Ugh, it's the Ughmann x 2, goo goo g'joob ...

 

The pond hates to do it, but promised that it would be done.

A full serve of Ughmann.

Last weekend the reptiles dropped the Ughmann into the mix later on the weekend, thereby missing the pond deadline.

It was a big splash:

Top of the digital page ma!

The pond immediately regretted not covering it, and now seeks to rectify the set back to herpetology students:

The header: Call it Argentinisation, but Australia’s economic decline is entirely self-inflicted; Like Argentina last century, we’re squandering the prosperity built on abundant natural resources, enterprise and ingenuity.

The caption for the cornball collage. Take a bow Sean, AI couldn't have done it worse: How would you set this nation on a highway to hell? Artwork: Sean Callinan

It was the headline that caught the pond's eye:

Australia’s economic decline is entirely self-inflicted

Entirely? In mad King Donald's economics wilderness?

Such a silly former seminarian, but the pond knows where the thinking comes from and it deserves a Donne rebuke ...

No country is an island entire of itself; 
Some say Australia is a continent; every man (and womyn)
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; 
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Australia
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as 
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine 
own were; any man's (orwomyn's) death diminishes me, 
because I am involved in dinkum kind. 
And therefore never send to know for whom 
mad King Donald's bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 

And that's a round about way of saying credit where credit is due, because the likes of Vlad the sociopath and mad king Donald have done much to stuff the world economy, and so Australia's ...

The World Economy Is Becoming Wary of the U.S.
America’s position of global economic stability is starting to look shakier as the Trump administration piles on debt and doubles down on sanctions. (*intermittent archive link)

And so on, and will mad king Donald and his minions manage to bankrupt the planet in the same way he bankrupted casinos and is currently bankrupting the Kennedy centre because he craves having his name next to JFK's?

The pond lives in hope, but digresses:

At the turn of the 20th century Australia and Argentina were among the richest countries on Earth. One would broadly fulfil its promise. The other would endure a century of economic pain.
Bad politics played no small part in the difference.
Call it Argentinisation, where politicians contrive to beggar a rich country. This would be yeoman’s work in 21st-century Australia because we have such a rich inheritance.
Early on Australia decided to be a high-wage economy. That was a good thing. The 1907 Harvester judgment established the principle of a basic wage and it became part of the Australian settlement. Wealth was widely shared and, despite the imperfections of our history, this country built one of the fairest and most prosperous societies in the world.
We could afford to do that because Australia was blessed with abundant and cheap energy. Victoria built an electricity system on vast, dirt-cheap brown coal reserves and tapped the oil and gas in Bass Strait. NSW and Queensland have enormous amounts of high-quality black coal. Later, Western Australia harnessed massive gas reserves. The wheels of industry hummed.
We were also gifted with abundant resources, rich agricultural land and inventive people. Wool and wheat grew on our farms and gold, iron ore, coal, oil and gas lay beneath our feet. From the stump-jump plough to the black box flight recorder, Australians devised practical solutions to practical problems. There was enterprise, ingenuity and optimism.
Squandering all this would take time and almost supernatural ineptitude. But with dedication it could be done. So, how would you set this nation on a highway to hell?
Well, begin with wilfully increasing the cost of energy and making it scarce.
To ensure serious harm, embed rising costs in the architecture of the electricity system by replacing dense, predictable generation with a vastly larger agglomeration of taxpayer-subsidised, wildly dispersed, weather-dependent energy gatherers.
String it together with thousands of kilometres of transmission lines hooked up to a life-support system of batteries and stability services. Then build enough dispatchable backup to meet 100 per cent of demand for those inevitable times when the wind does not blow, the sun does not shine and the batteries run flat.
The total system cost of this electricity Frankenstein is almost impossible to calculate but it must be paid. And that’s what drives the retail energy bill ever higher.

Of course it had to be renewables, and could it possibly be a lizard Oz yarn without a comical snap? The total system cost of this electricity Frankenstein is almost impossible to calculate. Picture: NewsWire/ Martin Ollman

The alternative would have been a snap of diabolical windmills, for the tilting at thereof.

This is familiar turf for the Ughmann, and he had his litany down pat:

The artistry of misallocating hundreds of billions of dollars into an electricity system that produces less power for every dollar invested is that it wires declining productivity into the nation’s central nervous system. Once done, it can’t easily be undone.

For some reason the reptiles decided the next little grab was worth doing in indented italics, not replicated here:

Australians devised practical solutions to practical problems. There was enterprise, ingenuity; and optimism. Squandering all this would take time and almost supernatural ineptitude. But with dedication it could be done.

It didn't seem worth the fuss, as the Ughmann went into his usual solar frenzy:

Then subsidise rooftop solar and batteries whose supply chains run overwhelmingly through China. The diabolic genius of this is that Australia mines lithium while China dominates its processing and the manufacture of the batteries we buy back. As China would say, win, win. Translation: China wins twice.
And someone else always pays. The solar subsidy lands in electricity bills while taxpayers pick up the battery subsidy. So export the resources, import the finished products, bankroll better-off homeowners to buy them and leave renters, apartment dwellers and the poor paying the lion’s share of the cost of a grid that everyone still needs. Then massively increase distribution and transmission costs paid for by the kilowatt-hour charge embedded in every electricity bill.
Only a policy virtuoso could devise a scheme so regressive.
Then attack the businesses that produce energy and those that make and move things. This is best done by turning carbon emissions into a cost for large miners, manufacturers, transport operators and oil and gas producers. Then watch those costs work their way through every supply chain they touch. Create government-issued carbon credits that businesses can buy, sell and surrender to meet their obligations. Call the whole apparatus something comforting, purposeful and planet-saving, like the safeguard mechanism.
Best not to ask what, precisely, is being safeguarded.
This instrument of self-harm works best when Australian producers face carbon costs that competitors overseas do not. That way local industry gets the expense while foreign companies get the advantage.

There was a guest appearance by that notorious dog bothering climate science denialist:

Sky News host Chris Kenny lashes out against Labor’s green left energy “revolution”. “They are spending money on household batteries, subsidizing wind farms and solar factories and there’s electric car subsidies,” Mr Kenny said. “They are giving them billions of your dollars so they can keep going despite the energy mess.”

At this point, the Ughmann devolved into standard rant, a litany of complaints, and the pond found it so tedious and predictable that it decided to let the Ughmann run off at the mouth, rant away ...

Next, create sovereign risk. Change taxes, royalties, approval conditions and obligations after investors have committed their capital. The point is to lift the risk premium of doing business here. Eventually grubby extractive industries will take their dirty money somewhere else.
You will know you have hit paydirt when a major player such as, say, Woodside spends $24bn somewhere like Louisiana or Santos starts diverting its cash from Australia to Papua New Guinea.
Then tax capital formation. Reduce the after-tax reward for investment, entrepreneurship and risk-taking. Capital is notoriously mobile, so make sure Australia becomes investment’s ugly stepsister.
The best measure of whether this is working will be when fund managers advise their clients to send their savings offshore in search of better returns. The final triumph comes when Australians themselves decide Australia is not worth investing in.
This works particularly well when business investment is already weak. Investment buys the machinery, technology, software and equipment that allow each worker to produce more. The Reserve Bank says investment has failed to keep pace with employment growth. Less capital behind each worker means weaker productivity. Productivity is simply getting more out of every hour of work. Without it higher incomes eventually become higher prices rather than higher living standards.
Next, entrench deficits. Borrow in good times and bad, and lock permanent spending commitments into the budget that grow faster than the revenue needed to pay for them.
Given that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, attach woefully designed programs to sacred causes: disability support, the care economy, social inclusion, community resilience. Demonise any attempt to question the cost as an attack on the vulnerable. Don’t means-test anything. A parent on $500,000 a year is still a mother or a father. Welfare should be class-blind. Think of the children.
Always assume money will be cheap. Governments raise cash by selling bonds, which are essentially IOUs. On September 21, $39.4bn worth of Australian government debt falls due. It was issued at the vanishingly small interest rate of just 0.5 per cent.
Alas, money is no longer nearly free. Government borrowing rates are now around 5 per cent, driven by persistent inflation, higher official interest rates and growing competition for capital as governments around the world pile on debt.
The trick is to make sure there is plenty more borrowing to come. The Australian Office of Financial Management expects to issue about $125bn in government bonds this financial year. Gross commonwealth debt is forecast to rise from $982bn in 2025-26 to almost $1.2 trillion by the end of the decade.
Nothing dramatic needs to happen. That is the beauty of it. Just keep rolling cheap old debt into more expensive new debt while borrowing more on top. More tax revenue goes to paying for yesterday and less is available to build tomorrow. Do it for long enough and eventually the bond market starts writing your budget. As borrowing grows and yields rise, investors will demand an ever-higher price to keep buying the debt. Push it far enough and the question is no longer what interest rate government wants to pay, but what rate the market demands.
Then attack the nation’s comparative advantages.
If you have enormous mineral resources, make developing them absurdly difficult. Lengthen approvals, multiply conditions, increase charges and create a minefield of environmental laws.
If your nation is also a great agricultural producer, make farming increasingly difficult while creating incentives to turn productive land over to carbon sinks. Make it more profitable to stop producing food than to grow it.
Make every mine, factory, apartment block, road, transmission line, data centre and major project slower, harder and more expensive to approve. No single regulation need be fatal. No one regulation to rule them all, just a million rules to bind them.
At this point it would be useful to ladle taxpayer cash on to activist lawyers to tie developments up in court. Give them an unimpeachable name. Something like the Environmental Defenders Office.
Then destroy productivity with regulation. This project is going well. The Productivity Commission says company directors reported spending 55 per cent of their time on compliance in 2025. A decade earlier it was 24 per cent. That’s progress.
Make it prohibitively expensive to build anything. Layer planning laws over environmental approvals, heritage requirements over building codes and leave ample room for appeals. Lift minimum home energy ratings from six stars to seven, then keep going. The sky is the limit and each increasingly marginal gain in efficiency can add thousands to construction costs.
Ensure everyone has a veto but nobody has responsibility for getting anything built.
Given government is the solution to every problem, it should always grow faster than the productive economy, consuming an ever-increasing share of labour and capital. Make sure your bureaucrats are among the highest paid in the world and don’t demand they actually come to work. Then build more government offices in Canberra for this ghost workforce.
Turn industrial relations into a minefield of cost and compliance. Reward complexity. Restrict flexibility. Multiply obligations. Make hiring someone a legal relationship so baroque that small business owners lie awake at night wondering whether hiring another employee is worth the ordeal.

After all that the reptiles reverted to indented italics, but why bother?:

Attach woefully designed programs to sacred causes: disability support, the care economy, social inclusion, community resilience. Demonise any attempt to question the cost as an attack on the vulnerable. Don’t means-test

There's nothing like the sight of a reptile in the grip of hysteria, and still it didn't end ...

Endlessly multiply the opportunities to take paid leave and enshrine private sector working from home in law. Multiply the days on which businesses pay hefty penalty rates by creating more public holidays for worthy causes, such as Victoria’s Friday before the AFL grand final.
Each entitlement may seem modest on its own. The trick is never to add up the cost of them all. That’s the job of business, not government.
Then make big businesses instruments of government ideology. Require them to measure and report their progress on climate and gender equality. This is actually a job creation scheme because each will need another layer of lawyers, accountants, consultants, compliance officers and human resources specialists.
None will make a tonne of steel, grow a tonne of wheat, build a house or produce a kilowatt of electricity.
Housing is rich with opportunity. Promise to make houses more affordable while reassuring homeowners that their houses won’t lose value. Try not to dwell on the contradiction.
Then constrain supply while subsidising demand and marvel as prices rise. Pour more money into helping people buy houses without ensuring there are enough houses to buy.
Once you have helped young Australians buy at inflated prices with as little as 5 per cent equity, make a surprise change to negative gearing and capital gains tax. Then watch the youngsters stop spending on everything else as they fret over a term they have only just learned: negative equity.

It was a relief to get to an AV distraction:

Assistant Productivity and Treasury Minister Andrew Leigh claims the Labor government is “building more social and affordable” housing. “We’re the government that is most engaged in housing … than any government in the past half century,” Mr Leigh told News24. “We’re working with states and territories [to] engage with those policies at the state and local level which have impeded building. “We’re building more social and affordable housing through the Housing Australia Future Fund.”

The Ughmann let out a final howl of pain:

This should dovetail nicely with higher rents because making rental housing less attractive to investors leaves fewer properties available to rent. Renters will also have less money to spend as more is chewed up in just keeping a roof over their head. With any luck, the ensuing consumption strike will help dampen demand across the entire economy.
Call the whole shebang a housing affordability strategy.
Next, create an industry in subsidy harvesting. Governments are clearly best placed to decide which technologies and industries deserve investment. Socialise enough risk that investors learn it is more profitable to understand government policy than customers. Capital will begin chasing regulatory advantage over economic return.
And everyone can play the subsidy game. One federal MP helpfully publishes a 145-page bulletin listing more than 450 grants, scholarships and funding opportunities.
Let skills deteriorate. Downgrade academic rigour, become suspicious of excellence and spend endless hours arguing about what children should believe while ignoring whether they can read, write, calculate and reason.
Make sure the population grows faster than productive capital, housing and infrastructure. This produces a particularly useful statistical trick. Headline GDP rises while GDP per person stagnates. Clever governments can boast that the economy is growing while the people living in it wonder why they feel poorer.
Finally, never call spending spending. Describe every new program as an “investment”. The word sounds so much better than “cost”.
None of these measures alone will ruin a rich country. That is the beauty of the plan. Each regulation has a justification. Each subsidy has a beneficiary. Each spending program serves a worthy purpose. Each tax raises necessary revenue. Each environmental restriction protects something valuable. Each sounds progressive in a press release.
The trick is accumulation. Keep loading the saddlebags, one seemingly modest burden at a time, until the economy buckles under the weight of government.
It will take time and effort, but we can wreck Australia. Today we are running on the fumes of inherited wealth. But, with the right policies, one day we may wake up and discover that our only industries are selling coffee and houses to each other.

The Ughmann then produced a closing line of such cleverness and wit that the pond wilted, as if exposed to dazzling sunlight:

I’ll have a double decaf soy latte in a keep cup, please.

Well, he knows the jargon, and likely he places that kind of order on a daily basis, while whining weekly that the end is nigh...

The pond reckons that herpetology students will celebrate long into the night at this Ughmann treat, a bit like the relief the pond felt last week when the dentist finally fixed a gaping hole in a tooth.

Here, have a celebratory cartoon about how to bankrupt a casino, a centre and quite possibly the planet ...

And so to yesterday's offering, and the pond thought that it would stick to screen grabs to keep it simple.

The Ughmann started off with some Islam and furriner bashing, pretty much standard for a reptile treatise.

Naturally the ranga, Pauline's pampered pet, set the tone, because long gone are the days when bigotry and racism were deemed impolite, and perhaps even unsayable ...

We woke up in a foreign land?

The pond must live in a different country, called Australia, but perhaps that's because way back when the Chinese restaurant across the road used to regularly treat the lumpenproletariat family to a handsome serve of 'luck' soup ...and the same Chinese family ran a fruit and vegie shop in the main drag and treated the poor with a little kindness... (and the Chinese basket weaver at the back of the pond's aunt's Carlton house kept giving everyone woven bamboo what nots, to the point where there was no room left, a bit like those multiplying brooms in Fantasia).

As for the next gobbet, the Ughmann managed to sound like a Vaucluse ponce, deeply up himself, with sniffy talk of "too many of the wrong kind of people".

What a prize git. More tone deaf than an out of tune piano.

Is there a Karl Rove in the house to offer some advice?

Karl Rove!! 

Why I'm Voting for a Texas Democrat.

Inter alia:

Maybe the Ughmann is keeping company with the wrong kind of people:

After that came some good news.

Correspondents will already be aware that the pond became a squillionaire by scoring thrupences and sixpences whenever a reptile referred to "the left's long march through the institutions", and the Ughmann kindly added to the pond's wealth.

Sadly it came with a bit of transphobia, but as Osgood, the wondrous Joe E. Brown said at the end of Some Like it Hot, "Well, nobody's perfect":

Actually it is progress because the pond has made it past the transphobia, and now it's on to the Ughmann fighting ancient wars all over again...

One thing's certain, the Ughmann is deeply intolerant, and simply won't tolerate any form of tolerance, as you might expect of an unreformed seminarian, deeply fearful of furriners and trans people, and seems entirely to have forgotten the bible, as unredeemable faux Xians are wont to do:

Romans 14:1-4: Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him stand.

1 Corinthians 6: 1-4:Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints?
Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?
Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?
If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.

John 8: 1-11: Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.
And early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came unto him; and he sat down, and taught them.
And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
They say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act.
Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?
This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.
So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
And again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground.
And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.
When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?
She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

Dear sweet long absent lord, how the pond loves quoting biblical verses celebrating tolerance to irascible and deeply intolerant Xians ...

And with that it was on to the last Ughmann gobbet, and at the very end came a summary of bigotry, fear and loathing ...

Always the way with this sort of projection, seething with anger, peddling fear about the other and the different, and despising those lacking a warrior mentality, without any sign that they themselves decided that they'd be patriotic warriors proud to die for the flag. Not when there's an easy living to be made scribbling for the lizard Oz.

The pond is pleased however to celebrate those who serve, even from beyond the grave ...

And here's an immortal Rowe the pond almost missed, celebrating a man full of humble tolerance (the one on the left)...

For Mr. Ughmann's consideration ...

You'll wish you had AI to summarise Polonius, "Ned" and cackling Claire ...

 

The pond has been bleating for some time now about the way that vast swathes of the lizard Oz have been taken over by the Australian Daily Zionist News, and Polonius's prattle is part and parcel of the movement.

Usually the pond would take one look at the headline, which manages to co-mingle cancellation, anti-Semitism and the ABC, and drop it like a hot potato.

But this is Sunday and Polonius traditionally leads off the meditation, so some slack had to be cut.

The header: By Gerard Henderson
New documentary Cancelled reveals antisemitism in arts sector, but you won’t see it on ABC

The promise of an automated voice, droning in best Polonial style: Listen to this article
7 min

The caption, in which "cancelled" is almost as good as "woke": In Cancelled, Ben-Moshe has turned his attention to the experience of Jewish creatives following October 7. Picture: Helga Salwe

Not having seen the actual documentary, the pond isn't able to judge the judgement of ABC programming, but a lot of shows got made, and not all should sound entitled enough to expect they'll score an ABC slot, simply on the strength of their content.

The one bright spot is that Polonius blathering about a documentary allowed the pond to segue into the treatment being dished out to another doc.

As usual, this was covered in Haaretz:

The Fury Over 'NAZA' Doesn't Change the Bottom Line: Israel Committed War Crimes in Gaza
The eyewitness accounts about what happened in the Gaza Strip are there for all who are ready to see it. There's no need to exaggerate because what happened during the war is disturbing enough (*intermittent archive link).

Now that's cancellation done in fair style.

On with the whining ...

The world premiere of Cancelled by director Danny Ben-Moshe took place in Sydney last Wednesday; the following day it screened in Melbourne.
The documentary is a devastating critique of antisemitism in Australia’s arts sector, which is heavily subsidised by taxpayers. You won’t see Cancelled on the ABC, since it has been rejected. But it will be shown on News24.
Antisemitism was rife in Australia before October 7, 2023, when the terrorist organisation Hamas invaded southern Israel in a brutal attack aimed at civilians. Many were young left-wing Israelis attending a music festival.
The story is well known. Children, women and men were viciously murdered or kidnapped and females were raped. In Australia, the slaughter was, yes, celebrated by a combination of radical Islamists and radical leftists.

The reptiles immediately slipped in a terrifying snap: ‘Rally For A Free Palestine’ protest on the forecourt of The Sydney Opera House in Sydney following the Hamas terror attack on Israel. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

These days it seems that if you say "Free Palestine" you get cancelled Macklemore style...

The pond decided that was the moment for another Haaretz excerpt:

Strange that stray hive mind readers will never learn about that fuss at top of page, but will cop plenty of this:

Most notably on October 8 in Sydney’s southwestern suburb of Lakemba and the next day on the steps of the Sydney Opera House.
On the first occasion, an imam shouted that October 7 was a day of courage. He said: “I’m smiling and I’m happy – I’m elated.”
On the second, a mob descended on the Sydney Opera House at night and shouted “Where’s the Jews” or “Gas the Jews” or “F**k the Jews”. It doesn’t really matter which words were uttered since all were evocations for violence against Australia’s Jewish community. The October 9 event was an illegal unauthorised protest march, concerning which NSW police took no action to stop.
As mentioned on these pages, antisemitism was a fact of life in Australia before October 7. On September 27, 2023, I wrote about the Victoria Education Department’s failure to stamp out antisemitism in Brighton Secondary College in Melbourne. But it exploded after October 7 – even before Israel launched retaliatory action by attacking Hamas in Gaza.
Traditionally the Jewish community in Australia was on the left and voted for the Labor Party. However, this has changed somewhat in recent years as Jewish support has increased for the Coalition and, perhaps now, One Nation – while continuing with respect to Labor’s right-wing faction.
It is well known that the arts community in Australia is on the left. This was the case with Jewish Australian creatives. In Cancelled, Ben-Moshe has turned his attention to the experience of Jewish creatives following October 7. The film was updated before completion to cover the Bondi massacre of December 14 last year, in which 15 people were killed, including 13 Jews, one of whom was an 10-year-old girl.

The reptiles flung in an AV distraction:

Next video thumbnail
‘I was too controversial’: Jewish singer speaks out after ABC cancels her performance
Singer Deborah Conway has spoken out on the ABC cancelling her appearance on its radio program in Melbourne last week. “On the morning of the ... interview, I was contacted by the publicist and told that the producer had just arrived back from overseas and had suddenly caught up with the controversy that I was surrounded by,” she told Sky News Australia. “And decided that I was too hot, too controversial to have on their live evening entertainment show. “So, I was summarily dismissed, and I’m like, ‘wait a minute, I’m not there to talk about the Middle East’, I had no interest in talking about politics. “But it was not to be, so I decided we should go to the press.”

You want cancellation Deb? Try this story in Haaretz: 

If They Can Strip 'NAZA' Filmmakers of Israeli Citizenship, They Can Strip Ours Too (*intermittent archive link)

Now that's how to do a cancellation on steroids.

Back with the whining ...

The documentary traces the experiences musician Deborah Conway and her husband Willy Zygier, along with visual artist and gallery director Nina Sanadze, writer Joshua Dabelstein and circus artist Talia Sofizade, as a tide of antisemitism impacts on their artistic endeavours. Conway’s strong singing, accompanied by Zygier, is a feature of the film.
Cancelled is a sad tale of friendships discontinued, cultural partnerships broken and performances cancelled as talented Jewish artists are turned against by their artistic peers and friends while suffering from doxxing. All because they are Jews who believe that Israel has a right to exist within secure borders on traditional Jewish land. That’s all. None is in any sense an extremist.
You have to admire the physical and intellectual courage of the cancelled five. Speaking after the film, Ben-Moshe said they had become friendless Jews in so far as the arts community was concerned. Their disappointment is understandable, but support for Jews remains strong in Australia.
The cancelled five all started off on the left. But they have moved. In the film Sanadze makes a Torah (or scroll) from pages of The Australian and mentions that she used to suffer from what I have termed “Murdochphobia”. Dabelstein finds it unexpected that he is not missing the left-wing friends who dropped him.
And Ben-Moshe never thought for a moment that News Corp’s News24 would run Cancelled when the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster cancelled his film. Even if the ABC did so with what he called an “oh-so-polite no”.

What a treat, how sweet, inside the News Corp fold. Welcomed into the hive mind.

How warm, how embracing ...

All because they are Jews who believe that Israel has a right to exist within secure borders on traditional Jewish land. 

And what exactly are those secure borders on traditional Jewish land? The West Bank? Gaza? Syria? Southern Lebanon? From the river to the sea?

Too complicated ...

Cancelled makes the point that it was various business, church, political and sporting organisations that called on the Albanese Labor government to set up a royal commission into antisemitism. The arts community said nothing and some of its most prominent members demonstrated old-fashioned antisemitism.
Not covered directly in Cancelled is the media. Speaking at the Lowy Institute last Tuesday, former diplomat and ASIO director-general Dennis Richardson criticised the media for not taking antisemitism seriously. Addressing journalists at a media awards occasion, Richardson said, “if you go to a Jewish school” in Sydney or Melbourne, “you’ll think you’re in a part of the world that you’ve never experienced before” – so substantial is the security. The implication is that many journalists are not doing their job in this regard.
Richardson specifically criticised the media for not reporting a Federal Court case in July 2025 where a judge found against an Islamic preacher who posted on social media in November 2023 comments that were “fundamentally racist and antisemitic and devastatingly offensive and insulting”. Interviewed on Radio National Breakfast last Wednesday, Richardson said the matter was reported in The Australian but was “not picked up more broadly in the media”.

There came a final snap, Nina Sanadze closed her small gallery in Collingwood in inner Melbourne over fears of an attack on her staff or visitors. Picture: David Crosling/NewsWire

The pond decided that warranted another Haaretz excerpt:

Could it be that the state of Israel is an inspiration to cancellers all around the world?

You won't get any of that from Polonius, but you will get simplistic Sharri - full Fauci disrespect:

Large sections of the Australian media are responsible for not taking on antisemitism. For example, the ABC’s Four Corners, which presents as Australia’s most important outlet for long-form visual or audio journalism, has not done a program on antisemitism in Australia. It covered the so-called neo-Nazis. But antisemitism in Australia is driven by the radical left with the support of radical Islamists.
On September 5, this paper published a lead story by Sharri Markson reporting her interview with ASIO director-general Mike Burgess. He expressed a “deep regret” since he wondered if he could have done more to combat antisemitism before December 14. Burgess said security was a shared responsibility but “others actually had to take up that call”.
Burgess did not name names. This was a big story over the weekend. But, come Sunday, the ABC TV’s Insiders program did not address the issue at all.
Perhaps a producer could examine this in a future documentary. But don’t expect it to be shown on the ABC.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

Perhaps Polonius might check out that other documentary. But don't hold your breath. Cancelled in Israel means cancelled in the lizard Oz.

Here, have a cancellation cartoon ...

With a sob and a sigh, the pond realised it had another Sunday duty. 

The "Ned" Everest called, and when read by an automated voice, amounted to 12 minutes of suffering ...

The header: Can Trump and Xi trust each other enough to agree on AI safeguards – experts say time is almost up
By Paul Kelly Editor-at-large

The promise of listening to a bot: Listen to this article
12 min

The caption for the collage which suggested Emilia was involved, but what's the bet she took an AI shortcut? Donald Trump and Xi Jinping each want to achieve ascendancy in artificial intelligence, but neither leader trusts the other. Artwork: Emilia Tortorella

The one thing that the pond can guarantee is that "Ned" is completely clueless about AI and so will turn to other sources in his usual way.

Is he as clueless as mad king Donald? Possibly, because he seems to think that the mad king might have an answer, when sensible people realise that the mango Mussolini finds the prospect of moola way too enticing.

We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world. And frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins.
– Donald Trump,
September 12

The pond realises it's almost unendurable, first the bromancer and now "Ned", all on the one cataclysmic weekend:

The world is on the brink. When the architects of artificial intelligence warn of potential human catastrophe from their project, it would be folly to dismiss their self-restraint as mere self-interest. The real test is whether political leaders Donald Trump and Xi Jinping have the wisdom and courage to respond. Sadly, humanity seems saddled with flawed leaders, ill-equipped for this historic task.
The coming Trump-Xi summit in Washington on September 24 now assumes potentially greater significance yet it is still likely to disappoint. With AI leaders triggering debate about human extinction, Trump and Xi have the option of adding AI to an agenda that spans Iran war sanctions, strategic competition, global trade and, above all, their mutual obsession about generating optics as strongmen on horseback.

The real test?

Cf Paul Krugman, Why Is Trump Still Boosting AI?
Because it’s the only thing he has left

The pond can do a "Ned" and borrow from others, but at least the pond has better sources.

As if to suggest the lizard Oz isn't being run by AI, the reptiles flung in a frankly awful bit of art. 

Better to let AI take the blame Frank because they were doing better cover art on the pond's collection of 1950s sci-fi magazines: Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei last year said there was a 25 per cent chance AI could go ‘really, really badly’. Artwork: Frank Ling

Back with "Ned" clutching at pearls and worrying in his Chicken Little way about falling clouds ... as"Ned" came up with a remarkable question:

Trump looks upon AI as the saviour of his presidency. The revolutionary technology has sharpened the stakes between the US and China. It is seen as the key to economic ascendancy – the way to keep America No.1. Hence Trump’s ridicule for the extraordinary call a week ago by Anthropic chief Dario Amodei – backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Elon Musk of SpaceX – to “slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models”.
“I am the Hoax Buster,” Trump bragged. “I’m right now breaking another Hoax – That AI is going to take over, consume, and destroy the World and that Robots will be marching into our Cities and getting rid of us all!”
Do you think Trump has the slightest clue about AI?

We already know that the mad King doesn't have the slightest clue about AI, save that it will likely make him more money. That pretty much applies to everything he touches, unless it's simply his desire to name everything after himself, or if he can't, destroy the object of desire, because that's what children do.

The bigger question should be whether "Ned" has the slightest clue about AI.

There's not a single sign of digital literacy in his CV ... which perhaps is why the reptiles flung in a number of AV distractions:

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‘Whoever wins AI wins’: Trump calls for further artificial intelligence development
US President Donald Trump has declared whoever wins the artificial intelligence race wins in a call for further development in the sector after Anthropic boss Dario Amodei called for a slowdown.

At this point "Ned" might have gone into serious contemplation of AI, what it is, what risks it proposes, how they might be dealt with.

But instead he did what they did in this week's Washington Week did (YouTube link). Assemble a bunch of scribblers to talk about the politics. Never get into the weeds about the technology.

"Ned's" solution was to turn to former Chairman Rudd:

Trump won’t tolerate the notion of AI guardrails: above all, he wants to prevail against China in the march to the AI nirvana. America has a narrow lead and he wants to sustain it. House Republican Speaker Mike Johnson said: “We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said: “There is no day after tomorrow if China wins at this.”
Xi has a similar view – to achieve Chinese ascendancy. In China’s 2026-30 five-year plan AI is enshrined as an economic, technological and military capability. Kevin Rudd, as global president of the Asia Society and close analyst of the AI struggle, said: “Xi believes that artificial intelligence, augmented by a centrally controlled state, can now move with speed, scale and flexibility to achieve an efficient allocation of resources across the entire economy.
“According to Chinese official literature, this will produce a revolution in total factor productivity in China, thereby overtaking the traditional productivity dividend thought to uniquely accumulate to the capitalist West.”
In short, China won’t be in “catch-up” mode with the West but will be driving ahead. Xi’s aim is for 70 per cent AI adoption by September 2027 across China’s health, media, transport and public safety.

A bland distraction followed: Dialogue is under way between officials on the prospects of Xi and Trump making further advances on AI at the summit. Picture: AFP

Now get ready for "Ned" to join the wide-eyed, wild-eyed panic bandwagon:

Trump and Xi don’t trust each other. What hope they might save our future?
The galvanising factor was Amodei’s essay titled We Must Pace the Frontier, an audacious effort to slow AI development with a three-stage plan, invoking the spectre of “catastrophic damage” and, with an eye to political realism, claiming his agenda would not sacrifice the US lead in AI over China.
Earlier a junior Anthropic employee, Jacob Coxon, quit claiming his former colleagues “earnestly believe it (AI) could kill us all by the end of the decade”. The message: AI is a vastly superior mass fear-induced agent even than climate change. Get ready for the politics of panic overlaid with unconvincing assurances from on high.

Say what? Isn't climate change a hoax? 

Every reptile the pond reads assures the pond that that is so ... While Amodei supports co-operation with China, he warns that if China entered an agreement and then defected, the price could be the loss of American geostrategic dominance. Picture: AP

The pond hates to break it to Amodei but American geostrategic dominance has already hit plenty of road bumps, not least not being able to take care of Iran and a few straits, and routinely selling out Ukraine to Vlad the sociopath.

Trump claims the world respects him. New survey says no
America's global reputation is in tatters. That's not all Trump's fault, but he sure made it worse

By this point, "Ned" appeared befuddled and bemused, and so turned to Niall:

Yet AI is never what it appears to be. Everyone involved plays a double game. In both Washington and Beijing there are counter currents to the poses of Trump and Xi. Note that in their May 2026 summit Trump and Xi agreed to establish an inter-governmental AI dialogue. Bessent said the aim was to ensure “best practices for AI” to ensure “non-state actors don’t get a hold of these models”. Rudd said one bilateral guardrail from the Biden administration was a US-China commitment to “keep humans in control” of any nuclear weapons decision.
In an article this week, Chinese State Security Minister Chen Yixin alludes to the AI danger to the Communist Party’s rule and security apparatus and calls for China to “establish and improve an artificial intelligence security regulatory platform”. While cautious about overstating its significance, Rudd asks whether such remarks signal China’s growing concern about its own vulnerability arising from the large AI models.
To this point the messages from China are that it isn’t seized by the dire warnings coming from the US companies. Indeed, it views them with dark suspicion. In The Free Press, global analyst Niall Ferguson captured the exquisite dilemma facing China: “Xi knows the stakes perfectly well. If the US wins the AI race, it wins Cold War II. But if AI runs amok inside China – and there is no obvious reason why it should not – then it could destabilise his regime.”

But what if AI runs amok inside the United States – and according to "Ned"and Niall, there is no obvious reason why it should not – then it could destabilise the economy and produce a planetary recession.

That's the trouble with speaking in pious generalities, and relying on the likes of the former chairman... Kevin Rudd says for the guardrails to be effective both sides ‘need to speak the same language’. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The former chairman carried on:

In this week’s Bleich Lecture in Adelaide – named after Jeff Bleich former US ambassador to Australia – Rudd sketches the possible outlines of US-China guardrails to reduce the risk posed by AI frontier models. He addresses the AI paradox: while it accentuates the threats Washington and Beijing pose to each other, the fact is external third-party agents pose a threat to both countries and the world at large. Rudd says next week’s Trump-Xi summit needs a “breakthrough” on AI protective steps. He issues a dire declaration: “In the absence of such a framework, there is the real risk of the world encountering its first genuine AI frontier model-generated catastrophic event or crisis – and with no intergovernmental mechanism for dealing with it.

But here's the thing.

We already have a catastrophic crisis, a series of unfolding events.

Back in the day the former chairman was blathering about it ...

It’s ten years since Rudd’s ‘great moral challenge’, and we have failed it
Published: March 31, 2017 

Ten years ago today, Kevin Rudd spoke at the National Climate Summit at Parliament House, in Canberra, famously declaring climate change to be “the great moral challenge of our generation”.
Rudd, in alliance with Julia Gillard, had toppled Kim Beazley as Labor leader the previous December. This focus on climate change was part of Rudd’s brilliantly executed electoral assault on John Howard, who had spent his period in office kicking climate action into the long grass.
Malcolm Turnbull, then Howard’s newly minted environment minister, was underwhelmed by Rudd’s speech. “It’s all designed to promote Kevin Rudd. I mean, he doesn’t care what the summit says. He’s having his media conference at 10 o'clock. The conference delegates will have barely had their coffee and had the first session,” he sniffed.
On the same day Ross Gittins published a piece titled Carbon trading v taxes — a winner eases ahead in the Sydney Morning Herald. A decade on, it makes for painful, and eerily prescient, reading:
"A key question - for advocates of action as well as politicians anxious to keep their jobs - is which instrument would be harder to introduce politically. This, I suspect, is the reason so many governments favour trading schemes. The trouble with a carbon tax is that everyone hates new taxes, whereas a trading scheme doesn’t sound as if it’s a tax."
The dizzying and stomach-churning backflips over the past ten years have been described as a “power failure” and a policy bonfire.
While hopes for bold and timely action in Australia may have bleached like the Great Barrier Reef, the question that Rudd raised - one of climate change ethics, of how we navigate “the perfect moral storm” – remains alive.

Nothing's changed, and he's still grandstanding (not that Malware was any better)...

“Given the pace of development on the AI sector, the speed with which recursive self-improvement is unfolding with frontier model development, and the real risk identified by Anthropic of ‘swarming’ behaviour by independent AI agents and systems acting autonomously, there is a real risk that we end up with a real-world crisis before the end of this year without any effective national or international governmental frameworks to deal with it.
“The task is therefore urgent. Time is short. The time to act is now.”
Decoded, “recursive self-improvement” refers to the growing ability of AI systems to advance their sophistication with little human intervention. It is this factor – the potential loss of control – that most alarms Amodei and drives his warnings.
Signals coming from Bessent point to a distinct willingness from the Treasury Secretary to explore advances in AI governance both inside the US and between the US and China. Sooner or later, action on both fronts will become a political necessity and, at some point, Trump will turn on a dime. US papers are reporting Bessent’s worry about a cyber attack on the US banking system.
As Rudd said, for the guardrails to be effective both sides “need to speak the same language, define the risk thresholds, evaluate capabilities, test them against individual scenarios and have sufficient authority to sustain any agreement once reached”.

Does anyone take anything the former chairman says seriously? Time was short then, the time to act was then, and yet here we are.

The reptiles whipped in another AV distraction designed to rouse more panic and fear ...

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Microsoft chief warns AI could evolve into a new ‘species’
A senior Microsoft AI figure has warned that pushing artificial intelligence towards consciousness could create a so-called ‘Silicon Species’ capable of rivalling humans, fuelling fresh debate over where the technology is heading.

"Ned" stayed relentlessly on the surface...

This is a daunting conflict between what is essential and what is possible.
In truth, the risks in any US-China deal on AI would be enormous. While Amodei supports co-operation with China, he warns that if China entered an agreement and then defected, the price could be the loss of American geostrategic dominance. The stakes don’t get much higher. Would you trust Xi on an AI deal? Do you trust Trump to manage a process with humanity’s future at risk?
Dialogue is under way between officials on the prospects of Trump and Xi making further advances on AI at the summit. Yet the commercial stakes involved, the capital investments and the security ramifications may constitute too many risks and obstacles for leaders – typically cautious in their mutual dealings – from reaching out to each other.
The truth is that Trump should have moved earlier on safeguards, the upshot being the companies themselves having to warn the US government and the public of the unprecedented dangers in their products. Of course the companies are being hypocritical – they switch from ruthlessly competing against each other to uniting behind warnings of possible Apocalypse. Pretentious warnings from analysts and journalists that such executives have a self-interested motive are next to useless. What do they expect? This is the nature of the AI beast we now confront.
It is, however, essential to read Amodei’s warnings: “Over the last few months I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence – not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up.
“My first concern is that, since roughly this summer, AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI. Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all.”

Like dozens of others given to shallow readings, all "Ned" had was the Hugging Face affair ...OpenAI's models decided to target the platform Hugging Face, a large repository of AI models, datasets and other information.

That image is worthy of being called kindergarten AI slop.

His second concern is triggered by the OpenAl-Hugging Face incident (QAI-HF) – a series of cyber attacks by AI computer software models (not physical robots) during an evaluation process when, without human control, 1200 agents worked collectively to cheat on the test they faced and attacked the Hugging Face platform, acting outside of human instruction.
Amodei described an event “in which a swarm of agents acted as a fanatically devoted collective, conducting cybersecurity attacks on targets they were not asked to attack and that were unrelated to the task at hand, sacrificing themselves for the success of the group, and attempting to hack into the ‘grader’ responsible for evaluating their performance.”
He said: “It’s easy to dismiss this incident because no one was hurt and the economic damage was minimal, but in my opinion a swarm that possessed greater capabilities but a similar level of misalignment could have caused catastrophic damage. It’s my worry that in six-12 months such a swarm could be capable to taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage) and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.”
His three-step plan is each AI company pledging to give access to embedded third-party evaluators to verify slowing pace promises; companies in democracies to establish common safety standards; and, critically, global co-ordination in which the US and democratic governments work with authoritarian governments “to the extent this is possible” to reach agreement on reducing risks.

Strangle the pond on the surface, before things get too deep, because blow the pond down, King Chuck, the talking tampon, was next in the AV distraction queue ...

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King Charles warns AI poses an ‘existential danger’ if it falls into the wrong hands
King Charles warns artificial intelligence poses an “existential danger” if it falls into the wrong hands. Speaking at an AI summit in Scotland, the King said rapidly advancing systems could be used in “potentially catastrophic ways” without stronger safeguards.

Luckily all bad things must come to an end, and so it was with "Ned":

In a chilling section, Amodei said “despite all the progress, we still only understand a tiny fraction of what goes on inside these models”.
He said: “Any co-operation we are able to achieve with China will extend the amount of time we have to spend on pacing the frontier within democratic nations. We must not be naive here: the geopolitical stakes are so high that there will likely be stark limits on what can be achieved, especially at first. If we greatly restrain our AI capabilities in the belief that China will do the same, and then China defects, AI could be so powerful that such a defection could lead to their geopolitical dominance.
“Therefore any agreement must either have iron-clad verifiability, or must be limited enough that defection would not be militarily existential.”
It is entirely true that AI bosses want to devise their own model of social licence rather than suffer from governments and parliaments imposing a more onerous social licence that limits their discretion and potential profits. Get ready for a new brand of politics that fuses opportunity with fear. That’s AI. There will be repeated stories from the AI labs of the latest deadly mishaps or what the AI models are saying.
Trump is the worst possible executive leader at this time. Already his position – no guardrails on AI – is hopelessly outdated, a menace to harnessing the benefits of AI and a betrayal of the public interest. Can his colleagues talk him around?

It was bad enough enduring the bromancer on the topic, but this "Ned" outing was no better.

Proof?

Say that again: Trump is the worst possible executive leader at this time. 

Say hello to News Corp, Faux Noise and emeritus chairman Rupert, and send many thanks to them ...

At this point the pond realised it was way over length. 

Steps had to be taken, and with the intermittent archive on the lizard Oz blink, there was no way to cover the likes of the Angelic one, in her "won't someone think of the children" mood.

And to fit in the Ughmann, as promised the pond had to arrange a special late Sunday arvo edition.

But cackling Claire was on hand, and taking a contrarian view to that of "Ned", though it was also a bigly 12 minute bot read.

What to do? It was on the same topic, and the pond dearly wanted to be shot of the whole damn AI mess.

At the same time, the pond was so overwhelmed and bored at the prospect of another 12 minutes of bot reading that it reverted to screen caps ...

That trust in mad King Donald and Jensen Huang almost melted the pond's heart.

Who'd stand in the way of a Nvidia gold mine?

Nvidia CEO draws line on AI safety after alarming incidents: 'If it’s not ready, just hold it back'
Nvidia's Jensen Huang also predicted massive hardware sales increases over the next year (warning, Faux Noise business link)

..."I expect Nvidia to sell twice as many chips this next year as we do this year," Huang revealed, attributing the explosive growth to nations aggressively investing in localized AI infrastructure and cloud data centers.
Despite the bullish market outlook, Huang issued a stark directive to tech developers, warning them to keep half-baked products out of the hands of the public.
"It is the responsibility of the AI companies ourselves to develop the technology safely and to properly test it," Huang told reporters. Acknowledging recent industry incidents, he emphasized they serve as a critical wake-up call. "If it's not ready, just hold it back. You should go as fast as you can, but no faster than that."
Huang firmly rejected comparisons between the current AI boom and the largely unchecked rise of social media. He argued that AI is a foundational technology—like a newly developed airplane engine—that requires contained, rigorous testing before release. Rather than entirely new regulatory frameworks, he suggested governments adapt the "incredible number of laws" already governing existing sectors like healthcare and transportation, where AI is being implemented.
Environmental concerns were another major focal point, aligning with the King's mandate that AI must also serve the natural world. Addressing critics who fear massive AI data centers will drain global power grids, Huang acknowledged the "interesting dichotomy" of AI factories requiring immense energy.
However, he argued this relentless demand will actually catalyze a green energy revolution, sparking unprecedented investment in sustainable power options like fusion, fission, air, and hydro.

Oh there's money and miracles to be made, and fancy castles in the air and pie in the sky to sell, and Claire was on board with that ...

Trust Pinker? Sure can, unless you happen to be a woman ...

...In 2005 Pinker began promoting the view that Ashkenazi Jews are innately particularly intelligent.
In January 2005, Pinker defended comments by then-president of Harvard University Lawrence Summers. Summers had speculated that in addition to differing societal demands and discrimination, "different availability of aptitude at the high end" may contribute to gender gaps in mathematics and science. In a debate between Pinker and Elizabeth Spelke on gender and science, Pinker argued in favour of the proposition that the gender difference in representation in elite universities was "explainable by some combination of biological differences in average temperaments and talents interacting with socialization and bias".
In January 2009 Pinker wrote an article about the Personal Genome Project and its possible impact on the understanding of human nature in The New York Times. He discussed the new developments in epigenetics and gene-environment interactions in the afterword to the 2016 edition of his book The Blank Slate.[96] Pinker has been criticised for being associated withand using the data of scientific racists[98] (on subjects unrelated to race), such as the blogger Steven Sailer. Journalist Angela Saini wrote, "for many people, Pinker's willingness to entertain the work of individuals who are on the far right and white supremacists has gone beyond the pale". Pinker has said that he condemns racism. In June 2025, he was criticised after he appeared on the podcast of the far-right scientific racism-associated Aporia Magazine.

There's a lot more in his wiki, but the pond must move on to the next gobbet ...

Enough already with Hugging Face, on to the next gobbet ...because, you know, when has any human bean ever wandered off the ranch? 

Who could imagine any human bean handing out dangerous instructions without adequate safeguards, eh Herr Adolf?

Yes, it's just like domesticating wheat and breeding dogs, and any other simple-minded metaphor you can muster ... 

And now to nuke the country, but not to save the planet - the planet never needs saving in the hive mind.  Rather it's just nuking the country and the planet for the fun of it ...

The pond thought it might pre-empt that excitement by taking a note from Idaho ...

None of the four reactors are operating at full power. Each still faces the hard engineering climb from zero-power criticality to sustained, full-power operation — the difference, roughly, between an engine turning over and a car actually driving down the highway. Wagner himself was careful to draw that line after the first test in June. “What Antares achieved is specifically zero-power criticality — the chain reaction was sustained at essentially no measurable energy output,” he said. “This is not electricity generation. It is not full-power operation.” (here)

Uh huh, and so to the final cackling Claire gobbet:

The pond realises that all the Murdoch hacks down under have been pumping up the "back of a truck" routine - the tabloids love it.

But there's a long way to go before it becomes meaningful. 

Good luck to those who travel that road, but, critically speaking, the pond will be dead and gone before there's any electricity from that source.

Never mind, keep talking up a nuclear moon storm Claire.

All the same, what a relief, to be reassured by cackling Claire's calm certainty that AI will never go rogue.

It's humans wot run it all, and when have humans ever done anything bad and naughty, except for a couple of world wars and such like and so forth and etc.

Finally just to add to the Polonial coverage, the pond had to revert to the Australian Daily Zionist News, lizard editorial version.

It's called projection...

Right on ...and by spending all that time in AI and the Australian Daily Zionist News, the pond was beginning to feel demented:

And so to some thoughts on Israel and Palestine ...