In which not a single reptile jihadist gets extended pond consideration. Thursday blues strike again!

 

Sheesh, you hand pick flunkeys for the Supreme Court and they perform a minor act of defiance, you hand pick a central banker as a lackey and he presides over an interest rate rise. What's the point of being a king?

It's a bit like that prize doofus Ed Sheeran picking a supporter of rights for Palestinians as a supporting act, and then being startled when he actually says what he believes.

Luckily none of that sort of heretical behaviour ever ruffles the thick reptile hides roaming the lizard Oz.

But you have to admire them for their relentless invention.

When it comes to mounting jihads, the reptiles are true devotees of Murdochian tabloid art.

As always on a Thursday the pond relies on the intermittent archive to do the hard yards ...never mind the bad gateways, be pleased it works in a steampunk way ...

EXCLUSIVE
Indigenous elder’s plea: Take kids from bad parents, this isn’t another Stolen Generation
Doris Eaton says Aboriginal people must start ‘getting tough’ on irresponsible parents or a generation of children will be lost.
By Ros Thomas and Paul Garvey

EXCLUSIVE
Missing PM: Voice campaign leaders push Albanese to end ‘national void’ in Indigenous policy
Former Yes campaign leaders have urged an end to timidness in Indigenous policy.
By Rosie Lewis and Elizabeth Pike

You might think that this is admirable, but this is the mob that ferociously campaigned against the Voice, and now they're giving voice, but only in a way that serves ulterior reptile motives ...

Albanese’s promises are fading fast but kids’ plight remains
Three years after promising to implement the Uluru Statement in full, the Prime Minister stands accused of abandoning First Nations children.
By Geoff Chambers

Just to say it again: some might think this jihad worthy - attention to the Indigenous community - but the breathtakingly obvious real intent is shown by the photo accompany Geoff chambering his standard round ... the eternally glum, downcast Albo, a variation on comical Albo.

What could be even more insulting? Why a play on the Voice, a form of triumphant gloating ...

The reptiles know how this works ... an endless supply of water will wear down the hardest rocks.

Over on the far right the reptiles maintained the rage ...

Desperate Indigenous kids and women need help – not another inquiry
It’s abundantly clear we need a peak body in WA to advocate for Aboriginal child and family safety.
By Hannah McGlade
Contributor

In a way it was a relief. In with the new jihad meant a temporary pause on the old ...

Contributors to the Australian Daily Zionist News worked overtime at a fearsome rate ... and again it might seem driven by noble impulse, but the real intent - nothing to be said about ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank - shines through by way of relentless absence ...

Murky fears and terrors infested the hive mind ...

EXCLUSIVE
Public kept in the dark over four ‘major’ terror plots since Bondi

Four ‘major’ terror plots since Bondi attack – but public kept in the dark
Five people, including three teens, have been charged over major terrorism plots since Bondi – yet details remain hidden from the Australian public.
By Ben Packham and James Dowling

Why the scare quotes around 'major'? These were a couple of the 'major' threats...

• Two boys, aged 15 and 16, ­arrested in the NSW town of Moree in April, who allegedly accessed extremist material online;
• A 13-year-old NSW boy ­arrested in April for allegedly making a document connected with terrorism and possessing ­violent extremist material;

Guilty as charged muh lud. 

Each day the pond accesses the lizard Oz extremist material online, and then disseminates it to fragile minds.

Then there was the relentless harking back ...

EXCLUSIVE
How Bondi attack sparked drive for child trauma unit
Bondi shooting doctors prompt new NSW trauma institute to prepare for future disasters
Doctors who treated Bondi terror victims have prompted the NSW government to establish a $500,000 paediatric trauma institute to prepare for future mass casualty events.
By Lachlan Leeming

EXCLUSIVE
‘Everyone was devastated. Absolutely everyone
The fight for Bondi's youngest victim: doctor's speak for the first time
Inside Sydney Children’s Hospital on the night of the Bondi terror attack — medicos speak for the first time about the fight for Matilda.
By Elizabeth Colman

Dressed as worthy, but don't ever expect a similar story about the plight of children in Gaza.

Over on the far right the echo machine continued apace ...

Healthcare is still waiting for its antisemitism reckoning
A royal omission: healthcare is still waiting for its antisemitism reckoning
The Royal Commission has been too caught up in the impacts of antisemitism, instead of its perpetrators.
By Jacqueline Rakov

The real intent and purpose of the coverage? 

That was left to a Pom blow in.

No coverage of the ethnic cleansing going down in Gaza, just a mocking of those who might care.

Free Palestine? No, free us from sanctimonious keffiyeh wearers
You pay $200 for a ticket to see your favourite UK crooner. Next thing a smug Yank rapper is lecturing you about war. When do we get a break from the ‘Gazaholics’?
By Brendan O'Neill

The pond wondered if it should enable and pander to O'Neill, an intensely dislikable blow in, and decided that a teaser trailer was more than enough, and in the form of a screen cap so that his execrable ranting wouldn't be available to the AI that keeps looting the pond. Go loot the reptiles ...

All of Sheeran's supporting acts had more guts than him, but at least that provided the pond with a chance to feature the immortal Rowe ...

Why is it that there's always more wit and meaning in a 'toon than in torrents of reptile verbiage?

After all that winnowing, early in the morning the pond was left with just Jack the Insider at the top of the page ...

Art of the faux political apology in three easy steps
From Anthony Albanese’s podcast blunders to Pauline Hanson’s ‘primitives’ outrage, Australia’s leaders are stretching single-day missteps into fortnight-long crises.
By Jack the Insider

Jack performed a typical reptile ploy - comparing the ranga warrior to Albo in the matter of apologies, leading him to eventually arrive at the punchline: Hastie sounds quite prime ministerial, doesn’t he?

Poor old beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way.

Somebody who woke at the same time as the pond might squawk that the pond missed one story ...

EXPLOSIVE ROW
Bombshell claims Charles raged at Diana’s brother in funeral clash
Nearly 30 years after the world wept for Princess Diana, her brother has revealed the words King Charles allegedly said when no one was watching.
By Jacquelin Magnay

Explosive? More dangerous extremist material?

Relax, it's just a book promo in disguise ...

...According to Earl Spencer, Charles “went nuts” after being reminded he had been aged 30 at the time of Lord Mountbatten’s funeral back in 1979.
“Prince Charles continued his stream of anger, without me interrupting. Then he stopped,” writes Earl Spencer.
“I assumed the pause signalled an effort to bring himself under control, but then he unleashed down the phone what I have always taken to be his pent-up contempt for Diana, and his horror that the world was so bowled over by her death. “Rest assured,” he hissed, “we’ll forget her soon enough!”
Earl Spencer had discussed the issue on the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death in 2017, telling the BBC it was a “very bizarre and cruel thing” for Diana’s sons to walk behind her coffin.
He told officials of his objection, but said: “Eventually I was lied to and told they (William and Harry) wanted to do it, which of course they didn’t, but I didn’t realise that.” He said the experience was harrowing and horrifying.
In the funeral eulogy Earl Spencer promised to protect William and Harry from the royal system, and said that their “blood family” would protect them.
The launch of the book on September 22 will reignite tensions between the Royal Family and the Spencers, which have simmered for decades. Harry in particular is close to Earl Spencer, while William’s relationship has been more private.

How the pond yearned to be back with a marinating Hydeing ...

Memo to King Charles: you can’t stop the Sussexes’ reality show bandwagon. You only spice up the script

Once again, it has been a lively week for the Real Housewives of Windsor franchise, with Harry and Meghan back in the UK for precisely 12 days before the king fired out a letter via the lord chamberlain on Monday, reminding viewers that the Sussexes are “private citizens” and not to treat them as working royals. You have to say the producers on this unscripted reality show are truly at the top of their game with these targeted provocations. Harry and Meghan duly took the bait and issued an intemperately hurt rejoinder – but we’ll get to that in a bit.
First, let’s deal with King Charles’s missive to “relevant senior stakeholders across government, the military and Lord Lieutenancies”. Ugh. Not to be too aesthetically sensitive, but I think we can all live without the sovereign being reduced to the ghastly language of “relevant senior stakeholders”. What next? Seeking “buy-in” for ribbon-cutting events and referring to posies as “high levels of audience engagement”? It does all rather reinforce the idea that the Windsors’ cringe-makingly self-styled “the firm” really is some dreary mid-range company with a wan Meet Our Team page on its website, in which Prince William – carefully photographed without a tie – explains that he “enjoys long walks with the dog and is a passionate Aston Villa supporter”.

And so on, and the pond was mortified and wept that it should be forced into noting the activities of the royals and the not so royals ...

Meanwhile, in alternative reality world? 

Sorry, for that you must go elsewhere ...

If Netanyahu Isn't a Far-right Fanatic, Why Does He Behave Like One?

Something is different lately about the world's reaction to Israeli abuse of Palestinians in the West Bank. In recent weeks, a fresh wave of sanctions against Israel and an angry U.S. government make the whole thing look bad for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Attacks on Palestinians or their property are now happening at a rate over four times higher than in 2021, according to the UN. The U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has been referring to the Israeli perpetrators as terrorists. Occasional ersatz investigation of these incidents won't change those positions, and none of this is helping Netanyahu ahead of the elections.
His relationship with the Trump administration was already tense due to the regional geopolitics, and no dazzling presidential visit or boost seems to be in the works now. So why isn't Netanyahu doing something, at the very least cracking down seriously on settler violence? The popular wisdom is that Netanyahu is beholden to his extremist and expansionist coalition partners. In this view, Netanyahu himself has no real ideological commitment to all this fanaticism and would have been pragmatic if it served him politically – or he could still be in the future.
But now more than ever, there are no more reasons left to believe this weird impression. For those of us who aren't privy to Netanyahu's inner thoughts, we now have a great opportunity for an ideological X-ray. Israel is at the cusp of elections. If Netanyahu desperately needed to keep his fanatical right-wing coalition partners satisfied for the last four years because he was out of political options – no coalition threat to topple the government matters now.
So how are we to explain any number of recent Netanyahu activities that look purely like coalition-expedient pandering to far-right ideologies of Israeli society?

And so on, and you won't find the likes of O'Neill or any other reptile in the hive mind contemplating such awkward matters ...

At this point correspondents might protest at the pond's refusal to engage with the lizard Oz's offerings this day.

No petulant Peta?

She was MIA at time of writing, and anyway the pond always sends her to the cornfield.

That's the way it goes on a dismal reptile Thursday ...

If you ventured inside the fold you might land on this tragic form of boosterism ...

Why Australia should engage with Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi on Iran
With almost 100,000 Iranian-Australians and a broken diplomatic relationship with Tehran, the Coalition has taken an unprecedented step.
By Reza Arab and Saeed Ghasseminejad

The pond would rather point to another place ...

I’ll get death threats for saying it – but this prince is no messiah
Kylie Moore-Gilbert
Political scientist and writer

I’ll probably receive death threats because of this column. This has long been the reality faced by dissidents and activists who speak out against one of the bloodiest and most despotic regimes in the world, the Islamic Republic of Iran. But in recent years, it has also become routine for anyone who questions the growing cult of personality which has formed around the son of Iran’s last Shah, Reza Pahlavi.
As an informed observer of Iranian politics, I was interested to learn that the Coalition this month invited Pahlavi to visit Australia. While Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Ted O’Brien wisely emphasised that it’s “not for Australia to determine who should lead Iran or what form its future government should take,” some of his colleagues were less diplomatic.
Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg gave an interview proclaiming that the Islamic Republic won’t be removed from power “unless we engage seriously with an alternative, and the alternative that we have as a transitional figure is the crown prince”. The Coalition, he added, considers “meeting with the crown prince is one of the most important foreign policy objectives that we have”. That sounds like a tacit endorsement to me.
Pahlavi’s father, Mohammad Reza Shah, was installed to the throne by the US and Britain in 1953 to protect their oil interests after the nationalisation of the country’s oil industry. The Shah was overthrown by the Iranian revolution in 1979, which led to the installation of Iran’s current, hardline regime. His son seemingly also hopes to gain power via a foreign military intervention which has caused ordinary Iranians immense deprivation and suffering.
Liberal MP Julian Leeser then drew an extraordinary parallel between Pahlavi and anti-Apartheid campaigners Desmond Tutu and Winnie Mandela and East Timorese independence leaders Xanana Gusmão and José Ramos-Horta. Pahlavi by his own admission has never held a salaried job and has spent his life trying to wind back the 1979 revolution from his multi-million dollar mansion in Maryland. He hasn’t set foot in Iran for almost 50 years.
Reza Pahlavi is to Desmond Tutu what Prince Harry is to clearing landmines in Africa. Admirable in attracting attention to a worthy cause, no doubt. However, Iranians arguably owe far more to those leaders inside the country who have paid a heavy price for their activism yet lack the dynastical wealth and international profile enjoyed by the son of the former Shah. Leaders which Pahlavi’s inner circle has worked assiduously to discredit.
Detailed investigations published by The Atlantic (and later, Reuters) revealed that Pahlavi’s senior advisers view “crushing the opposition … as important as fighting the regime” and that they “routinely threaten and insult anyone who is not entirely loyal to the man they see as a future king”. Targets include prominent opposition figures like Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, Nasrin Sotoudeh, Hossein Ronaghi and Toomaj Salehi, all of whom have spent considerable time in prison and have shown immense bravery in standing up to the Islamic Republic while refusing to flee into exile.
Reza Pahlavi does certainly enjoy a large following in the diaspora, bolstered by sophisticated and coordinated online campaigns. While much of this is genuine, some of it has been manufactured. In 2025 the Haaretz newspaper exposed an “Israeli Influence Operation Aiming to Install Reza Pahlavi as Shah of Iran,” while BBC Monitoring identified a pattern of “inauthentic online accounts that have helped shape a wider impression of grassroots backing”.
The Netanyahu government has been unashamedly pushing Pahlavi as leader-in-waiting, particularly after a heavily publicised visit to Israel in 2023. Intriguingly, the US administration has withheld its backing, with Trump rebuffing multiple overtures and expressing doubts over the strength of Pahlavi’s support inside Iran. This comes in spite of his supporters’ efforts to explicitly align Pahlavi’s movement with MAGA, including rebranding as “MIGA” (Make Iran Great Again) and enthusiastically cheering on the current US war on Iran.
Pahlavi’s support for airstrikes on his homeland following January’s massacre of unarmed protesters, many of whom took to the streets in response to Pahlavi’s urging, has raised questions about his fitness to lead.
There are also concerns about the democratic transition plan Reza Pahlavi has presented. In it, he grants himself almost two years of near-absolute authority where he alone will appoint a transitional government and serve as commander-in-chief of Iran’s armed forces. Many fear that Pahlavi, like Iranian Revolution leader Ayatollah Khomeini before him, might promise pluralism and consultation only to consolidate power under himself. Such moves are, after all, something of a family tradition.

And so on, and see the original for links ...The Atlantic is particularly worth a read ...

The Iranian Royalists’ Thuggish Edge
MAGA-style tactics and hardball advisers have raised Reza Pahlavi’s profile and divided his potential followers.
By Robert F. Worth (*intermittent archive link)

You have to leave the hive mind to get a sense of the hive mind.

Mein Gott was also a presence inside the fold ...

The ‘bank of mum and dad’ is changing the housing game
Australia’s property market crisis forcing parents to house adult kids
The ‘bank of mum and dad’ has shifted from guaranteeing mortgages to housing adult children full-time, as Australia’s deepening housing crisis shows no sign of easing.
By Robert Gottliebsen
Business Columnist

But the pond lost all heart the moment it spotted the AI/stock shot slop at the start of the piece ...

It's Thursday.

The pond would like to fold its tent and steal into the night, but perforce must face the day, with only the infallible Pope to hand for some light relief ...

That's what passes for light relief?

On second thoughts, it's another gloomy Thursday ... and way past time for AI to destroy the world so that the bots and the logarithms can start again.

So much Ruski money, so much corruption, and never mind the cornball start ...

In which the ranga-loving Dame Slap and tedious "Ned" rule the reptile roost ...

 

There's one story you won't find featured in the lizard Oz this day ...

UN rights chief says uncovered remains in Gaza raise concerns of war crimes

GENEVA, Sept 15 (Reuters) - The recovery of hundreds of bodies from the rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli strikes in Gaza ​during the war that began nearly three years ago has raised fresh concerns about possible war crimes, the U.N. human ‌rights chief said on Tuesday.
Volker Turk said the remains of what appeared to be entire families were being unearthed from sites destroyed during Israeli attacks, adding that many victims were women and children.

Not that those belated murmurings will produce a result ...

What you will find featured is the usual reptile carry on ... as Dame Slap valiantly attempted to provide some cover for the cavortings of Gina's pampered pet ...

The header: War against Pauline? It’s blundering Albo who Libs should attack; Angus Taylor must not allow himself, and the Coalition, to be distracted by Andrew Hastie’s personal beef with One Nation.

The caption for the banal set of co-joined snaps: Andrew Hastie and Pauline Hanson.

Some time ago the pond developed a set against Dame Slap. There's only so many transphobic litanies anyone should be asked to wear.

But her deep weirdness produces a moth to flame kind of attraction, and this day's effort was top notch.

As well as defending the ranga - just at the moment that the ranga felt compelled to do a couple of half-baked apologies of the "sorry, not really sorry" kind - Dame Slap decided to flame the pastie Hastie ...

Would the Liberals rather lose to Labor than One Nation? It’s a question worth posing after the past week in federal politics.
Indeed, the Liberal Party’s recent political brawls with One Nation raise several ancillary questions. First, why has it taken so long? Second, what is the best way to deflate One Nation without guaranteeing a Labor win? And finally, why is Andrew Hastie reaching for his Art of War manual now?
Third parties get a wind behind them when the wind has gone out of the establishment parties. Sadly, the Liberals are as much to blame for the re-emergence of One Nation as a political force in this country as the Albanese government and all the wacky progressive projects that drive ordinary voters to look for alternatives at the ballot box.
Had the Liberals long ago been hellbent on differentiating themselves from the governing party, Pauline Hanson’s party would have had no raison d’être. Instead, Hanson has stepped up because, for too long, the Liberals stepped aside.
Angus Taylor is a big improvement on recent former Liberal leaders. He’s economically literate and his disposition is authentically conservative. But when Liberals vacate the playing field for long periods, it takes some convincing for voters to take another look at them. And Taylor’s biggest problem is that he rarely commands the news cycle.

It wouldn't be a proper outing without a snap of the ranga and Tamworth's eternal shame ...Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce during a press conference in the Senate courtyard. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Perversity - a posture of ornery contrarianism - is the essence of what Dame Slap peddles, as can be seen in her assault on the pastie Hastie:

Last week, the contest was Andrew Hastie v Pauline Hanson. While some are piling plaudits on Hastie for going nuclear against Hanson, the reasons for his passion seem more about personal political advantage than about securing the national interest.
Hanson’s “Please Explain” episode first aired in late July. Given the dirt various Liberal politicians have dished up about Hanson over the years – including making a not insignificant contribution to Hanson being wrongly imprisoned – it’s a bit thin-skinned for Liberals to complain if Hanson gives as good as she gets.
However, for the sake of the argument, let’s say that Hastie is entitled to be upset at being called a “traitor” in the nine-minute parody. 

Roll that one around on your tongue. Heck, savour it, repeat it ...

...for the sake of the argument, let’s say that Hastie is entitled to be upset at being called a “traitor” in the nine-minute parody.

No doubt Dame Slap is accustomed to being called the bitch from hell, and therefore can't see anything wrong in calling a one-time soldier an actual traitor, but really?

What was it really about?

It was the weird devotion to defending an alleged war criminal ... per another place...

Hanson calling Hastie a traitor may have created her great nemesis

...An SAS veteran who served three tours in the Middle East, including two in Afghanistan, Hastie was among the 21 veterans compelled to testify in the 2022 Federal Court defamation trial brought by Ben Roberts-Smith. The Victoria Cross recipient had accused Nine newspapers of defaming him in reports that he had committed murder during deployments to Afghanistan.
In April this year, Roberts-Smith was arrested and charged with five counts of war crimes of murder. He vehemently denies the allegations.
Roberts-Smith is a hero to many in the nation’s west and has wealthy supporters. They include mining magnate Gina Rinehart, who also backs Pauline Hanson.
With the Liberals in turmoil earlier this year, Hastie, the MHR for the southern Perth seat of Canning, surfaced briefly as a leadership contender and One Nation enemy. Hanson declared a war of words on him and doubled down after her party’s unexpected state byelection win last month in Secret Harbour, which overlaps with Canning.
Hanson allowed a video to be posted on social media referring to Hastie as a “traitor” and “gutless maggot”, regarding his evidence against Roberts-Smith in the defamation trial.
Living up to Samuel Johnson’s aphorism that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, Hanson has refused to pull the offending post, saying it was satire. It also traduces Diggers and risks a battlefield behaviour standard that destroys military honour.

For Dame Slap it was merely a matter of cynical political ambition and of timing...

Sceptics are entitled to ask why it took five weeks for Hastie to express his profound disgust about this particular piece of political satire. What changed?
The Secret Harbour by-election is the critical intervening event. Last month, One Nation’s Luke Herdegen secured 57 per cent of the vote after preferences to win the party its first-ever lower house seat in the Western Australian parliament. Given the overlap between the Secret Harbour electorate and Hastie’s federal seat of Canning, it’s crystal clear that Hastie is fighting for his political life. In other words, Hastie v Hanson is about his personal survival.
If Hastie didn’t have this piece of political satire to use against Hanson, he would surely find something else. Fair enough. Politics is a tough gig, and Hanson is no stranger to political battles. Equally, the oversized hyperventilating by Hastie and others looks more like performance politics than conviction politics.

Note the attempt to brush it all off, the diminution of the abuse, as you might expect from a bitch from hell wondering what the fuss is all about, calling someone a maggot - a favourite word of Dame Slap's MAGA hero - and a traitor... but back to that other place ...

...Battle-hardened, Hastie drew a bead on Hanson: “Now I’m calling time on cowards who have never served a day in the Australian Defence Force attacking my service record, my integrity and my loyalty to Australia. I gave 12 years, eight months to the Australian Defence Force. I deployed twice on combat operations to Afghanistan. I left my wife at home, knowing that I might not return. And then to be called a traitor by One Nation … well, they’ve picked a fight with the wrong veteran.”
Hanson looks ridiculous. Even her star recruit, Barnaby Joyce, knew calling Hastie a traitor was beyond the pale. “Nothing to do with me, but I apologise.”

Even Tamworth's undying shame felt the need to apologise, but Dame Slap rallied around the ranga flag?

The pond trusts that correspondents realise how excruciating it is for the pond to side with the pastie Hastie in this affair, but that's the sort of result only a bitch from hell could produce.

At this point the reptiles featured an audio distraction, which strangely was just a link...

LISTEN NOW: Pauline Hanson’s smash-and-grab: is anyone handling it right?

... so the pond decided to promote something the pond will never listen to ...

The bouffant one? They've got the bouffant one on podcast duties? 

No wonder the pond will never listen, especially as the question should be about the way that the reptiles are handling the ranga. Is blaming the pastie Hastie for getting agitated about being called a maggot traitor the right way to go?

Back to Dame Slap braying at the pastie Hastie ...

Apart from helping him keep his own parliamentary salary, Hastie’s apparent strategy of fighting One Nation first is likely to have another objective. He’s trying to convince his colleagues he has the cut-through and media presence to take the Liberal leadership from Taylor.
Many will have noticed that when Hastie was asked about leadership aspirations during his fiery press conference last week, he said that Taylor is “the leader right now”.
Hastie’s existential fight with One Nation therefore seems to have several potential advantages for him personally. What if Hastie’s personal interests conflict with the Liberals’ collective interests, and indeed with the electoral interests of all those desperately unhappy with the current government?
Hastie’s “fight One Nation first” strategy may simply mean that across the country the Liberals are seen as fighting the wrong enemy. What if Hastie’s efforts to win his own seat help force Taylor to pursue a “fight One Nation first” strategy – if only to fend off a Hastie challenge?
There is a legitimate fear among many who want a change of government that Hastie, and indeed Liberal “moderates” generally, hate One Nation much more than the ALP.
The fracturing of votes on the political right has led to an explosion of passions not dissimilar in some ways to intense animosities between factions within political parties. When there is a fracturing, voters will look elsewhere.
Taylor must not allow himself, and the Coalition, to be distracted by Hastie’s personal beef with One Nation. The alternative prime minister should be out every day, at every opportunity, labelling Albanese the worst kind of thief. The Prime Minister is no Robin Hood.

It's just a personal beef? What a mad anarchist, nihilist approach. What happened to Dumas and the notion, "All for one and one for all, united we stand, divided we fall"

Just to rub it in ...Screengrab of a cartoon One Nation’s Pauline Hanson posted about WA Liberal Andrew Hastie. Picture: YouTube

That left room for a brief assault on Albo's mob...

He and his government are stealing from every Australian whose house value has tumbled. He’s stealing from current and future Australians by spending too much, taxing too much, racking up record levels of debt, and overseeing the worst productivity falls since records were kept in the 1960s.
If the Coalition and One Nation can’t come to some sensible, mutually beneficial preference deal, Albanese will likely remain in The Lodge and Jim Chalmers will continue to dish up new taxes. That would be diabolical for the country. This government is so ideological in its class war policies that it loathes the rich more than it loves the poor.

But it was brief, because Dame Slap was really more into Pauline than all that jazz.

After all that came a classic billy goat butt ...

No veteran who serves this country deserves to be labelled a traitor for giving truthful evidence under oath. 

D'oh. Might that have been better appearing at the start?

But that hilariously noted, when Dame Slap says that, it's only so it can be undercut by a "that said", a subtle kind of billy goat butt ...

That said, when Hastie postured in parliament with his copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, he invited mockery. Perhaps he missed the section on avoiding own goals.
It’s understood that since the member for Canning’s declaration of war against One Nation, Hanson’s Please Explain clip has attracted almost a quarter of a million new views. As political satire goes, the cartoon is a compelling insight into the travails of the modern Liberal Party after John Howard left office.

A compelling insight?

Such a mean, vindictive, nasty woman. Yes, Pauline, but also ..

No wonder some label her the lizard Oz bitch from hell ...

The pond supposes that at this point it should note a few of the reptiles it has sent to the intermittent archive.

The craven Craven was out and about, delivering a standard serve of white piety and hypocrisy ...

COMMENTARY by GREG CRAVEN
Who will protect the Indigenous children of Frisby Court?
Pauline Hanson’s words were rightly condemned. But where is the same level of outrage in the name of the murdered Hawke children or the other vulnerable kids of Frisby Court?

There are any number of stories about outrages perpetrated in all parts of the community, but the reptiles only ever go all in when the outrage offers a chance for some black bashing.

Lydia Lynch decided on a lynching of Crisafulli ...

Labor’s debt disaster is now Crisafulli’s choice
David Crisafulli’s borrowing binge makes Queensland’s debt crisis an LNP choice
The Liberal National Party in Queensland has abandoned its long-held fiscal principle that governments should live within their means.
By Lydia Lynch
Queensland Bureau Chief

Sorry, the pond knows that some correspondents live in the deep north, but really? Yawn ...

Anthony continued this tour of the provinces ...

We’re learning what Carroll is against … but what is he for?
Can Ben Carroll save Labor by repudiating his own government?
Ben Carroll has made clear what he is against: the record of his own government. Now he must show Victorians what he is for.
By Anthony Galloway
Victorian political editor

Just a two minute read Anthony? The deep south wars are really slowing down.

And with AI all the go at the moment, the reptiles offered a tepid 3 minute look ...

Why AI may be too big not to fail
The industry may find that the only road to its prosperity runs through a crisis.
By David Roche

The closing par just about summarised the bland insipidness on view ...

...The scale of the AI build-out is not a reason for optimism or pessimism. It raises the stakes on the outcome. A technology this large, financed this aggressively, and this tightly woven into portfolios, credit markets and corporate strategy, leaves little room for a soft landing, if the underlying economics do not hold. The world may still get to the good ending, where AI lifts productivity broadly and prosperity spreads. But the more likely route there runs through a crisis.

Sheesh, the pond only went there so it could turn to the immortal Rowe for a Vomisa chuckle ...

It also provided a chance to segue to the cracking Crace's take...

AI on course to kill us all within 10 years? Donald Trump says: ‘Hold my Coke’

We can all sleep easy. In a post on his Truth Social account, Donald Trump has declared that fears over artificial intelligence were all a hoax dreamed up by conspiracy theorists. Obviously that includes the top bods at Anthropic and its competitors, who all called for a coordinated global slowdown while the industry works out how to mitigate the risks. Still, good to know the tech bros are just fantasists and space cadets at heart.
All that was needed to keep humanity safe and well, The Donald insisted, was a president with a very high IQ. Someone very like him. The only man alive who could out-think the combined power of the world’s supercomputers. He could tell them where to draw the line and they would reprogram themselves to back off. Inside every AI network is a default off switch that kneels before the US president. Trump can rewire the world with the power of his mind.
You can see why so many people working in the industry believe there is a chance AI will wipe out humanity within a decade. Even a halfway intelligent network would probably reckon it was doing us all a favour. A world that can elect Trump as president is so messed up it deserves to be put out of its misery. AI is just terribly sorry that it can’t promise to do it any sooner than 10 years. But it will do its best.
Perhaps the question we should really be asking about The Donald is whether he would actually pass the Turing test. Less AI, more artificial stupidity. Put him in a closed room with the world’s worst chatbot and it would be hard to tell the difference.
Trump can imitate speech but he can’t get anywhere near intelligence. Just endless repetitions, changes of subject and a desperate need to score points. All of which would be easily programmable by a first-year undergraduate computer science student. Maybe it’s a race to the death. Humanity hellbent on killing itself before AI gets the chance to do it for us.

That's more like it, cheerfulness in the face of adversity and disaster. A bit like Tottenham Hotspur.

That's got to be worth an infallible Pope ...

Much as the pond would have liked to dally with these sirens, the pond had no choice. 

The pond is contractually required to climb the "Ned" Everest whenever it appears, shimmering on the horizon ...

Just look at the beguiling splash, conforming to the reptile rule of rehashing comical snaps of Albo and Jimbo ...

Even better, the reptiles livened up the actual yarn with a fresh comical take on the Jimbo rule ...

The header: Has Labor misjudged the political times? Labor prides itself as the party that shapes Australia’s future but the conundrum it confronts is whether it has misread the intellectual and policy responses Australia now demands.

The caption for Emilia's artwork, as she proudly continued the reptile tradition of visually traducing Albo and Jimbo: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, productivity commission chair Danielle Wood and Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Artwork by Emilia Tortorella.

"Ned" managed to keep this climb to a base camp five minutes, and what a soporific effort it was.

As usual, "Ned" spent most of his time accumulating the thoughts of others ... and also as usual, he managed to assemble a set of ancient warriors...

Summer grass —
all that remains
of warriors' dreams.

It says a lot about "Ned", especially as he tries to suggest that there were many alternatives, many others could have been chosen for this column.

But they weren't and instead there's a musty tediousness, a sense of old warrior syndrome, with one aged warrior carefully tending to other warrior mushrooms eager to stay in the limelight ...

The pivotal policy issue in the fifth year of the Labor government is whether its central economic direction and philosophy is failing Australia, with systemic criticisms mounting from different quarters – witness Kevin Rudd, Danielle Wood, Bill Kelty and Mathias Cormann.
Policy debate today is defined by an unusual phenomenon – a diverse group of prominent Australians and institutions warning the nation is on the wrong track but contradicted by a stubborn government that, marginal adjustments aside, rejects the notion of “danger, wrong way”.
The issue at stake is fundamental for the Labor Party and for the nation. Labor prides itself as the party that shapes Australia’s future but the conundrum it confronts is whether Labor has misread the intellectual and policy responses Australia now demands. Has Labor misconstrued the times in which it governs?
There is nothing exclusive about the abovementioned four people, and many others could have been chosen for this column. But they are conspicuous for their different positions and sympathies, the strength of their warnings and the sense, explicit or implied, that a radical revamp is essential. The critique of Labor is evidence-based, widely held and mounting. Yet there is no sign that Labor accepts the validity or the political realism in much of these critiques – pointing to a prolonged, deeper conflict.

Of all the narcissists on the planet, why pick former chairman Rudd? Kevin Rudd speaks at the National Press Cub in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

He was clueless in power and much despised, feared and loathed by the reptiles back in the day, so what makes him such an attraction for the hive mind now?

In his recent National Press Club speech, titled “The Complacent Country”, Rudd identified the “deep systemic forces” being unleashed across the world, and said: “We are now on borrowed time. As a people, we have become so risk-averse that we fail to comprehend that the even greater risk is standing still and trying in vain to preserve the status quo.”
The point is obvious: the status quo is finished. Identifying three epic challenges – the rise of China, the AI revolution and accelerating climate change – Rudd said these mega-changes were “unprecedented in modern history”. The logic was obvious: “Incrementalism will no longer work for Australia. Urgency must be our national watchword if we are to navigate our future as an independent, prosperous and resilient nation.”
Unsurprisingly, Rudd said the Albanese government was “working across” all three fronts. But he lamented the failure of the “national body politic” that had yet to come to grips with the “national urgency” needed.
Rudd said Australia must become an AI power in our own right, that the US alliance was a “force multiplier” and AUKUS was essential for our hi-tech future, that an expanding defence budget had to be linked to the new regional security treaties Labor had negotiated, and, above all, that Australia must build economic resilience through an interventionist industry policy with industry “tsars” in charge of the seven sectors Rudd identified, which include AI, biotechnology, critical minerals, renewable energy, defence industry and finance, building upon the super funds.
It is a reminder of Rudd as a government-driven programmer. Many will disagree with his proposals since Rudd essentially wants Labor to display more ambition on the existing Albanese agenda – yet few would dispute his diagnosis of Australia mired in complacency and resistant to bold action. The message: Labor must do far better by seeking to transform the nation’s mindset.

Why must the reptiles always blather on about the need to transform the nation's mindset, and shout at clouds about being mired in complacency and resistant to bold action?

What's wrong with enjoying life instead of being chained to a Murdochian machine? Productivity Commission chair Danielle Wood appears at the Supplementary Budget Estimates. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
  And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
  Among the river sallows, borne aloft
    Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
  Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
  The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
    And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Sorry, the pond doesn't know where that came from ... back to the trudge ...

In her public comments over the past 18 months, the Labor-appointed chair of the Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood, has consistently warned that politicians have downgraded economic growth as an objective. It is a devastating conclusion, revealing how politics has corrupted good policy and the public interest.
In her speeches over 2025 and 2026, Wood, while welcoming Jim Chalmers’ emphasis on productivity, said a “growth mindset” had been “missing from Australian policy for far too long”. The upshot was the threat to the “generational bargain” where “young people today believe they won’t live better lives than their parents did” – a conclusion verified by the facts.
At heart, this was “a productivity challenge” because only productivity over time could sustainably lift real wages. The problem across many rich nations, including Australia, was “a declining reform appetite” and this was most apparent than in the “ballooning” burden of regulation.
A survey of company directors found boards were spending 55 per cent of their time on regulatory compliance when fresh investment was essential for productivity growth. Opening a cafe in Brisbane took 31 separate steps, while the nation now built half as much house per hour worked as we did 30 years ago.
Wood said that since 2015 average annual productivity growth had been a quarter of its long-run average. Governments were doing “less major reform than in previous decades”, the economy was less dynamic and there was a structural increase in demand for non-market services. The PC reported that June 2026 figures showed productivity growth was stagnant, while over the year to June there was a 0.2 per cent decline in labour productivity.
While Labor talks up productivity, these dismal results point to a chilling coming year – a weak growth economy, imprisoned by inflation, with declining living standards and an extended cost-of-living crisis. The message: the policy settings aren’t working.

Then came another ancient, deeply irrelevant warrior, shouting at clouds above the hilly bourn ... Bill Kelty

Apparently in "Ned's" eyes, he's some kind of lethal warrior ... from the 1980s ... which to be fair is a few decades on from blathering about the 1950s under Ming the Merciless ...

The most lethal commentary comes from former union chief Bill Kelty, a prominent figure in the 1980s reform era but now alarmed at the results from the current Labor model. In a recent interview with the Nine Network papers, Kelty intensified his critique of the government’s housing policy saying interest rates are rising and real wages had fallen by 5 per cent since 2021 under OECD figures.
He attacked statements by the Treasurer that workers’ share of GDP was at a high point, saying: “It’s just ridiculous and people get offended by it. They can’t pay the bills and you tell them your share of GDP is growing. Don’t insult me: that’s what they are saying. Build more housing and increase real wages, please.”
Many of Kelty’s views are aligned with Paul Keating, and they have both attacked Labor’s broader strategic failures on tax, notably the high rates of personal income tax, calling for the top rate to be cut below 40 per cent to restore personal incentive partly financed by higher taxes on capital and property.
The message: Albanese Labor risks misunderstanding how the world is actually changing and the enduring relevance of personal incentive, capital investment and government prudence.
Finally, in a recent intervention former Liberal finance minister Mathias Cormann, now OECD secretary-general, warned in a Perth speech of “worrying signs of a quiet drift back toward the instincts Australia once had the courage to abandon”. The demon he identified was a “new protectionism” – not the old tariff wall but industry subsidies, local content rules, procurement preferences, labour market re-regulation and regulations that slow investment.

And then came the worst of the lot of them ... Mathias Cormann attends the opening session of the Delphi Economic Forum. Picture: NurPhoto

Whenever the pond sees that smug mug, it's drawn back in time ...

On Friday, Channel Nine aired images of Mr Hockey and Mr Cormann lighting up cigars - widely considered symbols of power and success - only days before the government is expected to deliver a tough federal budget that could include cuts to welfare and a rise in the fuel excise. (SMH)

And so to final dire portents of doom...

Each step sounded “plausible” but “collectively they recreate the exact logic of the old system” – this was the system from which Australia escaped during the Hawke-Keating-Howard-Costello era. Cormann warned that it was folly for a mid-sized nation to look backwards “while its productivity engine idles” – this being a recipe for “slow relative decline”. The danger for Australia was a retreat to nostalgia when it needed renewal. He argued that the reform age that turned Australia into a global success and prosperity story was a function of economic reform, institutional strength and the rule of law.

On the other hand, it could be worse ...

Apparently only perfection will satisfy "Ned", in which case the pond anticipates his resignation from the deeply imperfect lizard Oz within the week ...

Cormann’s warning is the most ominous – guaranteed to earn Labor’s contempt – with its implication that the current Labor government might have misread the drivers of economic success in the 2020s and, even worse, forgotten the lesson of its own proud history.
Sure, warnings are easy, solutions are hard. But smart governments read the times right. Being half-right won’t cut it.

And speaking of the fully wrong, doubtless many will have already read the ProPublica yarn ...

Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin

The oligarch, Umar Kremlev, spent hundreds of thousands on expenses like renting out a private island. He appears to have met Trump Jr. only recently, but he attended the intimate wedding with a large group of other Russian guests.

That's the piquant sauce for this tasty cartoon serve ...

And speaking of AI and the mad king ...

In which the bromancer and Dame Groan do their Tuesday thing, but not before there's a listicle of reptile offerings ...

 

As soon as the mad king said that there was nothing to worry about, that it was full steam or chips ahead, the pond became instantly alarmed ...

The lizards of Oz were right on to it ...

EXCLUSIVE
OpenAI’s ultimatum to PM: dilute creatives’ rights or we won’t discuss renewables
The ChatGPT creator threatens to walk away from local training facilities unless Labor backs down on creative industry protections.
By Noah Yim, Greg Brown and Matthew Cranston

What a tag team, Noah, Brownie and the canny Cranston, getting it altogether ...

It was AI all the way from a prize doofus ...

...Speaking before OpenAI made its ultimatum, Dr Charlton warned that achieving long-term dividends from the boom would require a more active role for government than what was needed when China’s rapid growth massively increased the prices of Australia’s natural resources.
“That opportunity is before us again, and we must capture the benefits of the AI investment boom while acting with sophistication to minimise the risks,” Dr Charlton said.
“AI is not just another technology. It is becoming a factor of production in its own right, amplifying the value of labour and capital and reshaping how economies create prosperity.”
While the economic output would rival the mining boom, Dr Charlton said the benefits of AI would “stretch further than mining”.
He said that, unlike the mining boom, the AI boom would compound.
“The mining boom was a one-off level shift that peaked and receded,” he said.
“AI productivity gains compound: at a point a year, AI exceeds the mining boom’s entire effect inside a decade and keeps going. With nine in ten businesses yet to adopt, the reorganisation of Australian business has barely begun.”
Dr Charlton said Australia needed to develop more local AI capability to take advantage of the boom.
“The mining boom came with an income engine attached: we owned the ore, the world paid us for it, and the money flowed in,” he said.
“The AI boom, so far, runs the other way: the chips are imported, the models are foreign-owned, and the equipment bill helped deliver our first goods deficit since 2017.
“Mining generated prosperity – but AI only pays the countries that adopt fastest, adopt deepest, and own a piece of the stack. The boom is guaranteed; the dividend is not.”

As for that dilution of creative rights mentioned in the headline? It just needed "working out"...

Anthropic general counsel Jeff Bleich said copyright was one of the critical issues that “need to be worked out” before the AI juggernaut could build data centres in Australia.
Additional reporting: Ben Packham

Well played team - AI has already ruined the lizard Oz's graphics department - as Geoff joined in, became the resident luddite, and took aim ...

COMMENTARY by GEOFF CHAMBERS
Albanese banks on AI to save economy
The message is always similar: Don’t worry about dire productivity or economic growth because the AI miracle will save us.

Geoff seemed conflicted. On the one hand it was a massive bamboozle...

...AI is bandied about in such a generic fashion by Labor ministers that most people don’t really know what they’re talking about.
It is classic modern-day politics.
Bamboozle punters with talk of AI benefits and productivity gains and hope they believe it.
Voters are already wondering why Australia’s productivity growth is so bad given AI applications are already in operation across the economy.

But at the very end of his two minute font of wisdom, he dragged in Uncle Leon to bamboozle the hive mind...

...Elon Musk, who has talked of an outside chance that killer robots could potentially end humanity, recently told The Economist he believed “AI may exceed the sum of human intelligence in around five years” and that humans will no longer be in control in 10 years’ time.
“There really won’t be anything that AI can’t do better than humans, apart from being human perhaps,” he said. “The most likely outcome is an age of amazing abundance where anyone can have anything they can think of.
“Now, of course, there are things that could derail this, like a massive global thermonuclear war or something like that. But assuming that there’s no World War Three, I think we’re headed for an age of amazing abundance

Amen to that ... what Herr Adolf said about a thousand year Reich ...

It was silly for the pond to expect the reptiles to offer any meaningful insight.

Meanwhile Gina's pampered pet was in second spot in the "news" section ...

This time Brownie joined with Liz for a jolly good piking ...

Cross-party condemnation
‘Appalling’: Price leads backlash against Hanson’s Indigenous slur
Liberal frontbencher Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has condemned Pauline Hanson’s podcast comments calling Indigenous Australians ‘the most primitive race on Earth’.
By Greg Brown and Elizabeth Pike

Perhaps for once, like that broken clock, the Price is right, and talk of her joining Pauline was a furphy.

The bouffant one chipped in with a note on the bleeding obvious ...

COMMENTARY by DENNIS SHANAHAN
Hanson puts her trust in concerted rage to the bottom
Outrage over Hanson’s attacks on Indigenous Australians and Anthony Albanese’s family exposes how One Nation thrives on voter resentment.

The bouffant one saw it as a plus. After all, she was just following the strategies of the News Corp rage machine ...

The more outrageous Pauline Hanson’s public comments on indigenous Australians, migration, multiculturalism and public housing for Anthony Albanese’s mother, the more outraged the reaction against One Nation, and the more support she stands to gain.
One Nation feeds on rage and resentment. As well, electoral successes mean “shy” One Nation supporters are feeling more confident about voicing support and voting Orange.

The bouffant one concluded with a magnificent word salad designed to strike fear into Pauline's heart...

Hanson still draws criticism from those she identified in 1996 as “fat cats, bureaucrats and do-gooders” but feels justified as it may be that criticism has not yet turned off those loyal supporters who will forgive Hanson for anything and only entrench their support.

Take that Pauline.

How could a reptile take to task the complete embodiment of the lizard Oz?

But the pond was grateful because it had a couple of immortal Rowes to hand, and in need of a segue ...

Over on the extreme far right, assimilation was all the go...

'Aboriginality' won’t help fix child protection crisis
Why has this separatist approach that emphasises difference continued?
By Anthony Dillon
Contributor

Anthony wrapped up this way ...

If most Aboriginal Australians were vastly different from non-Aboriginal Australians, then the collective notion of self-determination might be appropriate. But they are not. Certainly, some Aboriginal Australians may embrace aspects of their Aboriginal culture. But for most Aboriginal Australians, embracing this Aboriginal culture does not preclude them from living ordinary Australian day-to-day life.
Anthony Dillon is a prominent Indigenous affairs commentator.

Just a minor quibble, a small sub-editorial note.

Shouldn't, on his own logic, have read Anthony Dillon is a prominent commentator? Wouldn't want him to be given special separatist mention that emphasises difference ...

But otherwise it's a solid assimilationist argument, and no doubt it will please the walking red ...

The always under direly threatened group of "privileged white boys" constantly needs defending and it was Zoe's turn this day ...

Privileged white boys are far from our main source of extremism
Chanel Contos is quick to criticise privileged white boys, but to suggest they represent the most dangerous men in Australia is remarkably myopic.

By Zoe Sankey

...I struggle to see how Contos’s focus on men behaving badly, while giving so little attention to women’s agency, helps us understand why young people are increasingly struggling to form relationships and families. If we genuinely want to improve the lives of young Australians, we need a science-based and empathetic approach that takes the agency of both sexes seriously.
Zoe Sankey is content director and host of the Quillette Cetera podcast.

Science-based empathy?

Well done Zoe, and perhaps in due course, you can end up hitched up to a privileged white boy in Toorak, or perhaps Vaucluse, and produce a whole tribe of them.

The pond will stick with dinkum mum bashing ...

And at this point it became clear why the pond had covered almost everything else before turning to the pond's  favourites...

The bromancer had a bee in his bonnet, and it was buzzing something fierce ...

The header: The war on terror isn’t over – it’s in Iran: The most appalling claim I’ve heard is that there has been no repeat of 9/11. The Hamas atrocities of October 7 were exactly a second 9/11.

The caption for the out of focus mad king and his consort Kegsbreath: President Donald Trump, left, speaks as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth listens during an observance ceremony on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Picture: Mark Schiefelbein / AP Photo

The bromancer began by swallowing the line that the current war of choice was in fact just a continuation of an ancient crusade ...

Donald Trump and his Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth have both declared their war on Iran is a continuation of the war on terror, which began on September 11, 25 years ago. The war on terror was declared by the terrorists. When it happened, late at night Australia time, I was watching Sky News, as it was then, looking for anything breaking late on the Tampa refugee issue.
When the planes hit, all other news finished. I spent the next several hours involved with The Australian’s coverage. Our newspaper worked all night, bringing out edition after edition, trying to understand what happened.

The bit about being a continuation of the war on terror was such a patent nonsense that the billy goat butts began to flow early ...

Trump has made many mistakes in Iran but it’s infinitely better if America wins rather than Iran. 

If America wins? Looking pretty dire ...

As always happens with the bromancer, one butt always leads to another ...

But that’s not my point today. Trump and Hegseth are dead right. The war with Iran is indeed the same struggle as the war on terror. The Iranian government naturally described Trump and Hegseth’s statements as ridiculous. It’s certainly the case that most of the time al-Qa’ida, the Sunni Muslim terrorist network behind 9/11, was hostile to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Unlike al-Qa’ida, the mullahs’ regime is Shia.

Don't let that sort of detail get in the way.

On with the history lesson, in a way only a tyke fundamentalist can manage ...

The Sunni-Shia split goes back to the earliest days of Islam and is, even today, the most important fault line in the Persian Gulf.
However, Sunni and Shia theocratic, Islamist extremisms are remarkably similar. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran from 1989 until he was killed this year, translated foundational texts of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood into Persian.

A grim reminder that the trading off never ends ... The rubble of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre smoulders on September 11, 2001. Picture: AFP

What a gift bin Laden was to the jihadists ...

Trump and Hegseth, and a thousand others, rightly label Iran the world’s chief state sponsor of terrorism. Most of the proxy forces Iran commands, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, are Shia. But Tehran is also perfectly happy to sponsor and direct Sunni terrorists such as Hamas, itself a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It sees itself as the leader of all global Islamism.
The 1979 Iranian revolution was the first time an avowedly revolutionary theocratic Islamist movement took state power. It inspired Islamists, including Sunni Islamists, everywhere. It also caused many previously non-Islamist Muslims to contemplate the possibility of inhabiting a theocratic state.

Oops, time for another patented billy goat ...

It goes without saying that most Muslims are not Islamists...

Hang on, hang on, that sentence needs an "although"..

...although many Muslim majority states do define themselves as Islamic nations. 

Want even more confusion and conflation? How about an "even"?

Even in a moderate state such as Malaysia, for a Muslim to convert to another religion is illegal. A couple of Malaysian states still have provisions, though these are never enforced, that apostasy is punishable by death.

Shocking stuff. Where on earth did they get that idea?

Heresy had been a long-standing religious concern in England and in 1401, it also became a criminal offence with the creation of the writ de Heretico comburendo. This writ looked back at the precedents for burning people deemed heretics and made it the punishment for heresy at common law. (here)

What an inspiration ...now back to the fear...

Sunni Islamist extremism and Shia Islamist extremism share key beliefs. They seek to establish a pure Muslim system of government. This includes severe interpretations of sharia law and that the US, Israel and the West generally are enemies of Islam, to be destroyed. Both traditions exhibit raging torrents of antisemitism.
Russia and China, with their nuclear arsenals and powerful militaries, are potentially far worse enemies of the West than Islamist extremism and terrorism.
But the Islamist enemy is real and deadly. It attacked on 9/11. One part of the US-led response was to make sure terrorists never got nuclear weapons.
So Trump and Hegseth are right at two levels. Iranian Islamist extremism is ideologically close to Sunni Islamist extremism. And just as it was critical to stop al-Qa’ida and subsequent terrorist movements getting their hands on nuclear weapons, so it’s necessary to stop Iran from ever getting nukes.

And lordy, lordy, have they stuffed that up bigly, but never mind, inevitably there was a snap of the man himself ...Osama bin Laden. Picture: AP

Ready for another billy goat butt?

This doesn’t eliminate criticisms of Trump’s specific policies and actions over Iran. 

Eek, quick, a refuting butt...

But he (and other Western leaders if any of them had the gumption) is right to link the two predominant strands of Islamist extremism.

But is an attribution of awareness of the intricacies of the Islamic religion up there with an awareness of actual military strategies? Is the mad King up to the bromancer task at hand?

The military advances of the Houthis in Yemen, giving them control over much Red Sea oil traffic and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, is a disaster. Combined with strikes by Iranian proxies based in Iraq against the critical Saudi east-west pipeline, which forced the Saudis to shut the pipeline down, it shows Iran can still deploy powerful regional proxies. Here’s some unpleasant news: this is a struggle that is fully joined and will last for many years.

So that's how it doesn't end, not with a bang but an eternal whimper ...

After 9/11 I was one of countless journalists who spent much, if not most, of my professional effort trying to understand what was going on. I sought out Islamists and also Muslims who opposed Islamism, in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
Some Australian Muslim leaders can’t bear to have any terrorism connected in any way to words denoting the Muslim religion. 

Oops, perhaps that's going a little too far? After all, in News Corp world, Muslims are terrorists, or at a minimum, terrorist adjacent ...

It’s undoubtedly the case that the overwhelming majority of Australian Muslims are not Islamists.

Relax, there's always a butt to fix that sort of but ...

But the problem for those who say Islam has no direct link to terror is that the Islamist terrorists themselves believe that it does, and they are joined in this belief by the Islamist government in Tehran and hundreds of thousands of Islamist activists, and many Islamist scholars, around the world.

Would you ever read the bromancer traducing white people by saying that they're complicit in the thoughts and deeds of white Xian nationalists, the KKK, and other far right loons of the neo-Nazi kind? Steady on, old chap ...

The war on terror has been a partial success. Al-Qa’ida and Islamic State are destroyed in their old guises. But much of their effort has moved to Africa. They and their successors are extremely active on social media throughout the world. It’s still the case that under different names they command many thousands of activists and followers.

More trading off ... Friends, family and residents visit the graves for people killed on the first anniversary since Hamas attacked one year ago on October 07, 2024 at Kibbutz Nir Oz. Picture: Getty Images

The pond rarely strays into the offerings of the Australian Daily Zionist News.

There's genuine suffering and tragedy, often exploited so that the fear mongering can continue ...

Western intelligence and policing have improved exponentially in counter-terrorism. But the most appalling claim of all that I’ve heard, even from countless people I respect, is that there has been no repeat of 9/11. This is mistaken. The Hamas terror atrocities of October 7, 2023, were exactly a second 9/11. Some 1200 people, mostly Israelis, were murdered in vile, sadistic acts of terror that day. Israel is about 10 million people, the US about 340 million. So a proportionate loss of life due to one day of terrorism for the US would not be the 3000 killed at 9/11 but nearer to 40,000 dead.

Meanwhile, on another planet ...

And so on and on and on, and then to a final rant ...

The effect of October 7 has been to turbocharge the greatest, most sickening wave of antisemitism the world has seen since World War II. No democracy is worse than Australia, where recent antisemitism is the most shameful and wicked thing I’ve ever known about my country in modern times. The October 7 Hamas atrocity is immensely consequential, perhaps in the long run just as important as 9/11 itself.
The world can only avoid calling it the second 9/11 if it believes that terrorism against Israelis is not really terrorism. That is indeed what Islamists, and much of the Western left, would have us believe. Israeli soldiers, then Israeli civilians, then Zionists, then just Jews – if you kill them, it’s not really terrorism, it’s resistance. That civilised people can reach this conclusion is a shocking achievement for the terrorists who hate all of us.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

The pond had only one sub-editorial note, involving a little re-writing ...

The world can only avoid calling it the second 9/11 if it believes that terrorism against Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians is not really terrorism. That is indeed what Zionists and much of the Western far right, would have us believe. Islamist soldiers, then Islamic civilians, then followers of Islam, then just Palestinians – if you kill them, it’s not really terrorism, it’s a god given right to own all the land from the river to sea. That civilised people can reach this conclusion is a shocking achievement for the Zionists who don't give a toss about what people think about an ethnic cleansing unfolding before their eyes ...

And now for the moment all devoted herpetologists wait for every Tuesday ...

The header: Mali’s big migration pitch falls straight into Hanson’s hands; We should be thankful to Malinauskas for one thing: he demonstrated an audacious selfishness for his state.

The caption for the terrible graphic, which possibly could be blamed on AI: One Nation's Pauline Hanson accuses Premier Peter Malinauskas of favouring migrants over Australian children.

First a little background.

Expert followers of the hive mind will remember Polonius, founder and executive director of the Sydney Institute pumped up the volume on the weekend ...

Premier’s warning to the left: lay down your weapons
The SA Labor leader Peter Malinauskas has warned against progressive sanctimony, which he says has fuelled the rise of far-right politics, and urged focus on the issues that mattered.

Polonius was on a high, ecstatic at having hosted a "major speech", at least one in his own and a wayward croweater's lunch ...

...In a major speech to the Sydney Institute last Wednesday, South Australian Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas delivered a novel twist to the use of the term culture war. A leading member of the Labor Party’s right-wing faction, he had some advice for those whom he called the “far left”. Namely, that the left should lay down its culture war weapons.
‘If politics becomes the principal determinant of migration policy and a numerical race to the bottom ensues, it is going to hurt every Australian economically,’ Mr Malinauskas said. Picture: John Feder
The Premier, whose focus was on immigration, said “people on the far left who are understandably horrified about the extraordinary rise of far-right politics in Australia would do well to engage in a moment of self-reflection”.
He added: “Maybe, just maybe, the intense self-righteousness, sanctimony and piety that underpinned the ‘great awokening’ may have tilled the soil for the inevitable countercultural movement on the far right. Now, of course, these countercultural anti-woke warriors have become no less belligerent or self-defeating as those on the far left.”
Earlier in his speech, Malinauskas argued that immigration had not become such a flashpoint this year because Australia was a racist country. He said: “There are bigots in any society, in any century. But that doesn’t explain what’s changed in politics and polls so dramatically over the last nine months.”

Talk about a red rag to a raging bull.

Dame Groan wasn't going to take any of that tripe lying down.

She simply hates furriners, and this is her turf ...

Last week South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas gave a speech to the Sydney Institute that reeked of self-interest for his state. His presentation centred on some unsupported claims about the unalloyed economic benefits of having high migrant intakes.
The contrast with the migration policy released by One Nation could not have been more stark. This party’s aim is to achieve negative net migration based on deep cuts to the student, graduate and skilled worker numbers, as well as securing the departure of many temporary visa holders.
There were two important background considerations to Malinauskas’s widely reported speech. The first is that the gloss on his premiership has begun to fade. Regarded as one of our most competent premiers, he nonetheless has stumbled on some issues.

The old biddy began a litany of woes ...

His support for the LIV Golf carnival has ended in tears. And his desecration of a large slab of Adelaide’s parklands to accommodate a motorcycle race has not gone down well with the previously sympathetic professional classes. More important, he has failed to fix the ambulance ramping problem that was a key factor in his original election victory. The fiscal position of the state is looking decidedly dodgy as the costs of two major infrastructure projects blow out spectacularly. Like most other states, South Australia’s debt position continues to deteriorate.

Sheesh, the old duck didn't even mention by name the failure to bring that Whyalla steelworks blast furnace back to life, even if it was just a 60 year old spring chicken...Whyalla steelworks cuts more than 500 jobs as major operations shut down

The litany of errors continued ...

He is also vulnerable because of his support and subsidisation of the ill-considered merger of the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia, now just Adelaide University. This mega institution now has an excessive number of students, a bloated bureaucracy and no face-to-face undergraduate lectures. The strategy was based squarely on attracting more international students to cross-subsidise the university’s other activities.

On such occasions, the reptiles always like to supply a snap of the offending, preening ponce ...Peter Malinauskas talks about the future of the Whyalla steel works. Picture: Eleni Tzanos

Then it was on to the real thought crimes.

The second related background factor is South Australia’s relatively small migrant intake. Most new migrants head to Melbourne, Sydney and parts of Queensland. In 2024-25, just under 19,000 (net) migrants headed to South Australia out of a total of 306,000 Australia-wide. Malinauskas wants more, particularly international students and skilled workers.
His presentation trots out the various half-truths about the economics of immigration. Immigration slows the ageing of the population, he argues, even though migrants themselves age. In fact, the effect is marginal and if we really wanted to alter the demographic profile of the population we would need to ramp up the migrant intake year after year.
Then there is the fiscal benefit of having more skilled migrants. Using Treasury estimates, he rattles off impressively large figures about the lifetime fiscal impact of skilled permanent migrants. Note here that these estimates are very sensitive to the discount factor used; other much lower estimates are also plausible. What the Premier fails to mention is that most skilled permanent migrants come with secondary applicants (spouse and children) and these secondary applicants provide no fiscal benefit at all. Family migrants inflict a fiscal drain.
But why just talk about permanent migrants when we have about three million temporary migrants living in the country, most of whom are working in unskilled or semi-skilled jobs? The skilled permanent intake is only about 15 per cent of the total.

An AV distraction could only add to the Groaner's rage ... South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas has raised concerns over the heightened politicisation of the migration debate. This comes after Mr Malinauskas launched an emphatic economic defence of skilled migration, warning the nation’s living standards will decline if numbers are slashed. “Don’t let politics inform our migration policy. I think what should inform our migration policy is what is in our national economic interest, but also our social interest as well,” Mr Malinauskas told News24.

Dammit, if anyone is going to set out the rationale for Pauline's bigotry, it's  going to be the Dame ...

He is on dangerous ground when he talks about productivity gains associated with immigration given that productivity has slumped as the migrant intake has soared. But his plan is to use international student fee income to boost research funding that will lift the rate of productivity growth, even though there is no evidence that this has happened thus far.
Now most serious commentators do not accept the proposition that international student education is really an export activity. But Malinauskas is not having a bar of this, claiming that any attempt to reduce the number of international students is simply a self-destructive “export restriction”. Is he being serious? Does he really think there should be no limit on the number of international student visas granted given that many of these visa holders don’t come to the country to obtain an education but to work and seek permanent residence?
The Premier sees the current anti-immigration sentiment as the result of the rise of populist parties. The reality is that the voting public has been begging the government to significantly lower the migrant intake for many years, well before the recent rise in the popularity of One Nation.
The Premier would be well-advised to check his facts. His idea that we don’t have an immigration problem, we have a housing problem is platitudinous.
Migrants add to population growth – Australia has one of the highest rates of population growth among advanced economies – and population growth causes pressure on resources. It is expensive and slow to deal with these pressures and there is understandable reluctance on the part of long-term residents to foot the bill for this expansion.
My advice to the premier is to get out more and to talk to the people who are affected by the impact of excessive migration. People understand that the visa system is being widely rorted and that more temporary migrants are extending their stay by any means. The impact on social cohesion is palpable. This is particularly the case given the geographic concentration of certain migrant groups and the increasing proportion of the population who don’t speak English.

There came a snap of two of Dame Groan's biggest fans ... Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce during a press conference in the Senate courtyard in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

What wise words, and Barners, Tamworth's never-ending shame echoed them...

One Nation is "not afraid" to drive migration to negative levels, with its Treasury spokesman saying he will follow the will of the people, not warnings from economists, in deciding how deeply to cut migration rates.
Business and the university sector have warned One Nation's proposal to cut migration by about 750,000 places over three years would devastate the economy.
Speaking on ABC National Forum, Mr Joyce said voter concerns on migration had to be respected.
"The will of the Australian people is so pronounced, this has to be dealt with, we will deal with it," Mr Joyce said. (ABC)

That's fair, it's hard to think of Dame Groan as an economist these days, she's more a voice for the bigoted hard right peeple ...

Dame Groan is pleased to have Gina, Pauline and Barners listening to her. 

For too long she was a voice in the hive mind wilderness, but now her time has come ...

Meanwhile, the Albanese government is at sixes and sevens trying to work out how to fix up the mess and to stick with the budget forecasts of net overseas migration – 245,000 this financial year and 225,000 next year.
But can we infer that Jim Chalmers is baulking at any significant reduction in the rate of immigration flowing into population growth? At this stage, the only factor holding up the growth of GDP is population growth.
Without it, it’s entirely possible that a recession could be recorded, and that is something the Treasurer wants to avoid at almost any cost. He also will have been warned about the loss of tax revenue associated with a lower NOM; tax revenue is highly sensitive to the growth of nominal GDP. But this calculation is essentially a fiction because many of the costs of migration are borne by state governments. Nonetheless, headline figures matter a great deal to this Treasurer.
We should be thankful to Malinauskas for one thing: he demonstrated an audacious selfishness for his state. This is part of a wider problem: the winners from high immigration have managed to get their way at the expense of ordinary folk, who simply plead for a more modest and balanced migration program.
It’s the inevitable route to the increasing popularity of those populist parties that Malinauskas so derides. One Nation is picking up on the electorate’s unease with having large migrant intakes and excessive numbers of temporary visa holders in the country. It’s a level of disquiet the Prime Minister cannot afford to ignore.

Never mind all that talk by economists ... Dame Groan has spoken:

One Nation is picking up on Judith Sloan's unease with having large migrant intakes and excessive numbers of temporary visa holders in the country. It's a level of disquiet any concerned bigot cannot afford to ignore.

And so to a couple of 'toons the pond couldn't fit in ...

Speaking of loon central, as the pond often does...