizard Oz, and for some weird reason, it put the pond in a most excellent mood ...
The more Gerard plunged into hysteria and end of world syndrome, the more cheerful the pond felt ...
All that and more, but in the end we're all dead ...
Of course the pond is absolutely terrified ... the pond is half-expecting the bromancer to go full Springtime in Germany ...
But there are upsides ...
... and there are slides, and who said the Titanic couldn't be fun?
