As previously advised, the pond is off to Melbourne for a few days, and so daily updates on the doings of the reptiles at the lizard Oz aren't feasible.
But this month, the pond's clicks have reached c. 990k, and the pond wondered whether it might be able to reach a cool million.
Relax, they aren't real. The Google bot counter is delusional and fastidiously tracks all the other bots, as well as the AI harvesters dropping into scrape the site, and the only comfort in the figure is that it means assorted AI bots are being eternally corrupted by being exposed to the reptiles.
The real pond traffic runs in the hundreds, and the site is known only to expert herpetologists.
All the same, how to keep the site alive to keep the bots and punters entertained, while not being able to look at the reptiles, as the pond risks life and limb to move amongst the pinko prevert socialists and commie swine of the south?
A casual, passing remark by a correspondent reminded the pond of the existence of dashing Donners.
Once upon a time, he was reliably present on the lizard Oz, and so on the pond, but then he reverted to a trashy tabloid existence at the Daily Terror and other Murdochian tabloids.
The pond decided it would be entertaining to look him up, inspired by Matt McManus's observation in The Bulwark ...
...It's a curious time to be watching the far right. In days gone by, the far-right milieu produced intellectuals of the caliber of Carl Schmitt or Martin Heidegger. These intense critics of liberalism argued that the inauthentic nullity brought about by liberal metaphysics could only end in civilizational collapse. By contrast, the best that today’s far-right provocateurs seem to be able to muster is tirelessly repeating how casting black and gay people in Disney remakes can only end in civilizational collapse.
Could dashing Donners live down to that call?
Of course he could ...
You want someone to get agitated about Disney? Hold dashing Donners beer ...
The header: Kevin Donnelly: Woke re-write of Snow White is a Dopey move; The controversy surrounding Disney’s latest rendition of the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs highlights how cultural-left woke ideology is still all pervasive., writes Kevin Donnelly. (The Daily Terror's style is to repeat the name of the scribbler several times so that it can sink in to the noggins of the thugby league-addled hive mind).
The caption for the AV distraction conveniently provided for Terrorists who don't want to read on:
Disney’s live-action remake of ‘Snow White’ has been brutally roasted online amid its weak opening weekend box office. Earning $US43 million on its opening weekend, the film's budget cost Disney $US209 million. Critic reviews have been mixed to negative, with many citing the live-action film fails to live up to the animated classic. The film had received vast criticism regarding its lead, Rachel Zegler, who had touted the film would have a more woke approach. Zegler’s continuous comments bashing the original 1937 animated movie sparked outrage online, with her politics also dividing viewers. Following US President Donald Trump’s 2024 election win, the actress went on a tirade against those who voted for him. Rachel Zegler has since backflipped on many comments surrounding the film.
Truth to tell, the pond had almost completely forgotten the fuss surrounding this outing - there have been any number of turkeys since then - but bear with the pond because this is a parade, neigh a cavalcade of dashing Donners' hits ...
The controversy surrounding Disney’s latest rendition of the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs highlights how cultural-left woke ideology is still all pervasive.
Oh dear, the woke word not just in the header, but at the very start, and with much more woke to come, and so the pond had best slip in its reminder whenever the word slips on ...
Now on with dashing Donners, frothing and foaming in an anti-woke fit ...
The actor playing Snow White, Rachel Zegler, describes the original 1937 version as “weird” and in a 2022 interview said the new version would give women a more assertive role. Unlike the original film, Zegler states: “She’s not going to be saved by the prince and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love … She’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and the leader that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave and true.”
Bloody feministas! Enough to make a Donners faint, but it gets worse ...
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is not alone in being rewritten by woke activists. Classic myths, fairy tales and childhood stories have long been targeted by the cultural-left. Sleeping Beauty is condemned as the sleeping princess fails to give consent when kissed by the prince. Woke activists argue Thomas the Tank Engine reinforces capitalism as there is a hierarchy starting with the Fat Controller.
Not Thomas, anyone but Thomas...
Everyone knows that Thomas was a libertarian anarchist who refused to work for the Man ...
But it didn't stop there ...
Classic myths, fairy tales and childhood stories have long been targeted by the cultural-left. Sleeping Beauty is condemned as the sleeping princess fails to give consent when kissed by the prince. Woke activists argue Thomas the Tank Engine reinforces capitalism as there is a hierarchy starting with the Fat Controller.
How could that be? He just wants to be a Really Useful Engine and run over any woke loon in his way ...
Just to make sure everyone knew the topic at hand ... Rachel Zegler attends the World Premiere of Disney's Snow White at El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. Picture: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images for Disney
Dashing Donners was now in full litany of horrors mode, with poor old Shakspere among the victims...
According to one American academic the children’s story unfairly prioritises hard work.
Even Shakespeare is not immune. The trust responsible for overseeing the Bard’s manuscripts and memorabilia is working to “ensure that stories of trans people are recorded, celebrated and preserved as contributions to achieving gender equality”. On the basis visitors “may encounter language or depictions that are racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise harmful”, the trust is also committed to “explore the process of decolonising our collections and our organisational practice, helping to create a more inclusive museum experience”. Underlying the concept of decolonisation is the belief the reason why Shakespeare’s works are held in such high esteem, instead of being inherently significant and worthwhile, is because they are the products of British imperialism and white supremacy. So much for acknowledging and celebrating Shakespeare as a universally admired playwright and poet whose works are considered the most insightful, profound, superbly crafted and enduring among the greats of the English language.
Damn you Baz. How dare you slip firearms into the text.
And why didn't you show Juliet's real age, fit and proper for the times of King Donald and his friend Epstein ...
Come Lammas Eve at night shall she be fourteen. Susan and she, God rest all Christian souls Were of an age
The reptiles slipped in a snap to evoke the full horror...Andrew Burnap, left, and Rachel Zegler in a scene from "Snow White." (Disney via AP)
At last dashing Donners was in his Harold Bloom element, and could rant and rage long into the night...
Also, so much for valuing plays like King Lear and The Tempest that reveal so much about the dangers of hubris, the trauma associated with loss and suffering, the importance of forgiveness and redemption and what constitutes truth, fulfilment and human flourishing. Decolonising Shakespeare to rid his works of white privilege and Eurocentrism is not the only example of how Western culture’s literary heritage is being redefined in terms of woke mind control and group think. In America classics like Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn are cancelled and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird because it promotes a white saviour narrative. One American academic goes as far as justifying a “queer gender reading” of Jane Austen’s novels by arguing the author “promotes the progressive notion of homosexuality as a universal state through her subtle depictions of same-sex intimacies in her famously heteronormative novels”. Judging children’s stories and classic novels and plays written and performed countless years ago by today’s misplaced woke standards might make activists feel morally superior but it is wrong to judge the past in light of today’s beliefs. It’s also wrong to criticise films and literature in terms of power relationships involving gender, sexuality, race and class. To reduce everything to such a nihilistic and bleak interpretation ignores what is most vital about literature that has stood the test of time. As argued by English poet William Blake, literature at its best, as well as being aesthetically pleasing, transcends the mundane everyday world to reveal a wondrous, inspiring and spiritual reality that gives pleasure and understanding. Appreciating and valuing literature is also critical to the health and wellbeing of society. Stories, plays, novels, poems and narratives are an ongoing gift that passes from one generation to the next and that gives culture its richness and meaning. There’s no doubt, as a result of US president Donald Trump signing executive orders stopping Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs, stating that there are two sexes, male and female, and banning transwomen from female sports, that woke ideology in America is on the retreat. Unfortunately, judged by how the West’s literary classics and films are being destroyed woke ideology is still all powerful and it’s too early to say common sense, sanity and reason will prevail. Those hoping the tide has turned against cultural-left mind control need to think again. Dr Kevin Donnelly is a conservative author and commentator, his latest book is Wake Up To Woke: It’s Time, Australia
Are you not entertained?
That was ancient, but in its own way, timeless dashing Donners.
Those wondering about the book and where they could rush to buy the tome, please be advised that it's self-published and so you have to head off to dashing Donners' website to plunk your thirty bucks down... or pick it up second hand or for free in a street library, should you happen to find someone careless with their cash ...
Moving right along, just to round out this outing with Donners, it's important to note that he's not just a one trick woke pony.
He's also on top of political trends ...
As Matt McManus contended ...
..Historically, the far right has been described as the ideological playground of the “lesser intelligentsia.” Today’s far right seems determined to prove that their standards can be lower still—or even that their standards can be broken faster than they can be lowered. One far-right staple is to fantasize that the world runs on mystical cycles. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, Oswald Spengler hypothesized that civilizations went through life cycles much as biological organisms do. He fretted that the Western world was entering a winter in which it would be overtaken by a vengeful Global South. A decade later, the Italian reactionary mystic Julius Evola hypothesized that egalitarian modernity was a regression from a deeper aristocratic tradition, and augured a vital return to the latter in the form of a super-fascist SS. This cyclical thinking is celebrated by some of those on the far right who call themselves “traditionalists,” including, supposedly, Steve Bannon.
Speaking of lower still standards, how about devotion to Pauline?
Please allow the pond to cheat a little by moving past the AV distraction, and the splendid uncredited collage which suggests that the lizard Oz graphics department might be moonlighting for the Daily Terrorists ...
You see?
Pauline is a roll call of all the policies favoured by the lizard Oz and the Daily Terrorists, as they watched the once proud party of Robert Menzies mirroring centre-left policies, including climate alarmism, indiscriminate immigration, multiculturalism and government statism.
Who could stop this slump, this blight?
Why a redhead devoted to Gina, climate science denialism, incessant racist furriner bashing, monotone multiculturalism and chaotic, incompetent anarchy ...
Please, infallible Pope, a little visual inspiration to set Donners on firer.
No wonder dashing Donners was infatuated ...
Unlike the previous leader of the Liberal Party, Sussan Ley, who failed to realise being Labor-Lite spelt political doom, her replacement Angus Taylor and the newly elected Liberal Party president Tony Abbott understand what must be done to regain voters’ confidence. Taylor’s budget reply speech, in addition to denouncing the ALP’s deceit by misleading voters about negative gearing and capital gains tax, promises to stop unrestricted mass immigration and scrap the Albanese government’s destructive and senseless drive to net zero. In his speech at the Liberal Party’s federal conference, Tony Abbott, in opposition to cultural-left activists condemning the nation’s institutions and history, said: “We are the freedom party, the tradition party, but above all else we are the patriot party, which is why, at our best, we should be absolutely unbeatable.” After years of the Liberal Party being dominated by the likes of the former prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, it’s clear the party is now being led by those committed to centre-right political beliefs and values.
The feisty redhead brought out the warrior in Donners and how excited was he and the Terrorists.. Pauline Hanson and One Nation have launched a new attack ad aimed at Anthony Albanese and the Labor party.
Then there came a remarkable typo, which skilled pond correspondents will note immediately ...
Taylor and Abbott embracing conservative policies should not surprise. Whether the UK’s decision to leave the European Union, President Trump’s return to power, the rise of centre-right parties in Europe or the overwhelming vote against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, the political pendulum is moving to the centre-right.
Dammit, the reptiles in the lizard Oz wouldn't stand for it. They know there's no capital "V' in voice.
Never mind, dashing Donners turned to the inscrutable Scruton for help in his cause ...
As to why this is happening, look no further than what the English philosopher Roger Scruton describes as the inherently conservative nature of most people. Scruton says “the conservative attitude is instinctive” and “being conservative is a distinct way of being human, and in every sphere of life the conservative temperament has staked its claim”. For the majority of people, their lives and aspirations centre on family, kinship, community and a sense of place and patriotism.
At this point, the pond went in to a state of toxic shock.
The Daily Terror wants to charge a premium for their AV distractions?
PREMIUM Inside One Nation's Hunter branch meeting Become a member to access our premium video content
Tell 'em they're dreaming.The pond is perfectly content for dashing Donners to show how he's Our Henry lite...
In his book Where We Are, Scruton uses the Greek term oikophilia to describe this love and affection for what Robert Menzies terms in his Forgotten People speech hearth and home. In opposition to oikophilia, Scruton uses the word oikophobia to describe those embracing a “culture of repudiation”. Instead of identifying with family, community and nation, those committed to oikophobia are globalist in perspective, dismissive of the traditional family and critical of those expressing patriotism and valuing what is best about the past.
Those committed to oikophobia are also committed to grandiose, utopian causes such as stopping global warming and unrestricted immigration and multiculturalism.
Hang on, hang on, in amongst those ponce words,did the inscrutable Scruton and Donners (Our Henry lite) deploy the word "globalist"?
They did, they did ...and what fine company they keep ...
Globalist has been used as a pejorative in right-wing and far-right politics, and in various conspiracy theories, notably antisemitic tropes. In a 2014 YouTube video, far-right radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones described the concept of globalism as a "global digital panopticon control system" which he considered to be "the total form of slavery". Among the Christian right, particularly the Protestant right, globalism is an umbrella term which includes perceived secular aspects such as environmentalism, feminism, and socialism; globalism is believed to underlie the expansion of the New World Order – a prophesied enemy attempting to thwart Christianity – through organizations such as the European Union, United Nations, and World Trade Organization. Globalist values, promoted by the UN as a whole and the World Health Organization, among others, are perceived to be at odds with Christian values. UN conventions on discrimination against women and children's rights have thus been fiercely opposed by organizations and leading figures on the Christian right, such as Concerned Women for America, as methods to weaken parental rights, destroy the traditional family, and separate children from their religious and familial settings. The UN as satanic enemy is a theme in apocalyptic Christian media, such as the 1990s–2000s series Left Behind, in which the UN is run by the Antichrist, as well as Pat Robertson's 1991 New World Order and Hal Lindsey's 1994 book Planet Earth 2000 A.D.: Will Mankind Survive?. During the 2016 US election and presidency of United States president Donald Trump, he and members of his administration used the term globalist on multiple occasions. The administration was accused of using the term as an antisemitic dog whistle, and to associate their critics with a Jewish conspiracy. Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory refer to what they term "the Cabal" as a secret worldwide elite organisation who wish to undermine democracy and freedom, and implement their own globalist agendas. Hungary's former prime minister Viktor Orbán has used antisemitic tropes in accusations against globalists, espousing a conspiracy theory of a world network controlled by Hungarian-American philanthropist George Soros. (wiki for the footnotes and much more)
Dashing Donners didn't quite get into the Jewish banker 'leets, but what joy that Pauline had risen and would smite and smote them ...
Such elites also condemn any who disagree as racist, xenophobic, ignorant and guilty of supporting populist political parties. While commentators dismiss One Nation as a party of opposition and explain its success by arguing that voters are reacting against Australia’s Uniparty system, the reality proves otherwise. Hanson is welcomed as authentic and One Nation is seen as the antidote to those undermining social cohesion and stability, bankrupting the nation and turning Australia into what the eminent historian Geoffrey Blainey describes as a nation of tribes. Dr Kevin Donnelly is the author of Wake Up To Woke Why Pauline Hanson’s Party Is So Popular.
Splendid stuff, and the pond does hope that correspondents enjoyed this wander down memory lane with dashing Donners.
In keeping with his spirit, the pond dug up a few old cartoons to help in the celebrations...
The pond is off to the deep south for about a week. This is an incredibly dangerous mission - from what the pond understands from reading the lizard Oz, Melbourne is full of commie swine and weird socialistic pinko leftie preverts, who pose a constant danger to everyone.
The pond hopes to survive, and in the meantime, rather than let the site wither entirely, has arranged for a tour of News Corp tabloid trash.
Perforce this will feature tediously out of date stuff, but the pond hopes it provides a few distractions. In any case, it will ensure that correspondents will be able to post thoughts and opinions on the real reptile news of the day.
Now read on for your Friday herpetology studies treats ...
Hold on, before beginning, the pond feels an obligation to mention a few things which are routinely "disappeared" from reptile coverage.
There's nary a peep out of the climate science denying reptiles about this phenomenon, but El Nino's coming to get you baby, so let's see how the ostrich routine works this Oz summer.
And the reptiles have been blathering endlessly about the need to study the Holocaust, but there's a genocide happening right now that's equally instructive, and again not a peep about it.
... featuring a letter signed by, amongst others, two former prime ministers, former heads of all the Israeli security services, former judges, a Nobel laureate and the country’s most revered living novelist.
Inter alia ...
The letter accused Netanyahu and his far-right coalition partners, who are expected to seek another term in power together, of enabling attacks on Palestinians to further an extremist agenda of ethnic cleansing and annexation. “This is not solely a military and police failure, but the implementation of an overt policy by the Israeli government and its prime minister in general, and by the relevant ministers in particular,” the letter said. “[They] order the military, the police, and Shin Bet [the internal security agency] to enable the terrorism of Jewish criminals, because this horrendous phenomenon serves well the current government’s ideology of carrying out ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the territories of Judea and Samaria to facilitate their future annexation.” The letter also drew parallels with historic attacks on Jewish communities in Europe. “The crimes of Jewish terrorism in the territories are reminiscent of similar crimes and pogroms committed against our people by other nations in eastern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.” Israel’s military was complicit in this campaign of terror, through a failure to intervene and active participation in violence, the letter said. Attackers have included members of regional defence units, men in part-uniform, and men who were not in active service but carried weapons they got from the Israeli military or national security ministry. “The IDF [Israel Defense Forces] has clear policy of ignoring the crimes of Jewish terrorism, and in many incidents soldiers from the regional defense units and [settlement] security squads are themselves involved in the crimes of Jewish terrorism,” the letter said.
A triptych of drivel, and the pond will be naming a winner of its suddenly invented "best reptile drivel of the day" competition.
First up, a fairly standard serve of drivel from the onion muncher.
The pond realises that at this moment, a catatonic silence descends on correspondents, accompanied by an intense desire to immediately stop reading, but this site is only for the most hardened herpetologists, willing to swallow any garbage ...
Sad to say, ever since his Viktor Orbán junkets have dried up the relentless narcissist has been restless, and so this ...
The header: Let’s reject shame and defeatism – and share in national pride; Blackening a country’s history is one of the most effective ways to undermine the morale of its people. The caption for a painting which will begin the usual bout of triumphalism: The Founding of Australia, an oil sketch by Algernon Talmage. Picture: Supplied by the State Library of NSW
The pond must issue a couple of warnings.
First the reptiles claim this is a six minute read.
Secondly that means a full six minutes of nausea.
Thirdly don't expect anything other than the rote, mindless repetition of nauseating blather about the monarchy (O noble King Chuck), the glossing over of the treatment doled out to Aboriginal people, blather about the "Anglo-Celtic core culture and the Judaeo-Christian foundational ethos" and so on and so forth.
In other words, it's more than enough to induce a Technicolor yawn.
The history of nations, how it’s presented and how it’s thought of, matters to countries and their citizens, no less than our own personal history matters to us as individuals. Because just as it’s hard for individuals to think well of themselves if they’re ashamed of their past, likewise, it’s hard for countries to be strong and self-confident if they’re constantly self-flagellating over their alleged historical crimes. This is what Orwell was driving at when he said that he who controls the past controls the future. And there’s no doubt that the past of countries like Britain, the United States, and Australia too, is now being comprehensively recast as a story of shame. Americans are expected to angst over slavery, even though they fought their bloodiest war to be rid of it. Britons are expected to angst over the empire, even though it was actually the Royal Navy that stamped out the transatlantic slave trade. And Australians are expected to fret over the dispossession of the original inhabitants, even though British settlement marked the arrival on an ancient continent of science, technology, the rule of law and the notions of human rights that have eventually given Aboriginal people a vastly better life. Mind you, no country’s history is without blemish. Edmund Burke characterised the American Revolution as a revolution for the traditional rights of Englishmen in the New World; but, personally, I reckon Americans might sometimes miss the Crown. There’s been no better illustration of the magic of the monarchy than the fact that the King is the only western leader that Donald Trump hasn’t been rude about!
The reptiles tried to dress up this blather with cheap archival moments, as if that would add gravitas to the blather, U.S. Capitol paintings. Declaration of Independence, painting by John Trumbull. Picture: Getty Images
But this is the onion muncher, peddling for the umpteenth time blather about the black arm band notion of history:
Blackening a country’s history is one of the most effective ways to undermine the morale of its people. That’s why it’s been so prevalent over the past few decades, as the left’s long march through the institutions has intensified. For instance, the most recent academic history of Australia, published last November, opens by declaring that the traditional notion of settlement, as a largely peaceful expansion, is no less than the “founding lie” of modern Australia, masking what the author claims was a brutal conquest. Even though it was always official policy – albeit imperfectly observed – that the Aboriginal peoples of Australia should enjoy all the rights and protections of British subjects. Far from being the tale of near-genocidal oppression, the better story of Australia is how a convict colony, within a century, not only had the world’s highest standard of living but was actually the world’s leading pioneer of liberal democracy. By 1860, the then-self-governing Australian colonies had universal male suffrage – some 60 years before Britain. By the 1890s, in South Australia, people of both sexes and all races could not only vote, but run for office too. And in one of its very first acts, in 1902, the new Australian commonwealth granted all women the right to vote, almost 30 years before Britain. And yes, there was conflict on the frontiers of settlement. At Myall Creek, for instance, in northern NSW, a group of stockmen brutally murdered up to 30 Aboriginal men, women and children. But there was a sequel. Eventually, seven white men were hanged for the murder of black people – in Australia in 1838 – at that time almost unparalleled in any settler society. So here’s the problem: countries supposedly tainted by original sin, whether slavery, imperialism, or dispossession of the original inhabitants, fundamentally lack legitimacy. And a country so tainted can hardly have the right to defend itself or to keep its culture, even if the country in question has actually been so colour-blind that it attracts migrants from all over the world. And even if it’s actually the long Anglo-American ascendancy, and the post-war Pax Americana that’s created the world that, despite everything, remains more free, more fair, more safe, and more rich, for more people, than at any time in history. What, then, might those persuaded that their country’s history is shameful do by way of atonement?
What to do by way of atonement? Might not the onion muncher retire to a seminary and contemplate his many sins, or at least his navel, and in the process make the world a more tolerant and tolerable place?
Nah, to satiate the incessant narcissism, an unquenchable thirst, the reptiles obliged with a snap, Liberal Party Federal President Tony Abbott. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake / Getty Images
At this point the pond should note that the reptiles this morning seized on something designed to terrify the hive mind, manna from racist reptile heaven, and made it top of the "news", ma ...
Shock, horror, panic and sound the alarums, and fainting fits for months to come for the lizards of Oz, and sprinkle some 4711 Eau de Cologne on a hankie, and... send in the onion muncher...
Well, in Australia, they could seek to amend the constitution to give people with some Aboriginal descent more say than others over the government of the country. They could delegitimise the national flag by flying it co-equally with indigenous flags on all government buildings and at all civic occasions. They could begin all public speeches by acknowledging the traditional owners of “what always was and always will be” un-ceded land. They could change the school curriculum so that every subject, from maths to Latin, is taught from an indigenous perspective. They could invoke a climate crisis to close down our main exports and to hobble heavy industry. They could defund the armed forces now, while claiming to boost them in the far distant future. They could insist that gender is a social construct, rather than a function of biology, to confuse and subvert troubled adolescents. But for those with a grudge against their own country, it’s sustained mass migration, especially from countries with quite different cultures, that’s the surest and swiftest way to change and punish a place that’s irredeemably tainted by unforgivable sin; in order to dilute and eventually to extinguish the Anglo-Celtic core culture and the Judaeo-Christian foundational ethos, that’s actually what attracts migrants to the Anglosphere, but that today’s left-establishment finds so suffocating and judgmental; and it’s to encourage migrants to “other” themselves by funding ethnic activism under Orwellian slogans like “our diversity is our unity” or “our diversity is our strength”. In this regard, migrants from Islamic countries are especially useful, because belief in a global caliphate, and the conviction that it’s the Koran rather than the legislature that validates law, starts to make pluralist democracy unworkable. To green-left, cultural-Marxist governments, mass migration from the “global south” is not a problem; it’s the plan. It’s the way for supposedly unjustly rich countries to atone for their white privilege and to apologise to poorer ones by becoming more like them.
Uh oh, time now for a billy goat butt, what with him being a bloody furriner himself ...
I stress, this is not an attack on immigrants, nearly all of whom come to countries like Australia to join us, not to change us. But in enough numbers, change us they do, and not always for the better. Australia’s post-war migration was a wonderful new chapter in our history. As well as more people from Britain, migrants came from southern and Eastern Europe, and increasingly from all over the world. As “new Australians” – so they were dubbed – they were expected to integrate from day one and to assimilate as quickly as possible, mainly by working hard, playing sport and using local schools. Which they gladly did, because the vast majority of them wanted to become as Australian as possible as quickly as possible.
How the pond loathes this man, with a visceral loathing that transcends talk of the 1950s primary school understanding of history that he offers ...James Cook landed at Botany Bay in 1770 on the HMAS Endeavour.
And at last came a final gobbet of bigotry ...
More recent migration – the million migrants in a single year that recently entered Britain, the half a million in a single year that recently entered Australia, and the 10 million, perhaps, that flooded into the US during the Biden presidency – has been more problematic, though rarely through lack of goodwill on migrants’ part. It’s because misguided governments have celebrated every culture but our own; and because cheap travel and the internet have made it easier for people to live in two countries at once. And for some, like the migrant father and his Australian-born son, who recently turned Bondi Beach into a shooting gallery, to nurture the ancient hatreds that weak-willed governments have been too cowardly to name lest they be accused of racism. Still, there’s nothing better than to have people visibly not of Anglo-Celtic ancestry, speaking with a broad accent, Australian, British or American, palpably proud of their country. There’s no better testimony to the gravitational pull of the Western way of life and – in Australia – the universal appeal of a country that extends a “fair go” to all, especially to those who “have a go” too. Modern Australia has an Indigenous heritage, a British foundation and an immigrant character, starting with the settlers, who were then joined by people from almost every land. How a convict colony became such a “shining city on a hill” is a great story, but we do migrants no favours by deliberately making our country more like the ones they left. So let’s stop distorting our past, let’s stop thinking small about what our countries can do, let’s reject the defeatism and declinism that’s characterised Western elites, and above all, let’s remind all our migrants that they are joining the best countries on earth. Tony Abbott is the federal president of the Liberal Party. He served as Australia’s 28th prime minister. He delivered this speech to the Alliance of Responsible Citizenship in London.
If the Liberal party thinks this sort of carry on is the way to win the centre, then the long absent lord help the centre.
Do they really think that this sort of bigotry can beat the experts at the game?
The pond apologises for the onion muncher displacing Our Henry, especially as the onion muncher offered the sort of childish history lesson the hole in bucket man would disdain.
When it comes to history, Our Henry is more a nice china cup and decent historical aged tea sort of chap.
Never mind, there's a time for everything and now is his time; please, let Our Henry enter the competition with a Shaksperian flourish...
The header: Keir Starmer’s fall a sign of our ‘time of troubles’; Andy Burnham’s policies are only likely to worsen the structural forces that overwhelmed Starmer.
There was no caption for the snap, which is surprising because surely the reptiles could at least have noted that Larry the cat is missing from the shot.
There must be something in the water cooler this morning because Our Henry rabbited on for a bigly five minutes.
But the pond forgives him because this day he went full Shakspere, and what's more indulged in the fancy that Shakspere's view of British history can be taken straight, rather than as a reflection of Elizabethan times, with the plays a way of discussing matters of state that the authorities would have regarded as seditious without the benefit of theatrical fiction (cf this blog)
Lay on, McHenry ...
As vultures circled above 10 Downing Street, Shakespeare’s famous line in Henry IV, Part 2 – “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” – must have rung painfully true for Keir Starmer. The irony was that few British prime ministers had greater reason to feel secure: in the 2024 election, Labour won 411 of the House of Commons’ 650 seats, second only to Tony Blair’s majority in 1997. Yet appearances were deceptive. Starmer’s victory had been secured on just 33.7 per cent of the vote, the lowest vote share ever recorded by a majority-winning party. This was a textbook “loveless landslide”, reflecting no surge of enthusiasm for either Starmer or Labour. What little love there was then dissipated at lightning speed: within six weeks, Starmer’s net satisfaction rating had turned negative. Not that it would have been much comfort, but Starmer is hardly the only recent British prime minister to suffer so precipitous a decline. Political leaders, it seems, now reach the summit only to be hurled from it. It took 22 months for John Major’s net popularity rating to turn negative; remarkably, Tony Blair’s remained positive for nearly six years. The contrast with more recent experience could scarcely be greater: on average, the past seven British prime ministers have fallen into net negative territory in less than five months. Worse, the pace of political collapse has accelerated. Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson all enjoyed a honeymoon period. Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak had none, while Starmer’s was over in a flash. The result is a story in three acts. Tony Blair spent 60 per cent of his prime ministership in positive territory. Excluding Johnson, whose ratings were distorted by Covid, that figure fell to just 32 per cent for Brown, Cameron and May. With Truss, Sunak and Starmer, it shrank to a mere 3 per cent.
Poor Keir, now just part of an Our Henry listicle, Keir Starmer. Picture: Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Images
Sadly this focus on the Poms and Shakspere meant Our Henry had to abandon Thucydides for the nonce and for the pleasures of regicide
But he did try a little contemporary Oz relevance ...
The parallel with Australia is obvious. Both John Howard and Kevin Rudd enjoyed 26 months in positive territory. For Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison that moment of sunshine lasted, on average, just six months. Anthony Albanese did better, but he too is now in the doldrums. Between 2000 and 2013, Australian prime ministers spent 63 per cent of their time in positive territory; after 2013, that share fell by a third. In both Britain and Australia, as the descent into unpopularity accelerated, so did the rate of defenestration. The spiral, though, is far older than the opinion poll: and if there is a lesson of history, it is that regicide feeds on itself, unleashing a cycle of tumultuous instability. It was that world of repeated usurpations Shakespeare dramatised in the Henriad, where Henry IV, having deposed Richard II, feared so grievously for his own fate. His anxiety was well-founded: of the six English monarchs who met violent deaths, five died in near succession across the century and a half to 1485. What was true in England prevailed more broadly. Across European monarchies between 1000 and 1800, usurpers were roughly three times more likely to suffer a violent or involuntary end than legitimate rulers. The repercussions did not stop with them: even the legitimate successors of usurpers were twice as likely to be deposed as the direct heirs of legitimate monarchs. Once the spiral of deposition and counter-deposition was unleashed, regaining stability took, on average, six or seven turbulent successions. That one regicide led to another is unsurprising. Whoever obtained the throne by regicide lacked legitimacy; the demonstration effect of the original regicide invited encores, and; living in fear of the sword, both the regicide king and his immediate successors focused on self-preservation rather than effective rule, provoking the very fate they sought to avoid. Kingdoms in which monarchs were deposed therefore suffered what the Russians called a “Time of Troubles”: scarred by regicide, they reeled under punishments denounced from the pulpit as signs of divine wrath, until an extraordinarily capable leader finally seized control. That was the lesson Shakespeare placed at the heart of the Henriad. Richard II’s title was beyond dispute, and he believed its sacred character sheltered him from challenge: “Not all the water in the rough rude sea / Can wash the balm off from an anointed king”. But Richard mistook legitimacy for immunity. It is not lawful title alone that sustains kingship, Shakespeare suggested; it is the prudence, judgment and stewardship that convert legitimacy into enduring authority.
What a strong ploy, and perhaps a commentary on the onion muncher himself, something of a put down, as prudence, judgment and stewardship that convert legitimacy into enduring authority was never a feature of the onion muncher's brief reign.
It might have put Our Henry ahead in the competition, but then the reptiles ruined things by abandoning the Shakspere motif.
The reptiles were simply unable to resist featuring former chairman Rudd, and Juliar, who still live rent free in the hive mind, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard arrive at the 45th National Labor Conference on July 30, 2009. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams / Getty Images
Talk about a bummer, from Shakspere to a reminder of ancient reptile obsessions.
Our Henry at last got around to admitting that perhaps Shakspere was on about his times as much as, or more than, the past ...
Lacking those qualities, Richard discovered too late that even an anointed king can lose his crown. “I wasted time,” he reflects in prison, “and now doth time waste me.” Shakespeare’s Henry IV answers that fate by displaying the very qualities whose absence had undone Richard: true to his word, careful with his allies, resolute against England’s enemies – above all, mindful of the people. Yet none of that spared Henry the upheavals that convulsed his reign. For he ruled in a society undergoing profound social and political transformation, where shifting patterns of wealth, power and allegiance had already weakened traditional bonds of authority and increased the demands on the monarchy far beyond the resources available to meet them. Shakespeare’s England was also wrecked by a far-reaching disruption; and so is today’s Britain. The electorate has fragmented, shattering the social and economic coalitions on which the major parties once depended, and making it increasingly difficult to assemble mass constituencies. In turn, that fragmentation has been mirrored within the parties, weakening internal alliances while intensifying the jockeying for position. As the major parties seem ever more caught up in their internal dramas, the political fringe has expanded but has not found a stable base.
And yet no mention of Brexit? And the Brexit follies?
Et tu, Our Henry?
Not a single mention of the caper that has cascaded down through little England's history for the past decade?
At the same time, Britain is mired in its most acute and prolonged productivity slump since the Industrial Revolution, slowing the growth of living standards and of public revenues. Having been assured that governments can nonetheless sate every thirst, soothe every pain and solve every woe, voters inevitably swing between unrealistic hope and bitter disappointment, perpetuating the cycle of instability. And with Britain’s cast of recent prime ministers recalling Shakespeare’s magnificent, hyphenated adjectives – dog-hearted, milk-livered, shrill-gorged, lust-dieted, which all appear within a few pages of that tragedy of hubris and betrayal, King Lear – no Henry V has emerged to tame the Time of Troubles.
Time now to nip the future heir apparent in the bud ...Andy Burnham greets supporters at the Labour campaign HQ at Stubshaw Cross Community and Sports Club. Picture: Christopher Furlong / Getty Images
And so Our Henry, taking on the role of vulture, circles, was ready to swoop...
Andy Burnham is hardly a plausible candidate for that role. His policies seem designed to deepen the productivity crisis rather than solve it. Unwilling to remove the constraints on growing the pie, his only solution is to rob one group to appease another. As that runs into its limits, hope will once again curdle into disappointment, disappointment into fury – and fury into the search for yet another saviour. That is territory we know all too well. Nor have we truly left it. For the moment the regicides have receded; the structural conditions that fuelled them have not. They are, on the contrary, growing more acute. Alarm bells should therefore be blaring, both here and in the UK. If all you hear is smugness and complacency, that is merely the sound a kingdom makes, in the hush, as the circling vultures prepare to descend.
Splendid stuff, especially as Our Henry, together with the rest of the hive mind, managed to avoid mad King Donald's three ring circus ...
But had the Onion Muncher and Our Henry done enough to win, what with Killer Creighton offering incredibly strong competition, albeit with only a modest three minute IPA-inflected read?
The header: Alan Greenspan: the economics visionary who paved the way to financial crisis; Like the influence of John Maynard Keynes in the postwar era,
The caption: Alan Greenspan testifies before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee in Washington, July 1990. Picture: Luke Frazza / AFP
There is of course a profound irony here, what with Greenspan very IPA in outlook, and yet clearly responsible for disaster.
And so Killer has to propose that Greenspan came to resemble Keynes, neigh, was a kindred, kissing cousin Keynesian, and so that damned ruinous interventionist way could take a Killer rap over the knuckles yet again.
It's nonsense of course, but sublime in a Killer IPA way ...
If Alan Greenspan had died at age 80, obituaries would’ve lauded the former Federal Reserve chair as one of the greatest-ever economics practitioners. Instead, history will record Greenspan, who died aged 100 earlier this week, as a brilliant, contradictory figure whose self-admitted flaws paved the way for the global financial crisis of 2008 and the ongoing collapse in credibility central banks everywhere continue to suffer. An acolyte of libertarian Ayn Rand in his younger years, Greenspan became more like John Maynard Keynes, whose interventionist ideas most shaped postwar economic policy. Like Keynes, Greenspan was a polymath who became very rich as a shrewd investor before bursting into public life as chair of the Federal Reserve – an institution he’d earlier called “one of the historic disasters in American history”, courtesy of Ronald Reagan in 1987. Both men’s careers were buoyed by stockmarket crashes whose impacts on the broader economy were vastly different. Correlation is not causation, yet the minimal impact of the Black Monday crash on the broader economy was put down to Greenspan’s wise provision of liquidity. It was a playbook he returned to repeatedly after the collapse of the massive hedge fund Long Term Capital Management in 1998 and the dotcom collapse in 2001, when Greenspan slashed the official Fed funds rate to 1 per cent.
The reptiles flung in a snap, suggesting it might be slick Willy's fault, Alan Greenspan looks on as President Clinton speaks in the Oval Office, where the president nominated Greenspan to serve a fourth term as Fed chairman.
Now there might be some correspondents who remember the WSJ take, covered by the pond and saved to the intermittent archive, with the heading including "his faith in financial markets’ ability to police themselves became an Achilles’ heel".
Former colleagues and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman hailed Greenspan as the greatest central banker of all time when he finished 18 1/2 years as Federal Reserve chairman in 2006. Just two years later, the financial crisis triggered an austere reappraisal of his record. His view that markets could effectively police themselves became a driving force of regulatory policy in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Inter alia ...
None of that for Killer ...
It's not because in this Killer version of Greenspan he didn't intervene; somehow magically it's because he was an interventionist, the famous Killer IPA ploy of "black is white", and facts are always alternative...
The infamous “Greenspan put” was born: the risk of economic collapse and severe financial losses that most – especially small businesses – faced wouldn’t apply in financial markets, at least for the big players. The powerful Wall Street elite who happened to be the Fed’s clients would be rescued collectively by ultra-low interest rates and behind-the-scenes pro bono co-ordination. But the “long and variable lags” of monetary policy taught to economics students at university had been forgotten by his admirers by the time Greenspan retired after 19 years, in 2006. His tenure had overlapped with arguably the most halcyon period of US economic history: booming productivity growth alongside relatively low inflation without any of the severe economic downturns that blotted earlier periods. But as US economist Rudiger Dornbusch once remarked, “things take longer to happen than you think they will and then they happen faster than you thought they could”. Artificially easy money and the Greenspan put combined to trigger a massive financial crisis and recession from late 2007, which put millions out of work, destroyed trillions of dollars of household wealth, and prompted a litany of execrable bailouts of financial institutions. His successors, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, took Greenspan’s interventionist bent to new heights, launching successive rounds of “quantitative easing” that encouraged governments to rack up massive public debts that would’ve made Keynes blush. The Covid pandemic brought still more radical interventions that finally shattered what remained of central banks’ hard-won reputation for maintaining price stability. Perhaps it was Greenspan’s famous love of Delphic utterances that has aged less well. “I’ve learned to mumble with great incoherence. If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said,” he once joked before congress. It was the kind of colourful behaviour you wouldn’t expect from central bankers today. He even refused to bind the Federal Reserve to an explicit numerical inflation target after most other central banks had, arguing judgment was superior to mechanical rules. Again like Keynes, he placed greater faith in the discretion of exceptional policymakers than the rigours of the free market.
Oh yes, he was a devout Keynesian, and remember, you are entitled to your alternative reality, Alan Greenspan on the front of Time Magazine, February 1999.
And so to a final warning about the dangers of intervention, as only an IPA loon could scribble:
Yet old habits – despite all the obvious economic destruction caused since 2008 – die hard. Even free-market economists who would condemn government interference in any other part of the economy still assume it’s perfectly natural for bureaucrats to set the rate of interest. The Reserve Bank of Australia also operates in this world bestowed by Greenspan, whose “put” will prove very difficult to unwind without a major economic collapse. No financial institution in Australia, even a small one, would be allowed to wobble, let alone fail. Indeed, for all the talk of the need to reduce inflation, the RBA’s real target appears to be keeping dwelling prices high, credit flowing and the banking system profitable. Underlying inflation is headed to 4 per cent yet analysts are already pencilling in cuts in the knowledge inflation is in fact a secondary consideration. “In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value,” Greenspan wrote in a 1966 essay. After the GFC he had “found a flaw” in the worldview he had trusted for four decades. Perhaps in his twilight years watching central banks struggle to achieve any mandate, Greenspan came to return to his earlier views. Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.
If the pond had to pick a winner for the day, it would be Killer.
Every correspondent will have their own favourite, and will likely dispute the pond's choice.
But here's the reasoning.
The onion munch is old and tired and repetitious, and reading him felt like watching a Tamworth dog return to his vomit in the noonday sun.
Our Henry showed ingenuity in dragging Shakspere back into the little English mess, but failed the Brexit test, not mentioning it once, though it haunts the country in much the same way that those ghosts haunted Hamlet and Macbeth.
Up against this feeble competition, Killer had a Killer ploy, because transforming Greenspan into Keynes is surely the work of an IPA genius ...
And now this ...
And now reptiles, time to watch the Beeb, so you'll be ready for the coming Australian summer...
Again the pond woke to news of unprecedented temperatures in Europe and again it magically disappeared from the climate science-denying world of the lizard Oz hive mind.
Again the pond woke to depressing news about Gaza (which can also be found on YouTube here), and again there wasn't a peep from the Australian Daily Zionist News.
Having long ago determined that he was a dickhead, the pond had in the past needed to expend small amounts of energy avoiding him, but now won't have to bother.
The reptiles kept on doing their own version of Karl, with more celebrations of Pauline, along the way dumping on both the pastie Hastie and the windmill-hating beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way.
EXCLUSIVE ‘Declaration of war’: Roberts-Smith case triggers Coalition rift Ben Roberts-Smith case triggers Coalition rift as MP parades Andrew Hastie critic Defence personnel spokesman Phillip Thompson has paraded a prominent critic of Liberal colleague Andrew Hastie around parliament. By Ben Packham
Already? That drivel, that meaningless blather about "monoculture", means we have to get out the lettuce again, and see if it can stay a winner?
Possibly ... the lettuce might be able to handle the beached whale own goal scorer lovingly portrayedby the infallible Pope ...
Meanwhile, the reptiles were doing their best to lather up fear, high anxiety, and paranoia in the hive mind, with wild-eyed tales of Iranian assassins rampant, and terror stalking the continent (island if you insist).
There was an echo of this over on the extreme far right with Geoff chambering another round...
Somehow the cockies in the mighty 'Gong managed to stay calm.
It was with relief that the pond abandoned all that to watch as Ted ravaged Snowy 2.0, a proud Malware and Liberal party initiative, begun back in the heady days of 2017.
Take it away Ted ...but keep it short, say no longer than a 3 minute read according to reptile timings ...
The header: How Snowy 2.0’s latest audit confirms its shambolic progress; As a nation, we should be prioritising cost-effective projects that advance renewable energy, not a shambolic $40bn-plus battery.
The splendidly effusive and informative caption for the snap: Snowy Hydro 2.0 project.
The pond wondered if Ted might pause to mention that Malware (and his Liberal colleagues) was the proud auteur of the project, the man who devised the mise-en-scène, and was disappointed to discover that Malware had vanished, in much the same way as a European heat wave can be made to vanish.
The pond was forced to do a word search and check, but Malware didn't even have the presence of a lingering Cheshire cat smile...though less than a year ago, he could be discovered in the AFR, proudly defiant, still remarkably pleased by the cinematic triumph he'd produced.
Okay, take it away Ted ...
Has there ever been a more shambolic infrastructure project than the Snowy 2.0 pumped-hydro battery? That was reconfirmed last week in a damning performance audit by the federal Auditor-General that found “significant deficiencies in project governance arrangements have impacted value for money”. The 11-month investigation concluded that Snowy Hydro’s project management had been only “partly effective”. Even that seems generous: there are few findings of appropriate, let alone good, management. Indisputably, the project has been ineffectively managed since its launch nine years ago. The audit’s 98 pages are replete with management deficiencies. To quote just a few: “not effectively holding the contractors to account; not having access to quality data that would allow appropriate monitoring of the project; no agreed baseline schedule; the incentive framework (for the new contract) not working as intended; a reliable cost forecasting system is still not developed; risk management arrangements are still being established”. Snowy Hydro agreed with four of the audit’s five recommendations, covering project management, performance measures, risk management and contractor payments – all basic governance practices that should have been embedded from the outset.
The reptiles trotted out the latest villain, Snowy Hydro chief executive Dennis Barnes concedes the Snowy 2.0 project may miss its 2028 deadline.
But the pond felt the need to walk the Cannes red carpet, and cry out for the auteur. Qui est l'auteur? Auteur, s'il vous plaît!
Sadly Ted wasn't listening and ploughed on ...
However, true to form, Snowy Hydro only “partly agreed” with the fifth recommendation, “to develop regular public reporting on project schedule”. Clearly, Snowy Hydro intends to remain unaccountable and limit exposure of its inept performance, contravening the government’s commitment to “transparency and honesty”. The audit states “the project is currently behind schedule and is undertaking a cost reassessment that is likely to result in a further cost increase. This is despite the reset in 2023 which extended the commercial operation date for the project from May 2026 to December 2028, and almost doubled the delivery cost (of the main works to $12bn, six times the original $2bn estimate)”. The audit’s most damning finding is that Snowy Hydro “does not have a robust understanding of the cost to complete the project” – this is after nine years. Even more perturbing, last October Snowy Hydro asked its contractor “to undertake a comprehensive line-by-line reassessment of its costs to deliver Snowy 2.0”. How is it that the owner of a multibillion-dollar project does not know its completion cost and needs to ask its cost-plus contractor to find out? Incredibly, the reassessment “is expected to take up to nine months” (that is, by June 2026). But, as with everything associated with Snowy 2.0, even that exceptionally lengthy timeframe has slipped. Shareholder minister Chris Bowen has “pledged to reveal the cost hike by the end of 2026”. It now appears that Snowy 2.0’s updated main works cost will be about $20bn. That figure doubles to more than $40bn once financing costs and Snowy 2.0’s equitable share of 1100km of new transmission connections to Sydney and Melbourne are included. This is an absurd cost for a 2200-megawatt battery – five times Snowy Hydro’s $7.8bn market value and about $1500 for every Australian. Looking back, it is most unfortunate that the previous June 2022 Auditor-General audit failed to uncover any governance deficiencies, instead “assuring parliament that Snowy Hydro has appropriate arrangements in place to effectively deliver Snowy 2.0”. Snowy 2.0 was portrayed as a model project for other government entities to emulate. Not one improvement was recommended – almost unprecedented for an Auditor-General audit. If only the then Auditor-General had not been snowed by Snowy Hydro’s spin and had uncovered the ineffective governance and pending cost blowout that were disclosed a year later in the 2023 project “reset”. Had those deficiencies been uncovered when just $3bn had been sunk, the incoming Labor government might not have blindly locked itself into supporting the project.
The trouble of course is that this happens all the time with infrastructure projects.
The original bright spark, the incredible initiating auteur, has long left the stage, and instead assorted bunnies are required to front up to deal with the turkey, and speaking of a bunny, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
Ted stayed rigorously true to his mission, and nowhere in the last gobbet could there be found a mention of Malware ...
The latest audit makes a two-sentence mention of the 2022 audit, offering no explanation for why it was so wrong. So, how will the government respond to this latest audit? Will it ignore the findings and squander further billions, regardless, on the premise of 73 per cent completion and $12bn already sunk? But that claimed completion percentage looks exaggerated: only two-thirds of the tunnels have been excavated, the power station caverns are incomplete and no electromechanical equipment has been installed. And the remaining costs are still likely to exceed the benefits, with no assurance the forthcoming cost reassessment will not again prove understated. Snowy 2.0 is not only a financial and project management disaster but also an environmental disaster. Vast areas of pristine Kosciuszko National Park have been destroyed across 35km, with massive earthworks, huge spoil dumps, roads and tracks, transmission lines and easements, introduced weeds, depressed water tables, reduced stream flows and forthcoming pest fish transfers. For years, industry experts have been urging the government not to rely solely on Snowy Hydro’s repeatedly flawed advice and impossibly optimistic estimates. Will this latest audit finally prompt a rigorous independent expert review, so the least-worst option can be determined? If not, Snowy 2.0 will continue down the shambolic path of the past nine years – at the cost of taxpayers, electricity consumers and the Kosciuszko environment. As a nation, we should be prioritising cost-effective projects that advance renewable energy, not a shambolic $40bn-plus battery. Ted Woodley is former managing director of PowerNet, GasNet and EnergyAustralia. He is a board member of the NSW National Parks Association.
Well at least it took the pond's mind off other issues of the day ...
The pond also woke to news from Vlad the Sociopath's Russia ...
How lucky that Russia is developing a compleat monoculture.
And so to the bonus, and for this the reptiles arranged yet another despatch from that bizarre concoction known as ARC ...
The header: Why the West must relearn true meaning of liberty; I refuse to accept the future in which our daughters vote for Zohran Mamdani and Zach Polanski, while our sons spend their days watching Bonnie Blue and Nick Fuentes.
The slack-jawed local yokel reptiles repeated the same collage as seen before, and again without any credit for the monstrosity: Some of ARC’s leading speakers, including Jordan Peterson, Niall Ferguson, Douglas Murray, Philippa Stroud, Bari Weiss, Ayaan, Hirsi Ali, Tony Abbott, Kemi Badenoch, John Anderson, Erica Komisar, Kostantin Kisin and Michael Shellenberger.
As can be judged from the collage, this is prime fruit loon territory and Konstantin didn't disappoint for an exhausting five minutes ...what with an endless cry for freedumb ...
Many today argue that the pursuit of liberty is what has given us a society of disconnected, disassociated, atomised individuals. Liberty, they say, contains the seeds of its own destruction. Liberty is becoming a dirty word on both left and right because many mistakenly associate liberty with the grotesque excesses of liberalism, which has mutated from the pursuit of freedom from tyranny to the pursuit of freedom from reality. The consequences are all around us. Our public finances are a Ponzi scheme. Our energy policy seems to be set by the moronically possessed. Our societies openly discriminate in favour of some groups and against others while calling that equality. And Britain, a country that once famously and somewhat controversially ruled the waves, can’t stop a few rubber boats. Like it or not, the heart of our civilisation today lies not here in London but in Washington. We like to make fun of Americans for not speaking English the way we do; you know, properly. That joke is based on a thing most people don’t know, which is American English is much closer to the way our ancestors spoke than the way we speak now. Americans preserved the language of their ancestors while we, as its originators, continued to experiment with it.
WTF? They say fall, and we say autumn, and somehow we're the fallen?
What a stupid man, and what a silly point to make, as the reptiles slipped in a snap of a man who turned out to be not the solution, but part of the problem ... Nobel prize-winning author and critic of Soviet regimes Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn sitting on low stone wall outside his home. Picture: Steve Liss / Getty Images
The pond doesn't have the time to go into the damage he did, but try on ...
Solzhenitsyn, Putin and the historical myth-making that drives Russian imperialism March 18, 2022 Tomiwa Owolade Undeniably there are deep cultural and political ties between Russia and Ukraine. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a hero in much of the West, but he helped inspire in Putin a destructive scepticism about Ukraine's status as a nation.
Meanwhile, back to the gathering of the loons ...
This is true of more than language, and it’s time to concede that not all of our experiments have been for the better. When friends across the pond say we in Europe have become authoritarian, that we’ve weakened ourselves militarily, destroyed our economies in the name of ideology, we have to have the courage to admit they’re right. They’re not saying anything new. Here’s what Alexander Solzhenitsyn said in his Harvard address in 1978: “Europe … has of its own accord abandoned its strength and its influence on world affairs, and not just its physical influence but its intellectual influence as well. Potentially important decisions, major movements, have now begun to mature beyond the borders of Europe. How strange it all is! Since when has mighty Europe needed outside help to defend herself? At one moment she had such a surplus of strength that, while waging wars within her own boundaries and destroying herself, she was still able to seize colonies. A moment later, she suddenly found herself hopelessly weak without having lost a single major war.”
See above, and cue an endless, and endlessly destructive war on Ukraine by Vlad the sociopath.
On the pond trudged ...
There is no shame in learning from America. We’d only be learning from ourselves. Remember, the American founding fathers were born and bred in Britain, educated in British law and political philosophy, and steeped in British constitutional tradition. The arguments they used to justify independence were British arguments. They believed the British crown was violating British principles, which they fought a war to defend.
We should learn from the USA?
It seems that Konstantin didn't mind a crazy old geezer running the show ...
Many today worry about the strength of the trans-Atlantic relationship. I do not because I know that what holds us together is not just a shared history. We’re bound together by a shared destiny. The job of America is to spread the ideas of England. Liberty is one of them, but let’s be precise about what liberty actually is.
At this point the reptiles slipped in an AV distraction:
Konstantin Kisin's Opening Speech at ARC "THE TIME IS NOW"
For once the reptiles were linking to a YouTube video, but the pond didn't feel the need, what with this already a sumptuous feast of the silly ...
Liberty matters not because it maximises individual pleasure; that is liberalism’s mistake. Liberty matters because you cannot be a responsible citizen if you’re not free. A man who does the right thing because the state compels him to is not virtuous, he’s compliant, and because of that dangerous. When the state compels him to do the wrong thing, he will comply as well. Virtue requires choice, responsibility requires freedom and freedom requires responsibility. They’re not opposites, as the left and the new right suggest, they’re the same thing seen from different angles. The free market without moral responsibility gives you the financialisation of everything. Freedom of speech without the courage to tell the truth gives you a cacophony of noise and no signal, and personal liberty without the understanding that freedom is for something is how you get the atomisation. We’ve kept the freedom and discarded the purpose. We must not compound the mistake by discarding freedom too.
Indeed, indeed, freedumb...
And so to the "what's it all about Alfie?" moment ...
Why are we here at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship? We did not come together because we had a clear, rigid vision of how we wanted the future to look. We came together because all of us, in our own ways, saw that our societies and our civilisation were drifting. Wherever we looked, we saw demoralisation, decline and despair. Because we observe that we are not a society of responsible citizens. It will take decades to change that because generations of Westerners have been taught to hate their civilisation. They’ve been taught up is down and good is evil. Everyone is by now familiar with the saying that hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men and weak men create hard times. The weak men have done their bit and the hard times are here. If you pay attention, you can hear the clamour for strength rising. It will get only louder. It is possible that we here are the strong men and women reacting to hard times and fighting back. But it is possible that our generations are the weak men and the hard times are just beginning.
The reptiles made it clear where they stood by bringing together two civilisational threats ... Tia Billinger aka Bonnie Blue; New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Those images seemed to trigger Konstantin bigly ...
If that is true our children are the ones who are going to have to do the heavy lifting. Saddled with huge debts by their irresponsible parents and grandparents, facing the most disruptive technological transformation in human history, in a deteriorating geopolitical environment, our children will face hard times. Our job, then, is to prepare them to be the strong men and women who can rebuild our civilisation. That is why we must teach them that most difficult thing: how to be radical without being extreme. I refuse to accept the future in which our daughters vote for Zohran Mamdani and Zach Polanski, while our sons spend their days watching Bonnie Blue and Nick Fuentes. We must teach our children that the gravitational pull of the digital world is towards a society of atomised individuals. Human connection, family and community are what sustain our humanness, and no technology will ever replace it. We must teach them that people who disagree with you about politics are human. Zoomers are seven times likelier than Boomers to believe political violence is sometimes justified. Above all, we must teach our children to separate the comforting lie from the unpleasant truth and give them the courage to want to do it. None of these things can be taught, they can be instilled only by example, and so in the final analysis a society of responsible citizens will be brought into existence only by individuals who decide to do that thing that Jordan Peterson was brought into the world to remind us all to do: to take responsibility. Not by government diktat, not through the use of force, but by a voluntary choice exercised for the sake of not only your family and your community but that of your own soul. The fact we can do that is the beauty of our civilisation. Konstantin Kisin is a satirist, author and co-host of the podcast Triggernometry. This is an edited extract from the speech he delivered at the Alliance of Responsible Citizenship conference.
