In the great hall of Caterism ...

Of course the pond is reeling ...

It's not just Chris Mitchell ... the whole world is falling apart. 

Thank heavens she'll remain as a senior writer and the world won't be deprived of her scintillating insights ...

But in these troubled times, the pond knew its duty ...

Attention must be paid, even if it involves paying attention to the Caterists, and so the pond plunged on regardless, heedless of the consequences or the thickets of briars ...

Remember, in a monoculture only the loudest weeds should be allowed to flourish ...

Ah, how brave of the Caterists to mention Vietnam.

What a wonderful war that was, and how easily the United States could have won it, if it hadn't been for the students and the leftist white anters at home.

Why it was well known at the time that the Chinese were behind it all, and that helps explain the very easy and smooth relationship between the Chinese and the Vietnamese right at this moment. As Vice news so elegantly put it, Vietnam is pissed that China is blowing up the South China Sea.

And what's this, Philippines, Vietnam to sign strategic partnership ...

The pond can remember discussing the domino theory with blinkered conservatives of the Caterist kind aeons ago, and still wonders what the United States had hoped to achieve as it dumped more bombs and chemicals on Vietnam than had been managed in the second world war ... apart from the notion that bombing a country back to the stone age is a sure way to produce a flourishing civilisation ...

Of course you won't see the conceited types of the Caterist kind looking back ,and wondering about the carnage, or offering up a sense of outrage, though that country still endures the consequences of chemicals and mines to this very day ... nor will you see them setting off for a degree in colonial studies and western culpability, nor show the slightest sense of bewildered irony ...

How weird can it get? Try this in the NY Times here ...

Because of China’s recent territorial grabs at sea and its complete disregard for international law, we are now back to square one. Without a major strategic realignment, Vietnam’s island territories will simply be gobbled up by China. Our country must dispose of the myth of friendship with China and return to what Ho Chi Minh passionately advocated after World War II: an American-Vietnamese alliance in Asia. 
Ho’s sympathies with the United States and its platform of self-determination for all peoples went as far back as the Paris Peace Conference after World War I. Beginning in World War II, the Americans were the only foreign army to fight by Ho’s side against fascism in Indochina; the Office of Strategic Services (the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency) helped to train and set up the first Vietnamese-American guerrilla unit at the end of 1944.
It wasn’t a coincidence that Ho’s inaugural address, when he declared the creation of an independent Vietnam in September 1945, referred to America’s Declaration of Independence. He saw the noble values of democracy, freedom, equality and justice as the most important guiding principles for Vietnam. 
In a series of eight letters and telegrams to President Harry S. Truman, and three to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes in 1945-46, Ho denounced French colonialism and clearly stated “our goal is full independence and full cooperation with the United States” and expressed the Vietnamese people’s admiration for “the American people whose fine stand for the noble ideals of international Justice and Humanity, and whose modern technical achievements have so strongly appealed to them.” Regrettably, most of his letters were ignored. History is littered with many such missed opportunities. In this case, there were disastrous consequences.

Now there's a bitter irony, but it quite distracted the pond from the Caterists, no doubt blathering on about the Khmer Rouge, without the foggiest notion of how that particularly terrible brand of terrorism might owe something to the antics of Nixon and Kissinger ...

Actually it's galvanised some of them to start up a Muslim political party, which the pond welcomes as much as it welcomed the DLP, the Australian Scientology Party, the Australian Zionist Party and the Australian Pellists for a Brighter Future party, though all of those had a tad more appeal than the Australian Calvinists for an Angry Anglican attitude to women's rights and gays Party ...

The pond is more in the camp of the "Make religions pay taxes" party ...

But okay, the pond is a welcoming sort and is willing to overlook the way that imported British sods of the Caterist and Abbott kind, or even the Bolterish antics of a Dutch type shouldn't lead to a jaundiced view of the English or the Dutch in general.

Which is why the pond is always pleased to present the Caterist view, even when it verges on the sublimely silly, or is wont to turn to hysteria, with an unpleasantly high pitched tone carrying a rising sense of peevish alarm, while dumping the job of fixing everything on to migrants, no doubt because deep down it's all their fault:

Well the pond can make a start on this cultural separatism.

For a start, the wretches who turn out the halal food at Faheen Fast Food - oh the pond had the chicken tandoor last night, how sweet it tasted - must stop it at once, and start serving up a Caterist stodge of a stew, or better still, three vegetables and a chop, or a sausage.

This culinary cultural separatism must at once come to an end. The pond is prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Oh how sweet the chicken tandoor tasted, but as Pauline Hanson herself can tell you, halal is just a way of funding terrorism ... no matter what those cardigan, leather elbow clad leftists at the ABC might say with their fact checking ....

But, but, you say, food isn't culture, and all the pond can do is refer you back to the Caterist talk of a restaurant in Paris ... because it seems an attack on a restaurant is enough of a reason to dismiss all talk of colonialism and colonial adventurism and so the axis of weevils are redeemed and sanctified ...

As for the rest, one thing is certain.

When the Caterists talk of a harder edge, you can bet they're not talking about a little more Thai chili in the mix.

They're talking about turning the world into a monoculture of Caterist thinking, a bleak dour world as dull as mashed potatoes and sausage ... with not even a hint of Worcestershire sauce ...

Meanwhile, in other country, Tom Tomorrow is a contender for a Pulitzer ...

Whether he wins or not, there's more Tom and other cartoonists here and here's another one to cleanse the palate after a dangerously high dose of Caterism.