In which the pond is shamed by an onion muncher appearance, and Homeric Henry fails to deliver the referential goods ...

 

What's the greater shame? That the reptiles should feature the onion muncher or that the pond should waste time on him?

The pond suspects the latter. The reptiles are gunna do what reptiles do, but the pond has no excuse for its wretched, sordid behaviour.

The header: By Tony Abbott
The ‘frontier wars’ don’t belong in the Australian War Memorial

The invitation: Listen to this article
7 min

Listen to an automated voice for 7 minutes? 

The pond will stop its ears against the AI song...

The caption? Proof that a war did exist: ST Gill’s Attack on Store Dray, 1865, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.

It's just another form of black bashing, but it's the logic that gets to the pond:

Because it commemorates the service and sacrifice of the men and women who have fought for our country, the Australian War Memorial is our greatest national monument and shrine. It was originally conceived by Charles Bean, to honour the men whose exploits he’d described in the official history of the Great War.

Ergo, the noble white warriors that defeated the primitive black hordes (cf Pauline), the Australian War Memorial is the perfect place to celebrate the "service and sacrifice of the men and women who have fought for our country", producing the great and successful invasion which brought the country into being, which introduced the wondrous Anglo-Celtic, Judaeo-Xian tradition to the land, and which wiped out vast numbers of the original occupiers...

Sorry, not sorry ...

What these men did, he wrote, nothing now can alter: “The good, the bad, the greatness and smallness of their story will stand … It rises, as it will always rise, above the mists of ages, a monument to great-hearted men, and for their nation a possession forever.”
That’s been the role of the War Memorial ever since: to chronicle, to mourn, occasionally to admit and to explain, but above all to honour the deeds of the Australian armed forces, of the nation-in-uniform. It’s been intended as a place of unity and pride, rather than division and shame; a place to record and to remember what Australians have done together to defend our commonwealth, to support our allies, and to uphold our values. It’s never been intended as a place to note, other than perhaps in passing, the fights of some Australians against other Australians; and even then, say with the conscription debates, only in the context of our military campaigns.

But were they Australians? Weren't they just primitive blacks of no distinction whatsoever, singularly incapable of mounting a decent campaign up against dinkum military invaders bringing great joy to the land? (cf Pauline).

Didn't they deserve to be vanquished from the land with vigorous military actions and supporting settler guerrilla colonial campaigns so that the Anglo-Celtics might seize the country? (cf Pauline, cf Gaza)

A distracting snap: Charles Bean, official war historian, 1921. Picture: Australian War Memorial

It says something about the current management of the Australian War Memorial that they invited this charlatan to deliver this claptrap, but they did.

Perhaps it was an attempt to exorcise the deep shame of the behaviour of the invaders, but don't expect any shame from the shameless onion muncher, deploying "scare" "quotes" like that was a hands down way of winning an argument ...

That’s why the current campaign to make the so-called “frontier wars” a key element of the expanded and revamped Memorial is so misconceived. If the undoubted bloodshed between settlers and tribespeople is to be included, because the critics of colonialism now choose to characterise much of our history as a “war” between the British Empire and “First Nations”, what about the fights between “First Nations”, which were frequent and often deadly? How could events such as the Eureka Stockade or even the apprehension of the Kelly Gang be excluded, as at least they involved official direction, in a “war memorial” that would then have evolved from honouring our soldiers to eroding our conception of the nation for which they fought?
Recent claims that the “Australian wars” of the 19th century could have killed up to 100,000 Aboriginal people, largely based on projections and assumptions about the bloody work of the Queensland native mounted police, are entirely speculative.
Even the Newcastle University Massacre Map puts the Aboriginal death toll at about 11,000, from some 400 massacres around the country. And because this figure is often derived from subsequent oral history, it’s best described as a guesstimate – although that’s not to minimise the bloodshed that took place, such as around Bathurst, in Gippsland, western Victoria, the Kimberleys, outback Queensland, and particularly in Tasmania.
In the 1820s, Tasmania endured what were described, even then, as the “Black Wars”, with frequent attacks on isolated shepherds and homesteads, culminating in a declaration of martial law and the “black line”, where some 2000 soldiers and settlers attempted to corral the resistance.
Historian Henry Reynolds says that the martial law declaration plus the scale of settler casualties (almost 200 dead in a population of scarcely 20,000; with perhaps three times as many Aboriginal deaths) justifies it being called a war. On the other hand, benign interactions continued, with widow Sarah Birch intervening on at least two occasions to save the warrior Kickerterpoller from prison or execution. And governor George Arthur, along with most of the citizens of Hobart, received the remaining warriors with honour after the eventual truce.

Numbers? Numbers is the way to deny the black wars and black resistance?

At this very moment, the mad King is conducting a war with Iran, in which just there have been a mere confirmed US military forces deaths of 18, and perhaps 750 wounded. It's possibly all lies, and it's possible that thousands of Iranian civilians have died, but you don't have to do a body count to arrive at a war, cf the phoney war of 1939-40

Another distraction: Fish catch and Dawes Point, Sydney Harbour c.1813. Painting: John William Lewin

Marvel at the ways of an apologist for the killing fields:

If the undoubted violence of those much harsher times really constituted a war between two peoples, it’s hard to explain the eagerness of Aboriginal men to join their fellow Australians in the First AIF. At least a thousand Aboriginal men talked their way past racial bans on recruitment, with up to 30 of them decorated for valour. Hundreds were killed in action, including a son of 1930s activist William Cooper, who cited these deaths for king and country in his bid for Aboriginal people’s full civic rights.
It’s this Aboriginal contribution to Australia’s military campaigns, well before official discrimination ended, that has long been remembered and justly celebrated at the Australian War Memorial.
Of course, it has to be accepted that we let ourselves down as a country, and betray our best ideals, when we fail to confront the whole story of our past.
For instance, even though the subject matter of the Brereton Report is far from the whole story of our Afghanistan campaign, however contested, it is a part of it. So that’s a possible blot on our honour as a nation that can’t be ignored, even in a place dedicated to the ideals of duty, service and sacrifice.
And yes, for too long, the bloodstained frontier was amnesed from our history, in what WEH Stanner called the “great Australian silence”. Yet official goodwill dated from the very start of settlement, with governor Arthur Phillip enjoined by the British government to “live in amity” with the native peoples. When speared at Manly Cove while searching for Bennelong, he put it down to a misunderstanding and refrained from the show of punitive force that might have been expected at that time.
Then there were the explorers who could not have traversed territory unseen by British eyes without Aboriginal guides, the settlers who could not have farmed without Aboriginal help, and all the Australians from mission times to these who’ve dedicated their lives to Aboriginal advancement, that make any modern re-characterisation of our history as one of invasion and near genocide a wild pendulum swing too far.

Another visual distraction: Historian Henry Reynolds in his office at his home in Richmond, Tasmania.

For a moment the onion muncher argued against himself:

Of course, Tasmanian resistance leader Tongerlongeter is no less a part of our national story than Simpson with his donkey, and we should admire the spirit with which he defended a doomed way of life. No less than the Anzacs, he belongs to all Australians, whether their ancestors have been here for tens of thousands of years, or whether they’ve just emerged from their citizenship ceremony. The only question is: Where should it be enshrined?

Ah, a cunning deflection, an attempt to erase the guilt.

The solution: move it somewhere else, anywhere else.

What a noble tradition that is. Move the blacks to encampments, move them to remote areas, move them to a portable across the oval so other students wouldn't know they existed (oh Tamworth).

You can't keep the stupid down ...

Given that none of the participants in any “frontier war” had Australian uniforms or the authorisation of an Australian government, the place to recall and to regret might be at the Australian National Museum, or perhaps at a new wing of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies at the ANU as Reynolds suggested recently, but it’s not here at the Australian War Memorial
Tony Abbott served as Australia’s 28th prime minister. He is the author of Australia: A History (HarperCollins, 2025) This is a condensed version of a speech he delivered at the Australian War Memorial on Friday.

In Tasmania alone, the black wars had the authorisation of the British government, and its specious to propose that simply because the commonwealth didn't come into being until January 1901 that prior governments weren't "Australian" ...nor should it be discounted because  some of the military campaigns were a glorious failure ...

In November 1828 Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur declared martial law across the settled districts. It stayed in force until 1832. In practice it meant a settler could shoot an Aboriginal person without answering for it.
In October 1830, Arthur put roughly 2,200 soldiers, settlers and convicts into a human chain across the settled districts and marched it south east, intending to drive the remaining Oyster Bay and Big River people onto the Tasman Peninsula and hold them there.
It ran for seven weeks. It captured two people, a man and a boy. Everyone else walked through the line at night. (here)

It's to the eternal disgrace of the AWM that they should have pandered to this deeply stupid man, and the pond shares their disgrace ...

Meanwhile, the black wars continued atop the lizard Oz...

EXCLUSIVE
Agency delivers boy from kindy to meth den, via text
WA child protection officials removed a four-year-old Indigenous boy from his grandparents – his only carers since birth – via a text message and placed him with his meth-addicted mother.
By Ros Thomas

At this point the pond should note that the reptiles have introduced a mildly different format, part of which seems aimed at spoofing the intermittent archive.

So the pond can only note the current reptile jihads, offering the url in the hope that the archive will come good, as it often does ...

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation%2Findigenous%2Findigenous-boy-taken-from-grandparent-carers-with-while-at-kindy-by-text%2Fnews-story%2Fb526b3bd2feb6885ceabcc61118ec9bd

There were other familiar jihads ...

Migration policy is ripe for reform; all we got were tweaks
A quiet, managerial response to one of the defining political issues of the era is likely to do little to win hearts and minds.
By Lachlan Vass

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Fmigration-policy-is-ripe-for-reform-all-we-got-were-tweaks%2Fnews-story%2Fb9883bd097acd9e8ac0bedd97bfc2109

Maintain the bigotry ...

...A review of regional migration settings has also been under way since June 2024. Regional visa holders tend to live in capital cities and earn less than other skilled migrants. This is another area that appears ripe for reform, though two years later we’re still waiting.
Migration policy isn’t easy. There are difficult trade-offs to be made, and vested interests to be overcome. We should beware those who sell easy solutions. However, the government’s policies announced on Thursday are closer to procedural tweaks than systemic reform.
Lachlan Vass is research manager at e61 Institute.

The pond only inserts that closing note so it could pay tribute to the immortal Rowe (and assure correspondents they weren't missing much)...

And for a site now showing it's littered with AI, this came as an irony ...

How Iran recruited AI for surveillance and propaganda
Iran’s propaganda operators have invoked an ‘explanatory jihad’, treating propaganda as a religious and strategic duty.
By Rana Dadpour

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Fhow-iran-recruited-ai-for-surveillance-and-propaganda%2Fnews-story%2F4f85722d459de46b71e41e9fb4e8673e

...This gives Australia’s AI debate a concrete question: How do we protect people when a foreign state can use these tools to identify its critics, map their relationships and reach into the lives they built here?
Anthropic acknowledges that its safeguards allowed some surveillance-related software development. Australia’s AI Safety Institute should therefore work with providers to test whether safeguards can recognise a wider purpose across related requests, without making intrusive monitoring of ordinary users a condition of safety. According to Anthropic, one state organisation in Iran claimed to have surveilled and profiled 6388 Iranians in a year. The company then banned 16 accounts linked to the operation.
But closing accounts does not erase collected information or disable tools already developed. People entered in security databases may never know what information has been collected about them, who can access it or how it will be used. Providers and democratic governments should measure their response partly by the protection those exposed to AI-assisted surveillance receive, including confidential reporting and practical specialist support.
For people facing repression, AI safety is bound up with whether they can speak, organise and trust one another without exposing themselves or their families to danger. Keeping AI under human control is therefore an incomplete ambition unless we also ask whose control it strengthens, and what protection people have when that power is used against them.
Rana Dadpour is a research fellow at James Cook University. She came to Australia from Iran in 2012.

Never mind, Skynet will kill us all within the decade.

As noted above, it seems that the reptiles are so alarmed by illiteracy that they now must insist on providing the hive mind with the opportunity to listen rather than to read:

The header: By Henry Ergas
Don’t blame the curriculum for classroom mediocrity

Just as with the Onion Muncher, Our Henry came with a new automated voice offer:

Listen to this article
8 min

That bloody automated voice is everywhere, Skynet preparing to swoop ...

"Why cannot the ear be closed to its own destruction? Or the glistening eye to the poison of a reptile smile?"

The caption for the pathetic generic AI slop: “One Australian 15-year-old in two lacks at least one core skill needed to be a productive member of society,” writes Henry Ergas.

It was a great relief to discover that Our Henry wasn't delivering another Zionist diatribe.

But the pond should have been wary at having its wish granted, because there was no chance of being caught in a vortex of Homeric Henry this day (to borrow a phrase).

Instead it was just a bog standard outing on failing education standards (in the pond's recollection they've been failing for sixty years or more, ever since the pond left school), imbued with a deep fear of Asian competition:

In 2012, the Gillard government’s white paper on Australia in the Asian Century declared, as National Objective 9, that “By 2025, Australia will be ranked as a top five country in the world for the performance of our students in reading, science and mathematics literacy”.
Together with the Gonski report, that objective helped justify a spending splurge that, in inflation-adjusted terms, increased public expenditure per student by 24 per cent – 2½ times the increase in per capita GDP.
That the splurge benefited teachers, the teachers unions and our sprawling education bureaucracies is beyond doubt. But the results of PISA 2025 show that it failed miserably to boost Australian students into the uppermost ranks of the education ladder.
Not only did Australia miss the “top five” target in all three subjects; the distance between its scores in mathematics and science and those of the top five more than doubled. But it is not our absence from the medal podium that is truly worrying: it is the catastrophic deterioration in our performance over time.
Since 2015, the declines in our maths and reading scores are, on the OECD’s calculations, each equivalent to losing a year of learning – as if one previously worthwhile year of school were now being entirely wasted. Compared to 2003, the loss is larger still: some two previously worthwhile years of schooling now produce no measurable gain in skills.
We are, moreover, equal opportunity education vandals: just as the performance of our best students fell by more than that of their counterparts across the OECD panel, so did that of our worst. Kneecapping the best students is bad enough; but what has happened to the laggards is surely unconscionable.
The OECD defines a baseline score corresponding to the minimum needed to take part meaningfully in a technologically advanced society. Only half of Australian 15-year-olds clear that very low bar in all three subjects – science, reading and mathematics – compared to nearly 80 per cent in Singapore. Put slightly differently, one Australian 15-year-old in two lacks at least one core skill needed to be a productive member of society.
Predictably, the reaction to those results has been loud calls to reform the curriculum. That there is scope to do so is undeniable, but it is important to be realistic.
For Australia to reach fifth place in the rankings, the scores of Australia’s 15-year-olds would need to improve by about 48 points. However, very few studies of educational reforms find improvements exceeding 20 points, with gains of that magnitude depending on the reforms reaching every child and their effects lasting through to age 15. But even were those gains achievable, most would be spent standing still: the 20 points would merely offset our trend decline of about 16 points a decade in mathematics.
Nor should we assume that the curriculum explains the difference between Australian students and their better-performing counterparts. Japanese secondary students, for example, greatly outperformed Australian students in every international test administered in the late 1960s and early 1970s – a time when rote learning was still a central part of the Japanese curriculum.
The contrast in parental expectations is a crucial part of the explanation. Japanese parents, research conducted in that period showed, were far more demanding than parents in the Anglosphere. Thus, one study found that 40 per cent of American parents thought their children were performing satisfactorily, compared to only 5 per cent of parents in Japan. And unlike American parents, Japanese parents placed twice as much weight on effort as on ability, insisting that their children could and should do better by trying harder.

And yet Japan isn't exactly in a picture perfect state: Japan’s economic comeback faces hardest BOJ test in a generation

At this point the reptiles introduced damning evidence that Our Henry was right ...

Next video thumbnail
‘Kids are not learning’: TV host slams latest classroom dataNews24 host Danica De Giorgio discusses the PISA data on chaos in the classroom. “Chaotic classrooms, digital distraction, truancy … and bullying are now rife,” Ms De Giorgio said. “41 per cent report noise and disorder during lessons, one in three say classmates don’t listen to teachers, and four in 10 are distracted by phones and devices during lessons. “Kids are not learning; they are completely distracted.”

No, not that data. 

That Danica and this wild-eyed loon were talking about education was a damning indictment of the reptiles and the education system ...

 

If they're the best the reptiles can offer, no wonder vulgar youff are off the educational rails.

Then it was back to more paranoia about Asia, and at this point the pond can hear correspondents yowling. 

Where's Homeric Henry, what is this talk of Confucianism? What about the noble traditions of the Anglosphere?

Say what? Confucius was on to the Golden Rule long before Christ?

Was Christ just a disciple, cunning enough to flip that negative into a positive?

The Ancient Greeks, Romans and Persians were in to it too?

Sorry, there's no room for any of that in this deplorably degraded Homeric Henry outing ...

Still today, those differences in the emphasis on achievement are reflected in the investment East Asian parents make in after-hours tutoring. Participation in tutoring is close to universal, covering somewhere between 80 and 90 per cent of students in Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
What participation buys is, in effect, a second school system: by the age at which Korean students sit PISA, they will have spent the equivalent of about 4½ school years being tutored. Moreover, because there is intense competition between tutoring schools, the quality of that instruction is likely to be high.
It is conventional to claim that the greater focus on education in East Asia reflects the legacy of Confucianism. But while that has an element of truth, the far more important factor is that so much is at stake.
To take just one example, in Singapore, an employee in the top 15 per cent of the skill distribution earns 2.6 times as much over a working life as one in the bottom 15 per cent; and that takes no account of better working conditions, greater job security and much higher social standing. In Australia, by contrast, those in the skill ranking’s top 15 per cent earn just 1.5 times as much over a working life as those in the bottom 15 per cent.
Differences in growth rates compound the effects of those differences in the skill premium. Ultimately, an earnings premium is a percentage: its value depends on the earnings to which it applies. Faster growth makes a given percentage premium worth more in dollars; and because acquiring skills requires an outlay now, faster growth lifts the future income stream without altering the upfront cost – which means the investment becomes markedly more attractive.
The effect is anything but trivial: had earnings in Australia kept rising at reform-era rates, the extra lifetime earnings from moving to the top sixth in the skill distribution from the middle of the pack would be about 50 per cent greater than they are today.
That is not to suggest future earnings are all that matters. Rather, the point is that we have done everything we possibly can to reduce the stakes: failure rates are low; just about any school leaving score qualifies for university entrance; and only a minute share of the assistance tertiary students receive depends on academic performance. Meanwhile, the merit principle plays little role in hiring, promotion and dismissal decisions, while high marginal tax rates erode the gains from having superior skills. As if that were not enough, every government policy seems designed to entrench economic stagnation, reducing the return on acquiring skills.
Little wonder, then, that PISA shows astonishingly low levels of aspiration among Australian 15-year-olds. The motivation score of Australian students from non-immigrant backgrounds is less than half that of their US counterparts; and while the scores of students who are first-generation immigrants are significantly higher, they too remain well below the US benchmark.
We are, in short, firmly back at what Keith Hancock, in his masterpiece, Australia (1930), called the worship of the “middling standard”. “Australian democracy,” he famously wrote, “is properly anxious that everybody should run a fair race. It is improperly resentful if anybody runs a fast race. Indeed, it dislikes altogether the idea of a race, for in a race victory is to the strong. Its solicitude is for the weak, and its instinct is to make merit take a place in the queue.”
No amount of spending on schools or tinkering with the curriculum can cure that malady. It is not an unfortunate error; it is mediocrity by design.

Just a single reference to a 1930 text, and that one by Keith Hancock! An author who bored the pond way back when. At least Manning Clark offered an apocalyptic vision.

And that proves the pond's point.

Where are all the pompous, portentous references of yore? 

All the more urgently needed in a diatribe about the the failings of the education system and vulgar youff. They could have all done with some dinkum ancient Greek and Roman larnin' ...

The pond regrets that this Homeric Henry outing only deserves a D-.

Not so the infallible Pope and the immortal Rowe, who always wins top marks ...

And now, as there are more signs every day of AI infesting the hive mind, this ...

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 ...