In which there's guns and climate ...

 

The pond keeps wishing it could cover other comedy elsewhere, as in Sunak accuses Greek PM of ‘grandstanding’ over Parthenon marbles.

Sure, the jokes aren't great ...

Starmer criticised Sunak during prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, accusing him of having “lost his marbles”...

...Starmer said on Wednesday the row was another example of the prime minister’s incompetence. Starmer said: “It is ironic that he has suddenly taken such a keen interest in Greek culture when he has clearly become the man with the reverse-Midas touch.”
The Labour leader added, with reference to the recent controversy over James Cleverly’s bad language in parliament: “Everything he touches turns to … perhaps the home secretary can help me out here.”

... but it's great to see Britain still wreathed in dreams of imperial glory and the right to keep the loot it scored from looting the world. Then with a skip and a jump you can be reading Return the Parthenon marbles. The British Museum has too much stuff anyway ...

The pond did wonder about that. Can you ever have enough stuff, especially if you've looted it? The pond is an avid collector of stuff (junk if you will) and to think you could just roam the world looting it ... who wouldn't like that sort of stuff?

Meanwhile, back in the land of Oz, the pond can't mention matters before the court and so must resort to cartoons ...

Or how to do a Ben Roberts-Smith, part two ...

Meanwhile, back at the lizard Oz, there was petulant Peta perched like a raven in her usual Thursday spot, on the far right of the digital edition saying "Dutton evermore ..."

The pond did its best to read, and perhaps offer, a serve of petulant Peta, but the urging on of Captain Spud and the special pleading and the need to strike saw the pond stumble, as it usually does, and these were the pars that brought the pond to a grinding halt ...

The renewable energy crusade, with transmission lines through pristine bush and prime agricultural land, and ugly wind turbines off the coast disrupting whale migration and decimating bird life, is starting to alienate the conservation forces it’s supposed to please.
Then there’s the increased risk of blackouts this summer as coal-fired power stations age and there’s no gas back-up for intermittent wind and solar energy (because to buy off the Greens the ALP is now anti-gas, too). 

It's the litany-like aspect that gets to the pond, encapsulated in the "then there's". 

What's even more bizarre is the way that petulant Peta can suddenly turn into one of those bush greenie save the whale Nimbin types without even a hint of a blush or a sign of shame ...

Soon enough, then there's just about everything wrong with the world attributed to the federal government, and the pond wonders where the small government crusade went ... because it's easy enough to find the fear and division ...

The same happened when the pond looked below the fold. 

There was the bouffant one going all cry baby and having a sook at barbs directed at Captain Spud, as if a Queensland plod couldn't handle the heat. 

And then there was simplistic Simon having a change of heart ... and then there was Jack suddenly discovering that there was a clown show down south - it's been running and doing great business for years - and then there was Cheng Lei trying to get the bromancer agitated, and the reptiles couldn't even get his """ mojo working properly ...

The pond was at a loss, and decided to give Jason a go, and managed to get right to the end ...

For a moment it seemed as if Jason was in the grip of reality ...

Before our mind’s eye, the people and institutions we looked to for guidance and leadership turned the terrorists into the victims and the victims into the terrorists. The strategy has been so successful that not even many of our politicians can make a distinction between the evil acts of the terrorists and the desperate plight of the people in the Palestinian territories. 

"Before our mind's eye" is one of those remarkable pieces of gibberish too rarely used in recent times. 

If you trust an American dictionary, it means "the mental faculty of conceiving imaginary or recollected scenes", as in "used her mind's eye to create the story's setting," also "the mental picture so conceived."

Still the pond took Jason's point. It should be possible to separate out the evil acts of terrorists and fundamentalists, whatever their Tasmanian tiger stripe, and that includes the barking mad far right members of the current Israeli government, from the desperate plight of the people in the Palestinian gulags ...

The pond had, in its mind's eye, thought a lot of people were doing that already - but then Jason wrapped up proceedings with a paranoid rant ...

...Right now the West’s enemies are co-ordinating a network of state and non-state actors, criminals, terrorists and international cartels while inspiring sympathisers at home to launch a perpetual multipolar conflict in which Australia is also a target.

Their cunning will be in not triggering a world war. The aim is to break the US-led Western resolve by targeting our centres of gravity, belief in ourselves, driving splinters of hot dissent among Western populations who are now less sure of themselves and more divided – populations losing faith in everything that has made us strong since the Enlightenment.

The Iranian-funded and co-ordinated attack on Israel and its multifaceted, hybrid nature is fourth-generational guerrilla warfare deployed against the West.

This is the world we must now be prepared to face.

Jason Thomas is the director of Frontier Assessments. 

What the hell is Frontier Assessments, the pond wondered ... and sure enough ...

The pond will leave the "strategic methodology" to another day ... because that logo was a stand-out winner ...

The pond suddenly got it ... using to lizard Oz to create uncertainty to create value was a great business strategy ... and that camel was the finishing touch, the final flourish ...

As a result of all that, as the lock-picking lawyer might say, the pond doesn't have much for stray readers this day ...

The pond did want to pay tribute to Gra Gra for providing a bit of gun filler ...

It's a working-class pursuit? For its sins, the pond was once in a gun club, back in bush days, and there was a strange mix of academics, cockies who thought they were cowboys come to do low-slung quick draws, toffs who'd spent months making their own special handle, and the odd extremely well off tradie.

Sure it was a uni town, and it heavily skewed male, but it wasn't cheap. The entry point might have been relatively economical, but you could drop oodles of cash on the weaponry ... a bit like wanting a model aeroplane and then ending up with a giant-sized impersonation of a jet...

There's another trouble too ... stories from the United States, usually laden with some kind of rich irony ...

That's what Gra Gra is coming up against, and the odd random drive-by shooting doesn't help ...

Actually Gra Gra that line about "ninety-nine per cent" is a bit of a worry.

In the US, even one per cent can create mayhem ... you know, Suspect pleads not guilty in shooting of Palestinian students in Vermont ...

There's nothing particularly mystical in having "no idea about firearms". 

Guns can make satisfying holes in bits of paper - the pond tended to favour making holes in the supporting woodwork - or they can make unsatisfying holes in human flesh, or animal flesh if that's your fetish ...

But at least you got a huge snap of yourself in the lizard Oz, so consider the "knowledge" as doing its work ...

Sorry about the down-sizing, but the problem with guns is that they can easily turn into a cult, and you only have to look to the United States and Pew Research, Key facts about Americans and guns, to see how deeply weird the cult can get ...

The Beeb even has a tab, US gun laws, to keep track of some of the weirdness ...

There was an even deeper weirdness ... the pond had never imagined for a nanosecond that it might approve of anything John Howard did, but there you go. 

It's a bit like discovering petulant Peta is an environmentalist and a whale lover ,or that Barners wants to save Tamworth whales and Assange ...

You see Gra Gra, guns keep getting a bad press or at least an ominous cartoon ...

Never mind, have a last gobbet ...

Actually, Gra Gra, and the pond knows this from experience, it's possible for guns owned in one state to completely escape the minds of plods in other states ... and as for the rest, couldn't you just settle for saying that guns are penis substitutes and give off a very pleasing bang, a satisfying discharge, an almost orgaamic explosion? 

Sure, you can study the history of things going bang, but it's strange how few get interested in studying the history of the victims of things that go bang ...

With that, the pond paused for the infallible Pope of the day ...

It didn't have anything to do with what had gone before, and has nothing to do with the bonus to follow, but it's a tidy reminder of how big pharma can be its own worst enemy when it comes to sales jobs on vaccines and such like, which have changed the world enormously for the better ...

And so to take up petulant Peta's gripe about the climate, with the reptiles doing a bit of a climate build-up ...

What's remarkable about this?

It's been some 15 days since the lizard Oz ran Lloydie of the jungle with a satisfyingly terrifying snap of whale killers ...

15 whole days! The pond has been starved of snaps of whale killers ...

And so on, and yet here were the reptiles reporting as if any of this climate change talk might be true ...

But where's Lloydie? 15 days ago, he was full of gloom ...

We need more lines like "It's too late to change the weather"! ... though the pond would have liked a line about whether we like it or not, we'll just have to weather the weather ...

Sure the reptiles slipped. in a couple of snaps ...

And they couldn't do the story without raising saucy doubts and fears ...

Domestic pressure? Well they don't have to come. They can live on stilts ...

But where's Lloydie? You know, with a satisfying snap of dinkum coal, up there with terrifying snaps of whale-killing machines ...

Bad news on nuking the country? 

But at the very last minute, the reptiles turned to Ted for tales of nuking the country, not to mention gassing it ...

It turns out that Ted is off to COP28 to solve a problem the reptiles have spent decades assuring the pond didn't exist, wasn't happening, and now was ruining the bush and killing the whales ...

The reptiles seem to be in a dire state of uncertainty. Sure Ted's in de Nile, getting agitated about a problem that doesn't exist, but where's Lloydie when he's needed? 

It's going to be a right royal circus ... per the Graudian's Damian Carrington ...

And so on ... and on ... and how better to pass the time than talk up gas and coal with the reptiles, or nuking the country with Ted, or  developing oil and gas reserves with the UAE ... 

And so to end with a tribute cartoon by the immortal Rowe. The pond doesn't usually run with tribute cartoons, but that decision to resign on 26th January was a genuine touch of class ...

In which the pond gets comfortably numb with the bro and "Ned", and then goes full comatose with Dame Slap ...

 

The pond would like to make it known that it is available for televisual interviews for a modest payment of rent, though in Sydney these days the pond would expect around $2,500 a week to keep up a minimalist lifestyle. 

The pond can't promise a Walkley nomination, but can promise the feeling of integrity and honest journalism. Unfortunately the pond will not be able to make it incountry to sign a contract to seal the deal - it turns out that navigating the new Rozelle interchange is incomprehensible ...

Meanwhile, looters gotta loot and enjoy the looting, and the Tories are devoted to their looting ... but that's another country, and the pond thought it might start the day gently with another bout of bro hysteria, because the war with China by Xmas is going very badly, and the bromancer's gears seem to be stuck in grinding repetition ...

Why does the pond find the bro's hysteria so soothing? Could it be the reptiles' uncanny skill at finding the most objectionable snaps of politicians available, grimacing and gnashing teeth, while the bromancer grinds away?

Could it be the way that the reptiles show off the sort of kit the bro wanks about before drifting into a feverish nightmare each night?

Whatever, the more the bro hysterically rages and rants, the more the pond drifts off into another world ... and it doesn't take long before the pond is feeling comfortably numb ...

Ah, Adolf got a mention and so Godwin's Law, and what a way to end it all, not with a whimper but a bloody good set of bangs ... and yet the pond remained comfortably numb. 

Enduring relentless bro screeching over the years is perhaps not the most obvious way to achieve peace of mind, but the pond can recommend it as being better than vaping ... when all is lost, you just step out of the tent, perhaps for an extended time, and nirvana awaits ...

Try it sometime, perhaps with a hammer. Pound away at the head with a hammer, or the bro's columns, either will do, and then when the hammering stops,  the ensuing silence, the feeling of pleasant relief, will be almost unnerving ... 

Sure, the war with New Zealand is in deep trouble, but that leaves plenty of time to nuke the planet ...

Not satisfied by the level of numbness achieved by that short outing, the pond moved on to the master of numbness, some quality time with nattering "Ned", this day agitated by education, and with the news that we'll certainly all be rooned, at least until Captain Spud arrives to fix things ...

Ben is, of course, one of those useful idiots who can be joined with the standard reptile litany of the sky falling in ... with "Ned" in the starring role of Chicken Little ...

Usually this sort of educational rage, blather about the long march through the institutions, can be found on Sky News after dark (no link, the pond doesn't link to reptiles) ...

Ben himself has spoken of climate science, in a posting where the pond had hoped that finding a readable font and a useful colouring of said font - as opposed to an impenetrable white fog - might have proved that educational standards in online literacy was on the rise ...

The pond could have tweaked it, improved the contrast, but the beige look went with the beige messaging ...

It is of course grist to the reptile mill, because the reptiles have made a living out of trashing climate science for decades ... 

Ah, so it's all the fault of the Rudd-Gillard era, and yet the pond seems to recall - vaguely - that there have been quite a few governments of a different stripe in between ...

At this point, just to reinforce the message, the pond notes that there was a snap of Ben, a snap of Chairman Rudd, and a snap of the current infidel, looking deeply puzzled, as often happens with reptile snaps ...

The pond would of course rather be off reading Marina giving her usual good Hydeing in Brilliant: a Cop28 to save the planet – staged by oil barons who imperil it.

Inter alia ...

...Speaking of Lord Moore, can it really be only two years since Boris Johnson was leaving his own climate conference early by private jet, in order to have dinner with this longtime climate change denialist, who sought to persuade his former Telegraph employee that it was definitely worth going all-out to save Moore’s friend Owen Paterson from a minor wrist-slap from the parliamentary standards commissioner? Why, I do believe it can. Charles turned out to be wrong about that, and the resulting shitstorm was the beginning of the end of Johnson’s premiership. This week, Moore was railing against the possibility of the Telegraph titles insidiously becoming paid mouthpieces of a government, which somehow means so much more from someone who once refused to pay his licence fee to the BBC but wanted Johnson to make him chairman of it...

And also this ...

...Cop28 seems to be taking on the character of one of those late-stage Fifa tournaments, where World Cups are really just an international bribery exchange to which the football merely serves as the backdrop. How else to explain Monday’s revelation by the BBC and non-profit Centre for Climate Reporting that Al Jaber and the UAE planned to use the conference to pitch and promote oil and gas deals to foreign governments including China, Brazil, Germany and Egypt? We have to say “planned”, because Cop28 spokesfolk now say the documents detailing the strategy “were not used by Cop28 in meetings” and that “private meetings are private”. No doubt, no doubt.

Even so, Al Jaber’s people seem quite upset that this has all come out. Amusingly, even the Telegraph reported the story, having previously not really regarded such things as newsworthy, but presumably having a vested interest now it is itself the target of a vested interest. For what it’s worth, I agree with Charles Moore that a UAE state-backed takeover of the Telegraph titles would obviously be a bad idea, not least because it would mean a tragic farewell to the Telegraph’s fearless climate change coverage (27 November-28 November 2023. Taken too soon).

Meanwhile, the pond must make do with gloomy old "Ned", apparently unaware that the lizard Oz's fearless exposition of climate science was taken way too soon, somewhere around 2000 ...

Provided the mission doesn't mention climate science, the reptiles are right behind you Ben ...

Yes, yes, it's always a good hoot, when someone like "Ned" talks about resistance to evidence-based research ...

Okay, fair cop, the pond has simply used Ben and "Ned" for a little counter-programming, and the strategy has worked because the pond has arrived at the last gobbet with the planet and Australian education in ruins ... not to mention the war with Chyynnah also in ruins ...

Sarah Henderson is your answer Ben? She's your saviour? Well she surely suits "Ned" and the reptile climate science education agenda.

Yes Ben, soon enough education will be mightily improved by potent warriors, celebrated by the immortal Rowe ...

And so to a special bonus. There she was, positioned in her favourite spot, on the extreme far right of the digital edition of the lizard Oz ...

The pond spends a lot of time red carding Dame Slap, but decided she could given a run this day, if only to help the pond with a little more counter-programming ...

Meanwhile, speaking of another country and journalism, far removed from planet Janet ... there was Margaret Sullivan in the Graudian with The Israel-Hamas war is deadly for journalists. Lives are being lost, and truth...

...“The world needs to know what is going on,” but that’s getting harder all the time, Clayton Weimers, the executive director of RSF (the international organization also known as Reporters Without Borders), recently said.

RSF’s representatives, in a meeting at the White House this week, urged Joe Biden to do more to support journalists.

The overwhelming majority of the dead appear to be Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli airstrikes. As of Monday, the CPJ reports that of the 57 journalists and media workers known to have died during the current war, 50 were Palestinian, four Israeli and three Lebanese.

RSF has pleaded with the Biden administration to put more pressure on the Israeli government to protect civilian lives, including those of journalists. RSF also objected to the difficulty of getting necessary supplies – chargers, phones and camera equipment – to those working in Gaza.

“Meanwhile, the journalists in Gaza cannot leave, and the only outside media permitted to enter have been invited to embed with the Israeli Defense Forces and submit to strict rules controlling what they can see and share,” the organization said in a statement.

While this embedded coverage is valuable, RSF notes, “it is no substitute for independent reporting”.

Especially painful to the broader journalism world is the loss of Belal Jadallah, the press freedom defender who made an important contribution to a CPJ report published in May, “Deadly Pattern”. It revealed a complete lack of accountability in Israeli military killings of journalists over the past two decades.

“His killing leaves a gaping hole in the media landscape in Gaza,” said Sherif Mansour, who coordinates CPJ’s Middle East programs.

The willingness of the Netanyahu government to kill to control the information flow is notorious ... at least if you don't live on planet Janet ...

Actually the Graudian manages to publish articles that the reptiles of the lizard Oz have never shown the slightest desire to run ...

A little counter-programming for the poor buggers caught up in the war of the fundamentalists, as with "Rozan" not so long ago, Israel told us to move to south Gaza. Then it said it would bomb the south too. So where do we go now?

...Israeli officials are already considering expanding their ground invasion into Khan Younis. That prospect is too great for us to imagine. Almost a million people have already had to leave northern Gaza for the south. We are running out of food. Taps are decorative at this point, as is the fridge. There is never any running water or electricity. All the canned food and pasta we had has run out. Flour is the main thing we have left. We are having to pluck fruit off the trees in the garden and bake bread on wood fires, or use our neighbour’s clay oven. We still make dangerous trips to buy supplies, but it is so hard to find anything in the shops.

The streets of Khan Younis are packed. Displaced people, if they are not staying with relatives or hosts, are sleeping in schools, in tents and in the streets. The nights are very cold, even for us with roofs over our heads. All of our windows are either already broken or are left open to avoid glass shattering from the impact of nearby bombing. We don’t have enough blankets, and several dozen of us got the flu. Winter is really setting in and those in tents are most affected by the rain.

If we are forced to leave Khan Younis too, where are we supposed to go? We hate to think that Israel really wants to drive us out of Gaza altogether and into Sinai, but at this point it is a genuine concern. We are already hearing statements about turning Khan Younis “into a soccer field” and driving people out as the “solution” for Gaza. The world watched as Israeli missiles destroyed our homes, our mosques and churches, our hospitals. They watched as entire families were wiped out and, according to an update from Unicef’s executive director three days ago, more than 5,300 children were killed. Our greatest fear is that they will continue to watch as those who survive the carpet bombing are driven out of their homeland altogether.

You won't find any of this in the lizard Oz, but you will find lots of snaps ... best get them out of the way ...

You won't find this sort of snap ...

It is of course another chance for Dame Slap to bash the ABC, and soon enough embark on a general rant ...

Meanwhile, in the cause of counter-programming, the pond found Sam Wolfson's Antisemites supporting Israel is weird. Jewish support of them is even weirder appropriate for a gathering of loons ...

Perhaps the most bizarre spectacle of the past month has been watching some of the world’s most wretched antisemites lining up to give their unalloyed support to Israel. Even more jarring has been their embrace by those who are supposed to advocate for Jewish safety.

These people include the radical US pastor John Hagee, who previously claimed that Adolf Hitler had been born from a lineage of “accursed, genocidally murderous half-breed Jews” and sent by God to help the Jews reach the promised land. (He apologized in 2008 for some of his remarks.) He was invited to speak last Tuesday to an audience of thousands at the March for Israel in Washington, organised by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, to help “condemn the rising trend of antisemitic violence”.

Tommy Robinson, a leading member of the British far right, recently called on people to go to the Cenotaph, a war memorial in central London, to “protect” it from pro-Palestinian protesters. Last year Robinson defended Kanye West, saying it was obvious that “there are powerful Jewish people, claiming to be Zionists, who have their fingers on buttons of power in the entertainment industry, in big tech … and in governments” and that Jews “generally speaking, at least the white European Jews, have an average IQ of 110, so inevitably those Jews will rise to the top of corporations”.

Despite Robinson’s history of inflammatory and conspiratorial remarks, a 2019 Guardian investigation found that many of the groups bankrolling or supporting his organisation were rightwing pro-Israel thinktanks in the US, including Middle East Forum and the Gatestone Institute.

Then there’s US presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr, who earlier this year repeated the conspiracy theory that Covid-19 was “targeted” to spare Jewish and Chinese people. When he was accused of propagating antisemitism, which he denies, Kennedy chose to blast representatives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for insufficient support of Israel, saying that “criticism of Israel is a false narrative” and “Israel is a shining star on human rights in the Middle East”.

Kennedy was rewarded with an op-ed in Jewish Journal, a pro-Israel publication, titled “RFK is an Ally, not an Antisemite”, which argued that despite his comments “RFK’s unwavering commitment to Israel as a Jewish state is sincere and integral to his political values”.

Europe’s far-right political parties have a long history of promoting antisemitism. Yet Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, the AfD in Germany and Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party in Hungary all have given unequivocal support to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. Indeed, Netanyahu considers Orbán a close ally and often tweets support for him.

Speaking of Orbán that reminded the pond of a story in the Nine rags about the onion muncher a couple of days ago...

Tony Abbott’s freelance life after politics just keeps on getting better and better.

He’s joined the board of Fox Corporation, was seen recently hanging out with Canadian lefty-baiting provocateur Jordan B. Peterson and continues as an adviser to the UK board of trade.

Amid this already busy schedule, Abbott has joined hard right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán-sponsored Danube Institute as a guest speaker and will contribute to the Hungarian Conservative magazine.

“He believes that the Danube Institute offers a platform where valuable exchanges and debates take place, where different ideas and opinions can be given space,” the institute says via a translated statement.

The Danube Institute has an interesting history. As well as being funded by the Hungarian government (we’re keeping an eye on Abbott’s foreign influence transparency register, which as of Sunday afternoon did not list Danube), it’s developed a rather unhealthy interest in Europe’s changing demographics.

The Hungarian PM, a self-described “illiberal democrat,” is best known for ultra-right prototypical bare-chested nationalism and hostility to press freedom, the LGBTI community and immigrants (including a rant about how different races should not mix, which an advisor labelled “pure Nazi”).

It places Abbott in a difficult position – Hungary is at constant loggerheads with the European Union, an ally of Australia, who accuse Orban of eroding democratic norms.

Will Tony canvass that in his speeches?

We tried to ask, but he didn’t get back to us.

Some might be wondering how this is relevant to Dame Slap, but Wolfson carried on ...

In the US, there is Donald Trump, whose election was heralded by antisemites’ biggest public rally in the US in a generation, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Yet because Trump was also demonstrably pro-Israel in his foreign policy stances, notably moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, he receives ongoing support and endorsements from many pro-Israel pressure groups. Some of them were nervous when he criticised Israel’s lack of military preparedness for the Hamas attacks, but he’s now back in the fold, adding “#IStandWithBibi”to his Truth Social posts.

As anyone who has dipped into the pond knows, Dame Slap famously slipped on a MAGA cap and slipped out into the New York night to celebrate the arrival of the mango Mussolini, and now here we are ...

And then there was this from Wolfson ...

This month Elon Musk agreed with a post on Twitter that said Jewish people have been pushing “dialectical hatred against whites”. The owner of the account, which had fewer than 6,000 followers, went on to say he was “deeply disinterested in giving the tiniest shit now about western Jewish populations”.

“You have said the actual truth,” Musk said. This was not an unusual stance for Musk, who denies that he is antisemitic. He has flirted with white nationalism many times, and earlier this year he remarked that the Jewish billionaire George Soros “reminds me of Magneto” (the evil X-Men villain, who, like Soros, is a Holocaust survivor).

As expected, Musk was admonished by the Biden administration, advertisers on X and Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, the world’s most prominent pressure group in protecting Jews from antisemitism. Musk has attacked Greenblatt and the ADL many times, threatening them with lawsuits, saying the group over-polices language on social media and calling them “ironically the biggest generators of anti-Semitism on this platform”.

Netanyahu didn’t bother to admonish Musk at all – the pair are friends, and Netanyahu has called him the “Edison of our time” even after many examples of Musk giving a platform to antisemites.

Musk did not remove the original post; instead he denied he was an antisemite and promised to come down hard on those who defended Palestinian rights on X, saying he would remove users who posted phrases like “decolonization” and “from the river to the sea”, which he said were “euphemisms” that “necessarily imply genocide”.

Greenblatt was thrilled: “I appreciate this leadership in fighting hate.”

Over and over again, alleged antisemites or those who give platforms to antisemites have had their offenses chalked off by some in the pro-Israel movement, as long as they show sufficient deference to the Israeli project.

That reminded the pond of another story ...Mayor Of Paris Quits X, Calling It A ‘Gigantic Global Sewer’

Well yes, but to its shame, the pond can't boast. 

The pond spends a lot of time in a branch of News Corp's gigantic global sewer, and frequently spends time with sewer dwellers of the Dame Slap kind ...

These narcissistic sewer rats spend a lot of time preening and pomping around, boasting about being righteous ...

It takes a zealot to spot a zealot?

Perhaps, but please allow one last piece of counter-programming ...Nesrine Malik in The Graudian with The war in Gaza has been an intense lesson in western hypocrisy. It won’t be forgotten...

...Unlike Iraq, it has not taken years for the bodies to pile up, for the evidence to mount and to prove that the venture made no one safer, was merciless and misguided – and ultimately for confidence and trust in political leadership to leach away. Gaza is happening in real time, in some instances livestreamed. The bombardments are so relentless and concentrated that entire families have been wiped out. Thousands have been displaced, dragging their children in makeshift sleds (another harrowing scene). There is also the moral force of the children. Not just their deaths, estimated at up to 6,000 in less than two months, but their orphaning, displacement, and deprivation of food and water in a besieged Gaza that is now, according to Unicef, “the most dangerous place in the world to be a child”.

Humans can be taught to accept an awful lot that does not make sense, but there is a limit to what people can be plausibly told is not possible. Much of consent in politics is secured by popular agreement that there are things that are simply above the average citizen’s pay grade, and even beyond government control. Not being able to persuade “the only democracy in the Middle East” of something that seems plainly obvious, that the horrific events of 7 October cannot be erased by even more horror, is not one of them. The lesson is brutal and short: human rights are not universal and international law is arbitrarily applied.

Well yes, but the  pond learns that brutal lesson each day by reading the lizard Oz ... and brutalists from the school of Dame Slap ...

As for Palestinians caught in the maw? Not Dame Slap's and as for balance, you might as well talk to Dame Slap's hand or to the MAGA cap perched on her head ...

Meanwhile, on another planet, viewers of the ABC might have caught up on a story on YouTube (no need to give personal details to the app), headed Government strikes Murray-Darling Basin deal with Greens ...

Truth to tell, the pond only mentions it to note the many ways the country is stuffed, much like theh planet ... but not as the reptiles imagine it, more in the way that the infallible Pope describes the Murray-Darling basin ...