In which a frazzled pond performs the flag ceremony, with Japanese tea and submarines, and looks forward to martial law, pausing only to denounce Julia Gillard one more time ...

(Above: Pope gets ready for the long hot summer, and more Pope here)

Naturally the pond is not just alert and alarmed, the pond is alert and terrified.

It seems that some people are a little agitated, not because of what we've done - like invade a country on the basis of specious misinformation and lies and supervise its destruction and ruin - but because of what we are, which is to say righteous fear-mongerers desperately concerned to stay in power and kick the terrorist can down the road, and who knows, maybe help bomb a few countries further back into the stone age (damn you cowardly Britain and Germany, how can you not want to join in?)

What's needed is a brave bunch of reptiles ready to get the country into a state of complete and utter panic.

Where are the reptiles, there ought to be reptiles, send in the reptiles, oh don't worry, they're here:

It occurs to the pond that there's a good opportunity here, in the same spirit as firemen who turn pyromaniac to ensure a decent flow of fires. Well firies need their practice...

What's needed is a lone wolf to seize the moment, so that the Abbott government can dissolve parliament and declare martial law.

It's the only way forward if we're to cultivate more moments of terror and blind irrational panic - how happy is Thailand these days - and the pond stands ready to serve in the local militia.

As a coward, the pond has to confess that we've cancelled all plans to attend any football matches in any city in Australia this weekend. Oh it's poignant, the ecstasy of men in flight and yet the dire unimaginable threat to this healthy lifestyle - another pie with sauce please and don't forget the sausage rolls -  by filthy, vile perverts:

The pond remembers only too well that dreadful film Black Sunday, made in 1977, featuring Bruce Dern in a loopy scheme to blow up a football crowd.

Of course the real threat in the film was being crushed to death by a tonne of Bruce Dern certified ham, but that's another story.

What's that you say? How could the pond have been planning to attend a football match, since the pond hasn't bothered to acquire tickets?

Well that's another story, but already we've fortified and supplied the attic in which we'll live, venturing out only for survivalist goods, and to strut the community with the good old .303 to ensure the streets are full of laura norder.

Memo to self: if a blimp is sighted hovering in the air, shoot it down.

Thanks to a reader and to Leunig the pond will have no trouble weeding out dangerous elements that pose a dire threat to national stability, and will take all the steps required:

So who will be the first to go?

Well surely it has to be Leunig:

(and more Leunig here)

Yes, that's the sort of cheap, idle mockery up with which the pond will not put ... there are decent sorts of death cults, and then there are indecent death cults inclined to fiddle with children, and then there's the death cult of spaghetti worship ...

Exactly. Naturally the Terror got the marching orders just right:

And now for the pond's famous headless chook routine, always guaranteed to produce a laugh in Tamworth ...

What's that? The towel heads have taken Tamworth and are marching on Goonoo Goonoo?

Never mind, clearly the pond has turned a little light-headed, paranoid, fearful, and in a state of abject terror, and so there's barely time to notice the splendid efforts by the reptiles today.

But please let's do a tip of the hat and a wag of the finger at that ineradicable pompous bore, Paul Kelly, smoting the Labor party:

Yes indeed, and never mind the solemn promises and assurances made in relation to South Australia, since everybody knows a politician makes promises only in order to have some to break.

Instead let's pause to remember the PM's brave words:

...peculiarly baffling is Abbott’s failure to anticipate the shock his words would cause at home. Blithely, the Prime Minister picked a scab on the nation’s psyche. In his welcome to Japanese leader Shinzo Abe, Abbott related how even at the height of World War II, Australia gave the Japanese submariners, killed in the attack on Sydney, full military honours. “We admired the skill and the sense of honour that they brought to their task,” Abbott said, “although we disagreed with what they did.” 
Quite apart from the sentiments expressed, the language itself jars. In the context of imperialist aggression, “disagreed” is oddly diluted. I never expected to hear such words from a protege of John Howard, a leader whose political inspiration drew heavily from the Australian story, post-white settlement.

Well Julie Szego might be peculiarly baffled here, but the message is clear enough.

We don't just need some Japanese submarines, we should import their bloody submariners too, so we can have a decent honourable bunch who will go about their duties and their tasks with skill and a sense of honour ...

By golly, with Japanese subs and submariners, we could have won the second world war.

Oh wait, that Chris Mitchell kool aid takes time to wear off ...

What else?

Well the pond simply must tip the hat and wag the finger at Grace Collier:

Long after the hurly burly's gone and the hubbub has died and at the going down of the sun, there she is, still valiantly stalking Julia Gillard, still hoping and yearning that the Salem witch trial will produce a result.

The inquiry still needs to bring down its findings, she announces with unnerving prescience and insight.

Sadly Grace doesn't actually have any new evidence herself. But who knows what still might turn up? We can but live in grace and hope:

These are trying circumstances. Gillard has made statements under oath, there is a police investigation and a royal commission under way. She has no idea of what other evidence exists, whether any of that evidence will contradict her version of events and when she may be confronted with it.

Indeed. She has no idea.

And neither does Grace, but hey, there's always the opinions and views of Gillard's political enemies as reported in the press, because reports in the press of the views of the likes of George "the bookcase man and have I got a filter for you" Brandis and Julie "what asbestos" Bishop are authoritative pieces of damning evidence, to be faithfully recycled at the drop of a hat.

Does Grace have the first clue how a sulphur-crested cockatoo looks and sounds?

Yep.

George Brandis was reported by Fairfax as saying Gillard “materially misled” the authorities in the application process and Tony Abbott accused Gillard of “unethical conduct and possibly unlawful behaviour”. 

And so on.

Well they would say that, but how does Grace think sounding like a parrot with a particularly limited brain helps?

Is she in training for the Little Miss Echo of the year award?  Could it get any sillier? Why yes:

People who say Gillard did nothing wrong rely on the premise that she did not know what the association was used for and therefore cannot be blamed. 
That may be true, but it entirely misses the point. The allegation is simply that it was wrong of Gillard to help set the association up in the first place. This allegation relies on significant documentation for its basis. Now Gillard’s statement has added to that evidence. 
In my opinion, this allegation presents a risk for Gillard, both in terms of an adverse finding and possible charges. In due course, this sorry chapter in our history will draw to a close. 
Findings will be made, or not, and charges will be laid, or not. No amount of public barracking by ignorant commentators (and there are many) will change that.

Yep, there's Grace leading with her opinion, in a way that really can only be described as public barracking - she's guilty, guilty as hell, the PM says so, Brandis says so, Bishop says so, it must be true - and with a fine flourish of ignorance, in the process relying on press reports, and other recycled information ... and with not a jot or a whit of new information or new evidence ... just routine speculation of a natteringly negative kind ...

And yet she has the cheek to denounce public barracking and ignorant commentators ...

Only in the land of the reptiles ... only where the Chris Mitchell kool aid is at its strongest, in its most refined and purest form ...

Now if you'll excuse the pond, we're running terribly late for the flag raising ceremony conducted every day at dawn in the front yard in the pond household.

Lately we've taken to supplying an armed escort, because it says in the constitution we have the right to bear arms ...

And we have to stroll the perimeter to check the fortifications and make sure the bunker remains fully equipped and staffed.

It seems that stingers are the latest threat, threatening and terrorising the deep north:

Those bloody deviant stingrays. (But how did they fail to snatch that thing in his hands? Come on stingers, get it together).

Already the news is in from the west that the war on sharks is over, and the sandgropers have lost. EPA recommends WA government's shark cull plan not go ahead.

Shark drum lines not to be implemented.

WA govt unlikely to appeal shark decision.

And so just as the north has been lost to the toads, the west has been lost to the sharks.

There's an explanation of course: the sandgropers had a fuckwit for a general.

He couldn't handle the sharks, and he's making a bit of a mess of the economy too (Moody's downgrades Western Australia's rating)

Thank the long absent lord he's completely unlike our federal leaders, valiantly battling to save our way of life and the Jesus death cult.

Now let's go bomb the shit out of somebody for tampering with our way of life - that'll learn them good - and is there a lone wolf in the house?

Please, it's the only way we'll get to martial law, and a decent way of life ... as Robert Shaw said

Now, just blink for "yes", or die for "no".