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 ...