In which Sunday is no time for rest for summer school students involved in their herpetology studies ...

 

It has come to the pond's attention that some slacker students prefer to lobster at the beach instead of diligently pursuing their studies.

The pond concedes that death by skin cancer is preferable to death by reptile, and also concedes that we're dealing with a wretched B team, those with nothing to do and vain enough to keep doing it through the silly season. The pond also admits that it should apologise for its belated summer school publishing schedule, which sees astonishing reptile EXCLUSIVES land far too late in the weekend...

Take this news flash ...

John Howard would not back Donald Trump to be president again

Sadly, in the stripped back summer school edition, students must imagine the accompanying snap of the old dodderer out and about yet again in reptile la la land ...

Former prime minister John Howard would not back Donald Trump for the US presidency in 2024. Picture: Jane Dempster

Then it was on with ancient, venerable Troy speaking to ancient lying rodent ...

EXCLUSIVE
By troy bramston
4:50PM December 29, 2023

Indeed, indeed, who wouldn't have voted for the mango Mussolini in his prime. After all, he built the wall, and made Mexico pay for it ...

John Howard would not vote for Donald Trump if he had a vote in the US presidential election next year because the former president failed to accept the outcome of the 2020 election and fraudulently tried to overturn the result.
The former prime minister (1996-2007) told The Weekend Australian he would have “ever so reluctantly” voted for Mr Trump in 2020 because he identifies more with Republicans than Democrats, but could not do so in 2024.
“Once Trump refused to ­accept the outcome, I wrote him off,” Mr Howard said. “If I had a vote, I couldn’t vote for Trump at the next election. I just think somebody who refuses to accept the verdict of the public and runs around trying to get people to find votes is appalling.
“Nobody likes losing. Remember what he said on the night of the election? ‘Nobody likes losing, particularly me.’ Well, why particularly him? Do you think I liked losing to Rudd? No. Do you think Keating liked losing to me? Certainly not.
“I just thought that was a complete fraud on the American public and the democratic system.”
Asked if he would vote for Joe Biden in 2024, Mr Howard said “it would be very hard” and thought in 2020 he was already showing signs of “losing the necessary cognitive ability to do the job”.
But he did not rule it out, and would wait until the two major party candidates had been chosen before answering that.
Mr Howard spoke to The Weekend Australian to coincide with the release of his government’s 2003 cabinet papers on Monday and discussed meeting several US presidents during his time in public life.
He recalled getting on well with Bill Clinton and especially George W. Bush, who both overlapped with his time as prime minister. He met George HW Bush and Barack Obama, and Mr Biden before he was president. He has not met Mr Trump and said he does not “feel deprived in not having met him”.
Mr Howard previously told The Weekend Australian that Mr Trump’s behaviour was “appalling”, “disgraceful” and “terrible” following the 2020 election, and hoped the Republican Party would select a different candidate to run for president in 2024.
He said Mr Trump was utterly “unfit” to return to the presidency.

Students are reminded of those fresh treasures to come on Monday ... much like all Xmas's coming at once ...

Read Troy Bramston’s interviews with John Howard and Peter Costello about the 2003 cabinet papers in The Australian on Monday.

... but the pond isn't sure it will be up to handling the pace, and perhaps lobstering at the beach is the way to go ...

And so to the real treat for pond students - prattling Polonius's summary of the year. 

Leftist loudmouths take us down year of the rabbit hole

Students will immediately wonder why that wasn't ABC loudmouths, but relax, the snap that followed reminded Polonial devotees that "leftist" and "ABC" are interchangeable ...

ABC presenter Antoinette Lattouf. Picture: Instagram

Not sure if Instagram actually initiated the snap and so owns it in a way that allows it to licence it - as opposed to the reptiles doing a pond and pilfering it - but relax, the mouse running wild and free is for another day, and here the assignment is a simple one ...

By gerard henderson
12:00AM December 30, 2023

Count how many ABC thought crimes * are featured in this Polonial highlights piece ...

On New Year’s Day 2023, morale was high; the Year of the Rabbit forecast a period of peace and wellbeing. Alas, it was not to be. Anger, false prophesy, rudeness, self-indulgence, hyperbole, narcissism, memory lapse and fake news, along with a lack of self-awareness, prevailed in this valley of tears. Month by month in the media.

JANUARY. On Sky News, Melbourne deputy lord mayor and Labor Party functionary Nicholas Reece asserts fellow panellist Rita Panahi “forgot to take her tablets”. In short, he disagreed with her. Nine newspaper columnist Nick Bryant writes that a conversation with his mother-in-law five years before brought home to him “the gradual decline of Australia Day”. Left-of-centre creative director Dee Madigan blames the patriarchy for the fact “you can’t claim TV makeup on tax”. Ignoring that many blokes wear makeup on TV.

FEBRUARY. Jane Caro advises readers of Sunday Life that “unless you die young, all of us will get old”. Chris Taylor, one of the Chaser Boys (average age 48½), declares that being a team captain on the program Would I Lie to You? is a bit like having “an enormous amount of power over something that is profoundly silly and inconsequential”. He compares the role with “being the CEO of Sky News”.

MARCH. The Age and Sydney Morning Herald chief political correspondent David Crowe suggests Greens leader Adam Bandt has become the real leader of the opposition. Soon after, ABC RN Breakfast presenter Patricia Karvelas asks Liberal Senate leader Simon Birmingham: “Has Adam Bandt effectively replaced Peter Dutton as opposition leader?” On ABC’s Q+A, Antoinette Lattouf declares “Australia still has networks or programs that look like a neo-Nazi wet dream”. Meanwhile, an ABC trade union operative urges staff at the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster, who are working from home to come to the office so they can go out on strike.

APRIL. On Q+A, lawyer Teela Reid announces: “I don’t usually agree with white men but I agree (with British playwright David Hare) – abolish prisons!” For his part, Hare proclaims: “Not to allow Palestinians to speak in this country is just repellent.” Which suggests he knows as much about freedom of speech in Australia as he does about the need for prisons. The overwhelming majority of journalists condemn Dutton’s decision to advocate a No vote in the referendum to place an Indigenous voice in the Constitution. David Crowe compares Dutton’s decision to that of a pilot accelerating towards the ground. The Guardian’s Josh Taylor characterises the late artiste Barry Humphries as a mere “product of his time”. That’s all, apparently.

MAY. Sun-Herald journalist Peter FitzSimons issues a challenge – locate “anyone who would welcome a big or small (nuclear) reactor nearby”. Apparently, he is unaware of the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor located across Sydney Harbour from his abode. In The Saturday Paper, former Liberal MP Julia Banks refers to “the ignorance of some of the so-called leaders of Dutton and Morrison’s ilk” – implying they are out of touch. This is the same Ms Banks who declared in 2018 she could live on $40 a day.

JUNE. The ABC makes Andrew Probyn, its Canberra-based political editor, redundant. ABC executive Justin Stevens describes Probyn as a “fantastic journalist”. In time, David Speers becomes the ABC’s Canberra-based, wait for it, political lead. He’s also fantastic. Crikey editors Sophie Black and Gina Rushton publish a grovelling apology at having to “unpublish” an article by leftist comedy writer Guy Rundle. Which is quite amusing in itself.

JULY. Laura Tingle tells Insiders viewers she “was left speechless” on learning of the Robodebt royal commission’s findings. Except for the fact she “had to say something”. Novelist Richard Flanagan writes in The Monthly that attacks on the Yes case have been “as precise as a musket shot, as lethal as poisoned flour”. Overlooking the fact the leaders of the No case are Indigenous Australians.

AUGUST. Dark Emu author Bruce Pascoe, who identifies as Indigenous but has yet to name one Indigenous grandparent, has his work depicted in The Dark Emu story and shown on ABC TV. It is criticised by well-regarded anthropologists Peter Sutton and Keryn Walshe, neither of whom are political conservatives. Marcia Langton retorts that Sutton’s argument belongs to the “Bonga, Bonga” school of anthropology. She does not state where this is located. The Daily Telegraph reports retired leftist journalist Mike Carlton has been seen on Whale Beach swimming sans swimmers. He tells the paper to “f..k off”.

SEPTEMBER. Nine columnist Niki Savva states “some Liberals opposing the voice believe the tenor of the campaign will assure Peter Dutton reaps no reward if the referendum fails”. So, he is a loser whether he wins or not. Bruce Wolpe, an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, claims what took place at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 could never have occurred in Australia. He overlooks the violent attacks on Australia’s Parliament House on August 19, 1996 led by groups of trade unionists protesting against the Howard government. Police were injured and the front door smashed. In January this year there was a violent attack on Old Parliament House.

OCTOBER. In the referendum on October 14, the No case prevails by 60 per cent to 40 per cent. Immediately, the left intelligentsia accuses the toiling masses. ABC presenter Jonathan Green declares: “What the f..k; how can you say no?” The Guardian’s Katharine Murphy bemoans: “Lost in a fog of conflict and misinformation, we failed an empathy test.” Former Nine journalist Mark Kenny confesses: “I feel so disheartened; I feel I don’t know my country; or rather that I suddenly do.” Asked about the author of this missive, 60 per cent of Australians say they don’t know the now ANU professor.

NOVEMBER. News emerges that fine actor and eco-catastrophist Cate Blanchett has demolished a stone cottage on the Cornwall coast to construct a so-called “eco-home” with five bedrooms and a pool. Nine journalist Latika Bourke diminishes Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price by describing her as “the right’s new darling”. Chris Oliver-Taylor, the ABC’s recently appointed content tsar, says the ABC does not have enough staff from a diverse background. The hyphenated-name guy presents as a middle-aged white bloke. By the way, he has shown no interest in political diversity.

DECEMBER. Israel critic Louise Adler obtains a soft interview on 7.30. Adler, director of the taxpayer-funded Adelaide Writers Week, uses the platform provided by the ABC’s leading current affairs program to complain she is “being silenced”. Really. Jenna Price advises Nine newspaper readers “the ABC is constantly harassed by News Corp commentators who for all I know get bonuses every time they demean the public broadcaster”. She provides not a skerrick of evidence.

And so, the year ended with an ANU academic chasing a conspiracy theory down a rabbit hole.

* Teacher study guide: by the pond's count, the ABC was explicitly mentioned some 12 times, which, averaged out, means once a month. 

This is surely an undercount, because throughout the year Polonius maintained an astonishing obsessive-compulsive interest in the ABC ... the pond had readers writing in to complain on the rare week or so that the ABC didn't feature in a Polonial piece (the pond can only remember a couple of occasions, suggesting at least 50 Polonial pieces celebrating the ABC throughout the year).

To be fair, he did summarise his output quite tidily at the get go ...

Anger, false prophesy, rudeness, self-indulgence, hyperbole, narcissism, memory lapse and fake news, along with a lack of self-awareness, prevailed in this Polonial valley of tears. 

So long as Polonius scribbles and especially so long as Polonius keeps imagining he's a dog, bitching and barking and howling at the moon, irony will never be dead ...

And so to a rousing conclusion, because where would we be without ongoing celebrations of the killing fields, with garrulous Gemma standing by ...

Progressives in lock-step with Hamas ideology

At this point students might wonder why the story began with a snap of ...

A mass grave in Nigeria. Picture: AFP

There's a simple answer. It simply wouldn't do for the reptiles to show a mass grave in Gaza  ...

Carry on regardless, garrulous Gemma ...

By gemma tognini

12:00AM December 30, 2023

... because reptile distraction is a fine art ...

Last Saturday and continuing across Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day, about 160 Christians were slaughtered in central Nigeria, in a region known as Plateau State. Plateau is where Nigeria’s predominantly Muslim north collides with the mainly Christian south. Twenty villages were targeted in what has been described as a well-co-ordinated attack that took place when the world, not just the Christian world, celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ.

I found out about this attack while scrolling through social media on Boxing Day night, while grovelling through a spectacular episode of festive gastro. I didn’t read about the attack in the mainstream media until a few days later and, trust me when I say this, it took some finding. In the mainstream media reportage I did find some of the detail, specifically that the victims of this slaughter were Christians, was left out. That came after a little bit more digging and a lot less throwing up.

This isn’t a conversation about Islam versus Christianity, or Judaism. Or being a Hindu versus being a Mormon. Or an atheist or wading one’s way through the valley of indecision. In fact, it’s not a conversation about faith at all. No, this to me is something deeper and significantly more problematic.

We are living in an age of ideology, not conviction. We are being governed by people who favour form, not substance.

There is an obsession with feeling over fact, perception over reality and an absolutely hysterical addiction to victimhood.

Ah yes, an addiction to victimhood, though an addiction that's somewhat hard to sustain when you're dead ...

The pond did wonder if garrulous Gemma might have the first clue what Etan Nechin was scribbling about in Like Tal Mitnick, I refused to serve Israel as a soldier. It’s important to understand why ...

...Opting out of service isn’t straightforward. Refusal is rare partly because the army leaves little room for dissent. The Israeli high court of justice has ruled that while absolute pacifism is a valid reason for exemption, “selective refusal” – rejecting specific duties – is illegal. This stance, especially the refusal to serve in the occupied territories, is seen as a threat to national unity. Those few exempted on grounds of pacifism are also restricted from discussing the occupation or Israel’s politics more widely.

The IDF’s handling of refusers is also not consistent. Some face trials and multiple imprisonments before being discharged by a military psychiatric board. Others, like myself, are sent directly to this board. There, I had to articulate my beliefs to a tribunal of officers, which at 17 were more intuitive than clearly defined. The main method the army uses to release refusers is by declaring them mentally unfit for service, implying that in Israel dissent is equated with insanity.

The experience of getting out is disorienting, like stepping into an alternative reality. In my case, in the post-school wilderness and unskilled, I ended up in construction, a field shared by Palestinians, migrant workers and marginalised groups. Choices are slim for those who made the ethical choice to refuse enlistment, with plenty of personal and social ramifications.

Our refusal to serve wasn’t a gesture for external validation, or even to seek acknowledgment from Palestinians who were segregated from us by language and fences; but about taking a stand against the moral decay within – showing others and ourselves there is another path.

But refusers aren’t heroes. No one who has refused thinks they are. I know I didn’t. I didn’t find valour in my decision – but alienation. The choice to reject something central to my society meant I could never be fully part of it. There are even moments of self-doubt and guilt – have I neglected my duty? This is felt especially keenly when friends confront conflict and loss, however removed we are from their cause.

Refusal isn’t heroic but it expresses a different kind of resolution – the resolution to stand alone, to navigate the complexities of dissent, and to remain true to your beliefs in the face of societal dissonance; to realise that rebellion is required when facing a violent and unsustainable status quo.

Etan Nechin is a writer based in New York and contributor to Haaretz

Say what?

...rebellion is required when facing a violent and unsustainable status quo

What on earth is he scribbling about? Next thing you know there'll be charges of genocide made ...

Not to worry, being an armchair warrior relishing the killing fields is a living, of a kind ...

The slaughter in Israel on October 7 opened the world’s eyes to many things, two of which are relevant here. First, the venomous, inexplicable hatred that still exists towards the Jewish people that is not only excused but perpetuated by the progressive political left; and the undeniable truth that ideology rules moral clarity and at a terrible cost.

Only the ideologically obsessed would be demanding a ceasefire in Gaza without an immediate concurrent surrender by Hamas, and a release of the remaining living hostages. The fact these hostages still are being held and the international community is even talking about a ceasefire is insanity. Israel is the only nation on earth that needs to defend itself for defending itself. If that doesn’t embody the curse of rotten ideology, then nothing does.

But ideology now extends to the realm of fantasy, the kind that decides (out of desperation, I’m sure) that Jesus was a Palestinian and there were no Jews in Israel before 1948. I don’t know who is more intellectually stunted: the Free Palestine mob who dreamt up this cunning plan or the simpletons who’d buy it. I do know one thing for sure: both are drunk on ideology and someone needs to confiscate their car keys.

Ah yes, the pond remembers going there yesterday... some drunk at EB deciding Jesus was a Roman ...

Meanwhile, there was a distracting link designed to distract from garrulous Gemma for a moment...

Media-link

Pro-Palestinian protests at Christmas time is ‘disgraceful’

Indeed, indeed, completely disgraceful ... this is much more like the spirit of Xmas ...

On with the killing fields ...

Closer to home, we find ourselves again in a peculiar and circular conversation about the rights of a person to freedom of speech and expression. Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja was sanctioned by cricket’s governing body after attempting to push his personal views (via writing on his kit) during this week’s Test. Many have supported him, despite the fact the terms of the code and hence his employment prohibit this behaviour. I wonder where all the free-speech zealots were when Israel Folau was cancelled for doing the same thing. Oh, but Folau was spreading hate … Not according to him. Khawaja’s behaviour is divisive and disrespectful to Jews. Not according to him.

Meanwhile, on another planet ...

Meanwhile, it seems that bashing gays and perhaps throwing them off a Sydney cliff is just the sort of free speech we need ...

The bizarre common thread between these two unlikely bedfellows is that ideology has driven the response to both. You can speak your truth as long as you’re not a Christian or a Jew.

Ideology, that’s what this is, clear as day: plain, simple, toxic and exposed for the cheap currency that it is. If you couldn’t defend Folau, you cannot defend Khawaja. It’s free speech for all or for none. And freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences. As an employer, I know this better than most. Every business in Australia will have a social media code of conduct of some sorts, and it’s every employee’s responsibility to understand it and not to violate it.

Don’t get me wrong here; I’m not doubting Khawaja’s intentions or that his belief is heartfelt. What I am pointing out is the ideologically driven double standard.

Never mind garrulous Gemma's ideologically driven double standard, mysterious in its own way.

Instead students might ponder the mystery of how these warring tribes allegedly share the same Abrahamic god ...

... and so pray to the same long absent lord ... though some prayers are malicious and malevolent, and celebrate the mass ethnic cleansing ... with garrulous Gemma calling on her god to do her dirty work ...

Since the start of the war that Hamas started and, God willing, Israel will finish, the ideologically driven mainstream media for the most part has demonstrated in dangerous clarity how ideologically driven it has become. Who can forget the bombing of Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in the Gaza Strip on October 17? Mainstream media, for the most part, breathlessly reported 500 killed and blamed the Israel Defence Forces.

We now know it to have been a tragic own goal, a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket fired from within Gaza that fell short of its Israeli target. The death toll, about 100. Mainstream media took days to correct the mistake. Some never did. It’s certain that truth is a casualty of war but to an even greater degree it is one of ideology. Since October 7, the phase has been coined: no Jews, no news. Terribly, awfully true.

Only ideology could cause the Western left and its cronies to fawn over Gaza, chant Free Palestine, when Gazan society is the embodiment of everything they purport to be against. A place where being gay is a death sentence, where marital violence is condoned by law, as is intra-family sexual violence, where religious dogma rules and disagreeing with Hamas (the government) will get you a bullet in the back of the head.

Indeed, indeed ... and speaking of bombs to the head ...

Meanwhile, on another planet, there's Simon Tisdall noting the bleeding obvious about the corrupt criminal given a handy opportunity to stay out of court and out of jail, Amid fears of escalation in the Israel-Gaza conflict, consider this: war without end suits Netanyahu ...

...There’s another reason for believing escalation is now a very real danger: the far-from-fanciful consideration that a desperate, cornered, discredited and unpopular Netanyahu may welcome the prospect of Israel caught in a quasi-permanent state of war against all-comers. All-out conflict, depicted as existential in nature, would help silence his critics, stiffen the will and cohesion of his coalition government and deflect calls for his resignation and early elections.

More than this, a wider war without end, with Israel purposefully taking on Tehran’s proxies, could open a path to the fulfilment of Netanyahu’s oft-stated, oft-threatened ambition: to directly confront the Iranian regime itself and force a final settling of accounts with Israel’s most dangerous foe – a fateful showdown for which he once demanded, and very nearly got, Donald Trump’s help.

War without end could mean, in short, that Netanyahu survives while countless others doubtless would not. If he gets his way, Gaza may be just the beginning.

And so to a final garrulous Gemma Orwellian flourish ...

This war in Gaza isn’t about land or access to anything. It’s about ideology. Specifically, one that has the elimination of the other written into its DNA. You don’t have to go looking for it, it’s there in the Hamas charter. Go read it for yourself. I dare you.

George Orwell was right when he said in a time of deceit, telling the truth becomes hate speech.

But I am one who, perhaps foolishly, lives in hope. Hope that the more this idiocy is laid bare (special thanks to the Free Palestine brigade and the brains trust at Just Stop Oil) the greater and more aggressive the pushback will be. Our future depends on it.

The pond would double dare garrulous Gemma to read the charges of genocide, but what's the point? She just loves the killing fields, and wants more slaughter, possibly extermination if her god can manage it, like he did back in the day with a cleansing genocidal flood ...

As an Orwellian aside, apparently, according to gabbling Gemma, this is deeply Orwellian ...

Foolish cricketer... and so it is, deeply, weirdly Orwellian, but possibly he didn't have the space to finish it off in the style that gibbering Gemma would have liked: All lives are equal, but some lives are more equal than others ...

And as for "just carry on regardless with big oil" ... at least the pond can end on a positive note ... thanks to a taste for Polonial irony ...

... though perhaps for some reading about garrulous Gemma's love for oil might be a punch in the guts ...

That deserves an uplifting, positive cartoon for nerds who've completed this unit in their summer school herpetology studies ...

In which the pond's pared back summer studies for serious herpetology students continues ...

 

The pond's cut down, barebones summer school for serious herpetology students continues with a tremendously exciting piece by a reptile rarely studied, but whose time has come with an astonishing exclusive.

In no more than a zillion words, students are required to write an essay on coulda, woulda, shoulda ... using example provided ...

Lift ban on nuclear energy: mine it, use it, store it, says Peter Costello

Alas one of the features of stripped back studies is that students are deprived of tremendous illustrations, and perforce must imagine this image ...

Former treasurer Peter Costello. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Daniel Pockett

Now, thanks unto ancient Troy, it's on with the EXCLUSIVE ...

EXCLUSIVE
By troy bramston
8:18PM December 29, 2023

Do students need reminding already that they must write on the theme of coulda, woulda, shoulda ...

Peter Costello supports lifting the national ban on development of nuclear power to provide a new domestic energy source and help reduce carbon emissions, provided the private sector can see a commercial opportunity to make it viable.
“I would lift the ban,“ the former Liberal treasurer told The Weekend Australian.
“I would say it can only be done subject to very stringent safety standards and so on. But within that framework, if you reckon you can make a go of it – go ahead. I wouldn’t have a government subsidy because then the economics doesn’t stack up.”
The longest serving treasurer (1996-2007) said in an exclusive interview to coincide with the release of cabinet papers from 2003 on Monday that the Howard government considered lifting the ban put in place in 1998 and was aware of private-sector interest in developing the industry.
“I do recall a lot of consideration given to nuclear power,” Mr Costello said.
“There was a private-sector group that was looking at the feasibility of a nuclear power station. And I do recall senior ministers – me and the prime minister (John Howard) – saying, ‘well, we shouldn’t rule it out’.
“But, certainly, even then, subject to the economics stacking up, I had no objections to nuclear power. In fact, I thought it would have been a good adjunct to meeting our emissions targets … (but) if the economics didn’t stack up, no one would do it.”
Mr Costello said consideration was given at the time to depositing nuclear waste at the RAAF Woomera Range Complex in South Australia, the site of British nuclear tests authorised by the Menzies government in the 1950s and ’60s.

Students are reminded that they also need to explain in their essay how everything is the fault of perfidious Victorians.

Media-link
Victoria making all forms of energy expensive except renewables

Students are not to use that media-link. If they can't see how Victorians ruin everything on a daily basis, and that includes nuking the country, then they are unlikely to progress in reptile studies. Students who viciously point out that Petey boy represented Higgins for yonks will be marked down ...

At this point, the pond will helpfully point out to students that there are an excellent couple of shouldas to hand in the next sampling ...

“At one point, we had a proposal to put radioactive waste at the Woomera rocket range, which by the way, is already radioactive,” he recalled.
“I thought it was a good idea. I don’t know how far away Adelaide is from Woomera, but it’s a long way, and it just became politically too hot.”
Australia should examine storing waste from uranium exported overseas, the former Treasurer added. “What Australia should look at is we would own the nuclear rods, whole of life, so the nuclear rods would go off to whoever’s using them at the moment, they would use them, and then they would come back here and be stored by us. We would own life-cycle nuclear rods.”
“But this is the great joke: Australia is exporting uranium to countries all around the world. They are using our uranium for nuclear power: France, China, go around the world. So I can’t get worked up on health and safety grounds that we shouldn’t be doing this because if it is unsafe (then) we shouldn’t be exporting it.”

Extra marks are available to students who guess the name of the Nationals leader calling on Queensland to fix made of the country by evil, perfidious Victorians ...

Media-link
Nationals leader calls on Queensland govt to remove ban on nuclear

Only the deep north land of toads can fix things ... though perhaps Ted can too ...

Mr Costello’s comments follow those of opposition energy spokesman Ted O’Brien who is advocating the benefits of nuclear energy for domestic power use. Mr O’Brien argues that with more than 400 nuclear power plants in operation around the world, and small modular reactors in development, the technology should not be ruled out.
The Albanese government, while supporting nuclear-powered submarines under the trilateral AUKUS defence pact, is opposed to a nuclear power sector for Australia given it would cost too much money, is not commercially viable and would take too long to establish.

Students should note that ancient venerable Troy's piece concluded with a link to a piece entitled ...

Energy Minister Chris Bowen has labelled nuclear power as a “fantasy” for Australia.

Students are not encouraged to follow this link. Fantasies should be an important theme in the essay, including a mention of reptile nuke dreaming to save the planet by nuking it, with the rider that there's no need to save it because climate science is a fundamentalist religion, a hoax and a fraud ...

There was also an indication of astonishing pleasures to come ...

Read Troy Bramston’s interviews with John Howard and Peter Costello about the 2003 cabinet papers in The Australian on Monday

Students may include a short note detailing the wonders to be revealed. If only one prediction comes true, studies may be abandoned, and students can retreat to the beach to be fried like lobsters ...

Bolder and braver students might like to consider scribbling a shorter essay on the self-loathing routinely featured in pieces by former lawyer Dame Slap when scribbling about lawyers and any action which might happen to involve activist judges ...

A mention of self-loathing in the context of a deep hatred of women should be an important part of the essay, though the pond can only provide a shortened version of the text ...

...Dreyfus may argue, though he tabled no empirical evidence in support of this view, that measures to turbocharge claims of harassment and discrimination may help a claimant who would not otherwise get legal assistance. 
Mind you, even Kate Jenkins, on whose Respect@Work report the Dreyfus proposal was based, did not go as far as the Dreyfus proposal. Jenkins recommended a hard cost-neutrality approach in line with the Fair Work Act where parties bear their own costs unless the claim was vexatious or unreasonable.
Given the voracious appetite of lawyers and litigation funders to find and run new claims on a no-win, no-fee basis, or similar, this now familiar Dreyfus overreach is even more dubious. There is no justice in turbocharging an inevitable torrent of “pay me to go away” claims and adding another Labor brake on productivity.
Centuries of legal experience have told us the right balance is to allow costs to follow the result. The Albanese government’s desire to ring in the new year by giving presents to its friends is no reason to ignore the wisdom of the ages.
Dreyfus’s ill-conceived changes are also a thankyou to big Australian companies and their boards for being stupid, for keeping their head down and thinking Labor wouldn’t come for them.
What fools these highly paid executives and board directors were – and are. Almost all of them signed on to Albanese’s signature policy of a constitutionally entrenched voice even before there was any wording around it. For months and months they flaunted their faux virtue over a policy that would not help them or their shareholders one iota – a policy that was overwhelmingly rejected at the referendum because ordinary Australians understood what was at stake. This stand of corporate Australia was the biggest single act of collective corporate negligence in many, many years.
It was made much worse by the fact that concurrently these same big companies ignored the larger and more real risk of Labor’s workplace policies being legislated with the help of the corporate-hating Greens – polices that directly hurt companies, big and small. Their negligence is economy destroying. And their public whinging now about Labor policies should be greeted by Peter Dutton with a cold shoulder.
The Opposition Leader should fashion himself as the saviour of small business and leave those people on big corporate boards to live with the consequences of misusing their power.

The pond will break its down spartan, image deprived austerity rule to urge Dame Slap to scribble a piece in favour of the American legal system ...

The reason that the pond cut short Dame Slap in her rhetorical silly season prime was that the Angelic one had an important message for the period designed to celebrate peace and love in the name of Xianity.

Being a fundamentalist tyke, it ran along the lines of ... let the killing fields continue, let the collective punishment and ethnic cleansing flourish, let there be more deaths, let there be starvation and disease, let all suffer ... because noting what is going down is merely another form of radical chic ...

Palestinian cause adds to historic folly of radical chic

Sadly students must imagine flighty young fillies smirking and partying down in their radical chicness ...

A pro-Palestinian rally in Melbourne. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Luis Enrique Ascui*

In their essay, inspired by the Angelic one, students can expound at length on Jesus as a form of radical chic.

In the New Testament, war is universally seen as evil and Jesus emphasized peace instead. He advised us to avoid retaliation and revenge and to extend our love even to our enemies.

"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. (NIV, Matthew 5:38-45)

The apostle Paul and other New testament writers echoed Jesus' sentiment and expanded on it.

Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," says the Lord. "But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (NAS, Romans 12:17-21) (here with the good news that you can still keep on fussin' and feudin' and fightin')

The pond regrets the use of sources other than the KJV, on the basis that growing up tyke, the pond was once told that reading that version would see the pond spend a goodly time in purgatory ...

By angela shanahan
12:00AM December 30, 2023

Students should note that the Angelic one is apparently a Netflix user, and therefore clueless, because in her discussion of Maestro, she fails to mention the only significant thing about it.

The nose ...

Bradley Cooper has weighed in on controversy surrounding the use of a prosthetic nose in the film Maestro, in which he portrays the legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein.
After initial photos and a teaser for the film were released in August, some critics decried Cooper’s decision to don a prosthetic nose to star as Bernstein, who was Jewish. Daniel Fienberg, the Hollywood Reporter’s chief TV critic, called it “problematic” and described the film as “ethnic cosplay”. Others called the decision antisemitic, or used the derogatory term “jewface”.
Asked about the debate on CBS Mornings on Tuesday, Cooper said he initially considered not using the prosthetic, but decided to use it to resemble the renowned conductor, the son of Jewish-Ukrainian immigrants to the US perhaps best known for writing the music for West Side Story.
“I thought, ‘Maybe we don’t need to do it,’” he said. “But it’s all about balance, and, you know, my lips are nothing like Lenny’s, and my chin. And so we had that, and it just didn’t look right [without the prosthetic].”
The Anti-Defamation League was one of several organizations to come to the film’s defense, noting: “Throughout history, Jews were often portrayed in antisemitic films and propaganda as evil caricatures with large, hooked noses. This film, which is a biopic on the legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein, is not that.” (Graudian)

Advanced students might wander off to read Bradley Cooper's Maestro nose is a red herring: the real story is the wrinkles ...The fake schnozz has stolen the spotlight from the prosthetics which turn Cooper into an extraordinarily convincing elderly Leonard Bernstein – and remind us just how bad old-age makeup used to be...

... or they might just settle for the Angelic one's interpretation ...

There is a new film on Netflix a lot of people are talking about. For those of you who have been living in a cave, it is called Maestro, and for those one or two average suburbanites who aren’t addicted to Netflix, Maestro is about Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia, promoter of fashionable good causes and wealthy Chilean-born socialite. Lenny, as he was known by his contemporaries, was a great American composer and conductor. Most people know him for West Side Story, justly, because it is probably his masterpiece.
However, what most people might not know, let alone remember about Lenny and Felicia, is the shocking semi-comical furore they caused over a fundraising party they gave in their Manhattan residence for the notoriously violent black separatists of the late 1960s and ’70s, the Black Panthers. This was the naive pre-virtue-signalling of rich white capitalists falling over themselves to support and entertain a bunch of murderous thugs, some of whom were in jail for threatening to blow up public facilities and trying to raise bail for those accused of similar crimes. The party was brilliantly and unforgettably satirised by Tom Wolfe in New York magazine as “radical chic”.
Wolfe was of course satirising the breathtaking stupidity of a fashion, born of vanity, of supposedly intelligent people who included some of the greats of the artistic milieu of the day. As the Black Panthers blathered on about their manifesto, having their own society, getting rid of white oppression, using violence in “self-defence” and so on, Lenny and the invitees lapped it up with the odd “right on” and Lenny’s favourite, “I dig it”. They were inspired by the thrill, the romanticism of danger, without actually understanding anything the Panthers said, and blithely ignoring what they had done. However, the glitterati were acutely aware they were setting a trend. They were the embodiment of radical chic.
Radical chic isn’t a new phenomenon. It was around in the days before the French Revolution when Marie Antoinette entertained the harbingers of the revolution that obliterated the monarchy. Today there is a lot of radical chic going around. Social media and films stars are addicted to it, for all sorts of causes. The most obvious example is the Palestinian cause, symbolised by the wearing of the keffiyeh.
This imagery of identification with the Palestinians has surfaced not just at demonstrations against the Israeli incursion into Gaza, but as a symbol of “solidarity” with Palestinians after theatrical performances in Sydney. It is no accident it has been taken on by people of the theatre. They love to dress up. Be prepared to see it on the cover of fashion magazines in the not-too-distant future, like the European models sporting laboriously teased-up Afros in the ’70s.
In fact, the keffiyeh has been fashionable for a while. I even bought some while travelling in the Middle East for my own kids. They loved them. Mind you, they were made in Jordan, not China, as doubtless many of the keffiyehs youngsters are wearing are made.
However, this is not about “cultural appropriation” and the wearing of a garment that has deep cultural significance. The keffiyeh is worn all over the Middle East and I’m sure some of the demonstrators have their Palestinian ones confused with their fetching red Jordanian ones, but even more confusing is whether the keffiyeh wearers bursting on stages and yelling at shoppers really think this is furthering their cause? After all, this is Australia. No one can stand between a shopper and his new large-screen television.

At this point, some might be distracted by talk of Marie Antoinette, but the pond urges students to focus on the media link used to interrupt the Angelic one ...

Media-link
Sky News host slams anti-Israel protesters who claim Jesus was Palestinian

Again the pond must break its own rule to insert a bit of text from ancient times, when EB was judged a useful reference and every country town library had hard copies in prominent positions for students wanting a fast crib. Well at least they did in Tamworth ...

For the record then, let it be noted that Jesus was neither Jewish nor Palestinian and certainly not swarthy. He most closely resembled Jeffrey Hunter or perhaps Robert Powell, and if he didn't always have blonde hair, then he certainly had blue eyes ..

Now as the killing fields continue apace, let the Angelic one bring you light and understanding in a way beyond your ignorant vulgar youff follies ...

The truth is the history of the Middle East is a mystery to most young Australians. If our appalling education standards are anything to go by, most Australians under about 40 are too ignorant of any stuff about their own country’s history to indulge in immature disruptions for a political cause that has nothing to do with them. I suspect the newly aggressive tone of these demonstrations is more about upsetting despised Mr and Mrs Ordinary Australian, residents of despised capitalist suburbia, than the origins of the Arab Israeli conflict. I have no doubt the slogan-shouting keffiyeh wearers are being manipulated by the same Trotskyist-inspired mob that was calling for the destruction of Israel when I was at university more than 30 years ago, ignoring that it was the only stable democratic state in the Middle East. It would be more difficult for young Australians to study the history of the various cultures of the Middle East than to yell at shoppers to “support” a people whose culture and history they wear, as it were, lightly.
Orderly demonstrations on behalf of Palestine, or calling for a ceasefire, are perfectly justified. I too would like to see another pause, and although having been to Israel and admiring that nation, I have reservations about some Israeli policies. However, as a Christian Palestinian said to me: “Allies are important, but true allies know their place – and where their experience is limited.” The new “right on” keffiyeh wearers forget their limitations.

* Of course the pond couldn't resist showing that snap of vulgar youff in full flight ...

It's so much simpler than reporting actual news ...you know, talk of genocide ...

... and talk of actual ethnic cleansing ...

Tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed into an already crowded town at the southernmost end of Gaza in recent days, according to the United Nations, fleeing Israel's bombardment of the centre of the strip, where hospital officials said dozens were killed on Friday.
Israel's unprecedented air and ground offensive against Hamas has displaced some 85 per cent of the Gaza Strip's 2.3 million residents, sending swells of people to seek shelter in Israeli-designated safe areas that the military has nevertheless also bombed. That has left Palestinians with a harrowing sense that nowhere is safe in the tiny enclave.
Israel's widening campaign, which has already flattened much of the north, is now focused on the urban refugee camps of Bureij, Nuseirat and Maghazi in central Gaza, where Israeli warplanes and artillery have levelled buildings.
But fighting has not abated in the north, nor in the city of Khan Younis in the south, where Israel believes Hamas leaders are hiding. Militants have continued to fire rockets, mostly at Israel's south.
Israeli shelling over two days near Al-Amal hospital in southern Gaza's main city Khan Younis killed 41 people, the Palestinian Red Crescent said on Thursday.
The casualties include "displaced persons seeking shelter" at Red Crescent premises, it said.
The Gaza health ministry said on Friday that 187 people had been killed across Gaza over the past 24 hours.
The Israeli army also announced the death of one of its soldiers in Gaza, bringing the number of troops killed during the war inside the Palestinian territory to 168.
The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on Friday that an aid convoy came under fire from the Israeli military, without suffering any casualties.
"Israeli soldiers fired at an aid convoy as it returned from northern Gaza along a route designated by the Israeli army," UNRWA's director in Gaza, Tom White, wrote on social media platform X.
The UN said late on Thursday that around 100,000 people had arrived in Rafah, along the border with Egypt, in recent days. The influx crams even more people into one of Gaza's most densely populated areas.
People arrived in trucks, in carts and on foot. Those who haven't found space in the already overwhelmed shelters have built tents on the roadsides.
"People are using any empty space to build shacks," said UNRWA's Juliette Touma. "Some are sleeping in their cars, and others are sleeping in the open."
Israel has told residents of central Gaza to head south, but even as the displaced have poured in, Rafah has not been spared.
A strike on Thursday evening destroyed a residential building, killing at least 23 people, according to the media office of the nearby Al-Kuwaiti Hospital.
At the hospital, residents rushed in a baby whose face was flecked with dust and who wailed as doctors tore open a Mickey Mouse onesie to check for injuries.
Shorouq Abu Oun fled the fighting in northern Gaza a month ago and sheltered at her sister's house, which was located near Thursday's strike.
"We were displaced from the north and came here as they [the Israeli military] said it is safe," said Abu Oun, speaking at the hospital where the dead and wounded were taken.
"I wish we were martyred there [in northern Gaza] and didn't come here."
Residents said on Friday that many houses were hit overnight in the Nuseirat and Maghazi refugee camps, and that heavy fighting took place in Bureij in central Gaza. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah said it received the bodies of 40 people, including 28 women, who were killed in strikes.
"They are hitting everywhere," said Saeed Moustafa, a Palestinian man from Nuseirat. "Families are killed inside their homes and the streets. They are killed everywhere."

And heaven forfend awkward cartoons ... showing same as it ever was ... same as it ever was ...

Summer school for herpetology students: unit in portentous pretentious referencing

 

The aim of this unit is to leave herpetology students better prepared for the arduous task of portentously and pretentiously referencing philosophers and historians and poets - the more ancient the better.

Required reading: no actual reading is required, but it is required that students be armed either with a google-like tool (go the ducks if you must), or an old-fashioned source of quotations, the more ancient and irrelevant to the modern world the better.

This site doesn't like to boast, but thanks to a recent street library find, it became the proud owner of A Dictionary of Quotations, by Colonel Philip Hugh Dalbiac. It should be sufficient to note that the dictionary was compiled by a Colonel for students to be reassured that this is exactly the sort of reference they should somehow acquire.

While there is no date on this volume by Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd, of sundry parts of the world, including London, Edinburgh, Toronto, New York, Paris and Melbourne, the Paris of the south, it carries an elegant ink stamp of ancient public service pedigree, though in this case for Trinity College of Music London, 310 George Street Sydney.

Herpetology students might be unaware that Trinity has maintained a local presence for many years, and still has a website boasting of its presence. Those doubting the longevity of colonial presence may look to Trove for a July 1925 report on the practical examinations of May 1925 in The Sydney Morning Herald.

At this point, some stray reader might indulge in some foot-stamping and moan to the sky, "what in the long absent lord's name does this have to do with anything, you bloody ning nong",  at which point a skilled herpetology student could embark on a discussion of the source of ning nong, and whether it should in fact be in need of a hyphen ...

As this is a summer school unit, there will be few visual distractions. Students are required to focus on the words, and must imagine the visuals ... though clues are provided.

Students will be marked up if they can take a quotation and try to make sense of it by offering another quotation.

For example, if a student encounters "climate change activism that reached new heights after Greta Thunberg’s rise to stardom", they might like to point to recent stories, such as Climate change: Seasonal shifts causing 'chaos' for UK nature, or 2023's costliest climate disasters show poor lose out in 'global postcode lottery'.

While such references will establish the bleeding heart credentials of the student, better students will immediately enlist Thucydides, saying "for it has always been law that the weaker should be subject to the stronger", History of the Peloponnesian War.

Or:

“For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller towns to subjection.” The History of the Peloponnesian War

Now that the ground rules for the unit have been established, it should be noted that there is no time limit on this unit. Students may spend as much time as they like digging out arcane and irrelevant quotations, the more arcane and irrelevant the better ...

Goodbye, 2023: The year of living angrily

The first test for the diligent student might have come a tad early for even the most diligent because they must imagine a photo of a scene designed to produce shock, horror, terror, fear and loathing in the reptile readership, and all from a descriptive line ...

Environmental activists march through Treasury Garden in Melbourne. *

It's difficult to imagine the sheer terror induced by mention of "environmental activists" but students must quell their rising alarm - it can in severe cases lead to heart failure or at a minimum angry letters to the lizard Oz. It is of course part of the year of living angrily, because there's always a deep and abiding anger lurking in the pompous pretentious referencing ...

By henry ergas
5:00AM December 29, 2023

2023 will be remembered as the year of living angrily. As storm followed storm, the debate, if one can call it that, was almost always vituperative, rarely civil and never friendly.
But the year’s tone merely reflects the legitimation, over the past decade, of outrage as the dominant style of political expression.
Of course, politics is inherently antagonistic: it involves a clash between alternatives. Henry Adams had a point when he wrote, way back in 1907, that political competition is “the systematic organisation of hatreds”. The promise of democracy, however, is that it moderates that competition’s excesses, funnelling its passions into well-defined channels that prevent controversy degenerating into limitless conflict.
Quite when that promise slipped our grasp is inevitably hard to determine. But a crucial step was the persecution and near judicial execution of Cardinal George Pell.
More clearly than in any previous case, that maelstrom involved the convergence of virtual lynch mobs on Twitter, unabashedly one-sided reporting by the ABC and SBS, and a political chorus led by the Greens but which included substantial parts of the ALP.

Some students might have been bemused to see a scene from 2019 featured in the story.

Cardinal George Pell arrives at Melbourne County Court in February 2019.

What, they might wonder, has the suffering of the frock-loving Pellists in 2019, got to do with 2023?

Any student wondering this way has fallen into a basic trap, a lack of imagination, a failure to understand.

That reference to Henry Adams way back in 1907 is surely a clue. Anyone in the business of portentous pretentious referencing, with bonus pomposity, would know that all the world's a stage or an oyster, and anything can be shucked to fine purpose.

Please allow the pond to demonstrate the methodology. Right in the middle of the moaning of the suffering of frock wearers, the pond will now drop in a reference to Hamilton, as found in the founders' archives:

The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security.

Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy—not that this is the intention of the generality of them. Yet it would not be difficult to lay the finger upon some of their party who may justly be suspected. When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”

It has aptly been observed that Cato was the Tory-Cæsar the whig of his day. The former frequently resisted—the latter always flattered the follies of the people. Yet the former perished with the Republic the latter destroyed it.

No popular Government was ever without its Catalines & its Cæsars. These are its true enemies.

Cue references to the mango Mussolini's love of dictators and his own desire to be a dictator and seek revenge on all and sundry.

Or not, because there are many other chances for portentous pretentious referencing, with deep pomposity ...

Pell was, no doubt, a scapegoat. Indeed, it was hard, observing that process, not to be reminded of an early definition of that term which, in 1711, said “in most of the Nations of the World, where publick Divisions have prevail’d, they always had People among them (who were forced) to bear Scandal without Guilt, to be Condemn’d without Crime, sent, like the Scape Goat, into the Wilderness with other Men’s Faults upon their Backs, without any regard to their own”.
But the choice of target was no accident. As well as paying for the sins of the church, Pell stood for everything his assailants detested: attachment to tradition; a scholar’s love of the Western canon; and an adamant rejection of the belief that personal identity and sexual preference are mere consumer items, to be adopted and discarded as readily as a snake sheds its skin. Expressed by a Muslim cleric in Lakemba or Broadmeadows, conservative Islamic values would have been entirely acceptable. Expressed by a Christian prelate from Ballarat, conservative Western values were not.
Viewed in the longer term, that episode’s legacy to our political culture was three-fold: the cult of the victim, whose allegations had to be taken at face value; the entrenchment of self-loathing, in which Western values were necessarily despicable; and a vision of the world dichotomised into saints and devils, along with a scarcely concealed command to extirpate the latter.

Now some students might be distracted by talk of the "cult of the victim", while at the same time presenting the frock devotee as a victim, but no one asks for logic when indulging in portentous pretentious referencing.

An ability to move quickly on is much more important ...

Media-link
Jacinta Price accuses Albanese of ‘ignoring Indigenous issues’ after Voice failure

That Manichean vision – along with the rapidly crystallising coalition of online lynch mobs, public broadcasters and the “progressive” wing of politics – was then seamlessly transferred into the climate change activism that reached new heights after Greta Thunberg’s rise to stardom.
Led by “Extinction Rebellion”, those movements’ striking feature was their utter contempt for the law. Endorsed, or at least tolerated, by education authorities, schoolchildren were almost everywhere allowed to skip classes and engage in mass protests. At the same time, the movement’s militants acted – often with official connivance – as if public inconvenience could never outweigh what they (fallaciously) considered their rights.
They were, in other words, fanatics; once again in the original meaning of the term, which Philip Melanchthon, the great German Lutheran reformer, coined to describe those possessed by the phantasm of “enacting on Earth the kingdom of heaven through the elimination of the devils who stand in their way”.
All that provided immensely fertile ground for #MeToo. As the Gadarene swine became the epitome of the age, the presumption of innocence – already trashed by the Pell case – was trampled underfoot in the rush to condemn. Any word of caution, any hint that tantrums needed to be distinguished from traumas and grudges from genuine grievances, was denounced as sure evidence of misogyny.
With #MeToo deployed to devastating effect against the Morrison government, the sordid Brittany Higgins saga then gave Labor and a herd of “progressive” media personalities a formidable weapon in the election campaign.

Naturally at this point there was a media link ...

Media-link
Greta Thunberg pleads not guilty for blocking venue entrance while protesting

As the pond has never indulged in reptile media-links, some students might weaken at this point and desire a visual ...

Such students will not be marked down ... they might even be encouraged ... because it's a natural way to respond to drivel ...

What that proved, were further proof needed, was the strategy’s extraordinary effectiveness. As rage and spite marched hand in hand, shaping the public mood, the massed battalions of social media activists, left-wing broadcasters and “progressive” politicians seemed invincible – all the more so as the Hayne royal commission, which had fanned anti-business hysteria, convinced large corporates that opposing the zeitgeist was suicidal.
It is consequently unsurprising that the newly elected government went into the referendum brimming with hubris. It may have been madness; but in the shrewd formulation of Roy Porter’s A Social History of Madness, “even the mad are men of their time” – and this was a time that seemed to be going their way.
The referendum campaign therefore relied on the standard playbook, including casting the issue as a struggle between unquestioned good and unredeemed evil. There are very few instances, if any, of the No campaign’s leading figures denigrating their opponents’ intelligence or good faith; there are at least 65 instances of prominent Yes campaigners, including government ministers, describing the No case’s supporters as bigots, liars or just plain stupid. Nor did defeat quell their rage: it simply converted it into a potentially deadly cocktail of abject denial, aggrieved silence and simmering resentment.
There are, in this chain of events, stark echoes of an ancient lesson. The Greeks, who thought deeply about rage, believed it differed fundamentally from ordinary anger: anger had a defined focus; rage, a sign of fury at the world, was labile, readily shifting from one object to another. Characteristic of personal immaturity, it was by its nature opportunistic, rushing to the target of the moment, like a child rushing to a new toy.
Centuries later, Anna Freud, in a well-known article on aggression, reprised that conclusion. A good or true lover, she noted, is faithful; “in contrast, a ‘good hater’ is promiscuous: he has free aggression at his disposal and is ready to cathect with it on a non-permanent basis any object”. Love sticks; the perpetually restless, never satiated, aggression of haters moves and spreads. And as it does so, it readily resuscitates, albeit in ever varying form, the hideous archetypes of the past.

A final visual featured ...

Juergen Habermas

But having broken the rule about visuals, perhaps another would be allowed at this point?

At this point students will note a final flourish of most excellent portentous pompous pretentious referencing ... the art of humbug, and it doesn't just involve lollies ...

That is why the founders of Critical Theory, including Theodor Adorno, Jurgen Habermas and Ernst Fraenkel, who had lived through Nazism, saw the students who stormed their lectures in 1968 as “red fascists”, primed to veer, as many did, into anti-Semitism. And that is also why the keffiyeh-clad storm troopers of the movements that transformed this country into a persecuting society now defile our venues with the exterminationist cry of “from the river to the sea”.
None of that has come out of the blue; it is the fruit of a decade of “progressive” activism, which has elevated rage into its modus operandi. Labor purports to be uncomfortable with its results; it would be better if it had the moral clarity to acknowledge how we got here and reflect on its lessons.
As 2024 dawns, we will remember our Tennyson: “Ring out a slowly dying cause, / And ancient forms of party strife; / Ring in the nobler modes of life, / With sweeter manners, purer laws”.
But we will also remember Thucydides’ grim yet lucid warning. It is, he wrote, in the nature of human affairs, with their weaknesses and crippling imperfections, that the abysses loom far greater than the peaks. And when mayhem is on the march, pushing us towards the abyss, all of humanity’s reserves of culture, courage and resolve are needed to stop it in its tracks.

Indeed, indeed ... as the poet cogently put it ...

Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough

Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To read a dullard Henry, heaven forfend,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

As though to breathe were life!

While inhaling undiluted Henry 

can only cause strife...

Meanwhile, the collective displacement, the collective punishment, the ethnic cleansing, and the slaughter continues apace, with the pompous portentous referencer leading the exterminationist cry ... but the skilled herpetology student will quickly pivot, speaking as we are of of grim yet lucid warnings that don't involve drongoes of the Tennyson kind ...

The top 20 climate disasters in 2023 by cost per capita

1 Hawaii, US, wildfire – $4,161

2 Guam, storm – $1,455

3 Vanuatu, storm – $947

4 New Zealand, storm – $468

5 New Zealand, flood – $371

6 Italy, flood – $164

7 Libya, flood – $105

8 Peru, flood – $66

9 Spain, drought – $50

10 Myanmar, storm – $41

11 Chile, flood – $39

12 Haiti, flood – $36

13 Mexico, storm – $35

14 Chile, wildfire – $30

15 US, storm – $25

16 China, flood – $23

17 Peru, storm – $20

18 Malawi, storm – $17

19 US, storm – $16

20 Peru, flood – $9

At this point, slack students will revert to traditional forms and Xmas messaging, because it's only a few days, a few weeks, a few months to the next one ...

Meanwhile, students with a keen eye for history will appreciate that there can only be one answer to certain questions of history, and this is one of them ...

* For students who lacked the visual imagination, this was the terrifying sight, harridans, and possibly cross-dressers, disturbing the peace of the Paris of the south and sending reptile survivalists scurrying to their bunkers ...

Of course students will recognise the Xmas-themed visual reference encoded in the display ...

A spartan summer school for herpetology students ...

 

I’ll never stop blogging: it’s an itch I have to scratch – and I don’t care if it’s an outdated format

Well yes, though the pond's itch would disappear the moment that News Corp imploded (exploded will also do).

Now to the set studies for summer school herpetology students ...

Exercise 1:

In view of this scientifically impeccable study, explain in less than a 100 words, why both John Banville and John Gray are fuckheads, Gray for making the argument, and Banville for quoting it approvingly, in Back to the State of Nature in the NYRB's December 21, 2023 issue (possible paywall).

John Gray argues in The New Leviathans that only Thomas Hobbes can explain how a liberal civilization based on tolerance came to an end, and what we have lost in abandoning it.

...Gray’s new Leviathans are not all coherent, centralized political regimes. In the book’s final chapter, “Mortal Gods,” he tackles, with a keen focus, the thorny topic of what has come to be known under the general heading of “woke.” Gray sees this movement—if so diverse and heterogeneous a phenomenon can be called a movement—which has been dreamed up and promoted by “hyper-liberals” who constitute the present-day “antinomian intelligentsia,” as providing “an ersatz faith for those who cannot live without the hope of universal salvation inculcated by Christianity.” It is also, however, on the secular level, “a revolt of the professional bourgeoisie.” As late capitalism delivers more and more of the world’s wealth into the hands of a very few plutocrats, many middle-class professionals—“university professors, media figures, lawyers, charity workers, community activists and officers in non-governmental organizations”—find their earnings dwindling and their status in society deteriorating.
The result of this crisis is a scramble for the positions and powers that used to be the birthright of an educated elite. Now there are more elites than Western economies can cope with, absorb, or sufficiently reward. In this milieu, being woke is a wise career move: “By advertising their virtue, redundant graduates hope to gain a foothold on the crumbling ladder that leads to safety as one of society’s guardians.”

Students who fail to make mention of "virtue" and its relationship to "virtue signalling" in their essay will be marked down. Students who note the use of "leet" by fuckheads who clearly imagine they are 'leet can stop at this exercise and go fishing.

Students who wonder what happened to the NYRB will be encouraged to do post-graduate studies.

Exercise 2:

This is a free form exercise. Students must imagine the state of desperation of the woman described in this piece and evoke her despair, and her sense of liberation and freedom when it's all over. 

Poetry, a novella, a short story, or an essay are all acceptable forms.

What my first love taught me about the Left: they imagine better worlds while creating worse ones

By timothy lynch

5:00AM December 28, 2023

The first woman I ever loved was an eco-feminist. She was radicalised by the 1984 British miners’ strike, listened to Billy Bragg on a C90 cassette tape, marched for women’s rights, admired communist East Germany and refused on principle to visit the US. In the 33 years since she dumped me, I don’t think she ever has.

In those decades, the left of which she was a proud and, I thought, typical member has been transformed.

Barbara (name changed) would now march not to keep coalmines open but to close them. Bragg would be too old/white male/working class (and thus need decolonising). The women’s rights marches Barbara joined in the 1980s she would now condemn as anti-trans. Only her anti-Americanism – the second most durable hatred on the left, after anti-Semitism – would endure.

The right has switched, too. Not as completely as the left but in important ways we often elide. This transposition of left and right conditions much of our contemporary politics but goes mostly unremarked.

In the ’80s, the Conservatives effectively closed the British coal industry. Barbara sent the picketing men blankets and goodwill. Today, “beautiful, clean coal” (Don­ald Trump’s phrase) is deified by those on the right. It speaks to man’s independence from the forces of cold nature. Scott Morrison held aloft a lump in parliament.

In the 2020s, it is the left that has assumed the four-decade-old Conservative position.

In Australia, Anthony Albanese and Energy Minister Chris Bowen vilify coal. Like Margaret Thatcher and Ian MacGregor, Thatcher’s head of the National Coal Board, Labor is plotting to throw every miner out of work.

Then, the right stood for middle-class values: marriage, family, low taxation, strong defences. Now, Australian Liberals trade on their working-class bona fides. In the US, Republicans tell defenestrated coalminers that they will be their voice. Democrats blame them for climate change. Barbara wept with the injustice of Thatcher’s assault on mining communities. Hillary Clinton now derides them as deplorables.

The right stood against the sexual revolution, free love and the consequences of the pill. Now it is the left that polices sex. Brittany Higgins, a young conservative woman (at least until Network Ten got to her), has become a poster child of the left’s obsession with sexual misconduct. The sex re-education programs on every university campus, warning of the perils of physical intimacy, are mandated by progressives, not by conservatives.

It used to be the religious right that told us to avoid sex. Now it is the cultural left. It was conservatives who criticised feminism. Now it is trans activists on the left. Indeed, it is Liberal women (such as Moira Deeming) who have paid the highest price for upholding a traditional conception of women’s rights. Many left-wing feminists have gone missing in action.

The left-right transposition is especially evident when it comes to race. It was small-C conservatives (often southern Democrats) in the US who wanted to maintain racial distinctions. Now it is the left that upholds race as the basic determinant of societal relations.

Conservative segregationists scoffed at Martin Luther King’s vision of a colourblind constitution. Now it is the left that condemns the reverend for his colour-blindness. We should hire, fire, promote and condemn based on race. MLK, left-wing anti-racists now tell us, was guilty of “content of character racism”.

Yes campaigners for the Indigenous voice wanted race written permanently into the Australian Constitution. No campaigners, representing most conservative voters, wanted it written out. When I was growing up near Leicester, then and still one of the most ethnically diverse cities in Britain, the far right demanded rights for indigenous Brits. In modern-day Australia, it is the left that makes the equivalent claim for First Nations people.

In Britain, asserting “indigenous rights” is racist. Here it is anti-racist. I have never been able to hear an acknowledgment of country here without thinking how bizarre it would sound in the English Midlands. “Sovereignty was never ceded!” sounds like an anti-EU Brexit slogan.

Why this ideological transposition? Losing wars changes the loser. And the left lost the biggest in its history in 1989.

My year with Barbara began the night the Berlin Wall fell (the other 9/11: November 9). We drank Blue Smirnoff, she in bemused sorrow, me in joyous irony; vodka was one of the few things the Soviet Union did well.

That night, the left lost the key economic argument of the 20th century: command economies don’t work, free-market ones do. People crave the opportunities of the latter. They will flee the former when given the chance.

My bearded university lecturers spent the ensuing years in a state of deep agitation. For many, the fall of communism coincided with their own midlife crises. It was wonderful. Today, zealously held but weak arguments are protected by speech codes and de-platforming. Then, men and women who had backed the Soviet project were subject to debate. Many did not like it.

The game plan thereafter was to establish a leftist catechism, grounded in a cultural revolution, the challenging of which would be heresy.

This “long march through the institutions”, as Rudi Dutschke, the young disciple of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, described it, is reaching some sort of destination now. And what a scene of tedium and enervation it is.Instead of debating big questions, we fly rainbow flags. Safe spaces have taken precedence over dangerous ideas.

When class war didn’t work, new kinds of oppression, to paraphrase the Communist Manifesto, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones, were found.

Climate, race and gender have replaced class as the source of left-wing fervour. These wars have been waged much more effectively. Their dialecticism – you are with us or against us, anti-racist or racist, pro-trans or transphobic – has enabled their colonisation of social media.

Marx claimed class war was inevitable. It proved not so. But culture war may well be. The US has been in a protracted one since Roe v Wade in 1973. Australia is flirting with its own version because of the voice debacle.

Climate denialism, structural racism, rape culture and transphobia. Collectively, these progressive priorities now have the quality of crisis. They are spectres haunting the West, to again adapt Marx’s rhetoric. Their negation now mobilises whole campuses and workplaces. Denying their salience, let alone standing against them, is hard to impossible.

In the US, if you want a university job, you will likely have to affirm, in writing and at interview, your contribution to their fighting. Australia is not quite there but we are inching closer. It is one of the forms of American cultural imperialism to which we are most susceptible.

I don’t know what Barbara would make of this transformation of the left. Sadly, dear reader, finding out would be a research project too far for me. I suspect she would be in sympathy with some of it. But much of it she would not recognise as the natural evolution from her 1989 platform.

She did teach me something vital, a lesson too few on the right imbibe. Those on the left are not bad people. They are not evil. But they are naive. They insist on realities that are fantasies. They seek final solutions to problems insoluble. They imagine better worlds while creating worse ones.

Timothy J. Lynch is professor of political science at the University of Melbourne.

Failure to mention that the "long march through the institutions" is as moronic as the use of "woke" will result in an F.

Exercise 3:

Imaginatively recreate the rest of the text in this piece, so that the gobbet selected can be seen in its quisling sell-out context. 

Students are encouraged to read the recent New York Times both siderism that saw stories about how Putin was anxious to begin peace talks, and there was no need to worry about Navalny, now that he's been found in an Arctic gulag, with peace of mind to hand ... and never mind the sociopath in charge of the gulag ...

Why Ukraine’s stalemate underscores threat of a global flashpoint 

By michael sexton

5:00AM December 27, 2023

...The return of Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, would be such a demand, given that it was part of Russia for centuries and really became part of Ukraine by accident on the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1989. If Crimea is assumed to remain with Russia, the heart of the dispute becomes the allocation of territory in that southeast corner of Ukraine.

There are, however, those in the Biden administration and the congress who don’t take this limited view of the conflict. They see it as a proxy war between the US and Russia with Ukraine supplying the soldiers on the ground and the US and its allies providing the funds and the armaments.

It is hard to see how their agenda of a decisive defeat for Russia could be accomplished unless this is equated with the removal of Vladimir Putin by his own colleagues – an unlikely event on present indications. This is not World War II, when Moscow, like Berlin, could be taken and occupied by foreign troops.

All this raises the question of why some of the administrators and legislators in Washington are so hostile to Russia and were so hostile even before the invasion of Ukraine. It might be thought that the dismantling of the Soviet Union and its domination over eastern Europe would mark the end of the Cold War, but the US embarked on an expansion of NATO up to the borders of the new Russian state. 

Exercise 4:

Calculate the number of times that migrants are mentioned in this piece on the basis of the concluding remarks ...

Treasury’s 2023 report card leaves little to boast about 

By judith sloan

12:00AM December 27, 2023

...Given the tight labour market, the completion of these enormously expensive infrastructure projects is draining workers from the more prosaic task of building new homes that are needed to accommodate the expanding population courtesy of migration.

Simply setting targets for new home completions as the Albanese government has done – 1.2 million new homes across five years – achieves nothing much by itself.

Towards the end of the year there were some emerging signs of slight economic weakness, including sluggish retail sales and home approvals as well as subdued consumer sentiment. While commodity prices eased somewhat, the terms of trade remained at historically high levels through the year.

Given ongoing strong population growth, it seems likely that Australia will avoid a technical recession. But the collapse in real household disposable income, which takes into account tax and mortgage payments, means many Australians have felt worse off during the year.

A central issue is now the speed at which inflation declines, paving the way for lower interest rates. In the US and Britain, inflation has fallen sharply and, in both cases, is within their target range.

The fear here is that services sector inflation may prove sticky, which would prevent us following suit. At this point it’s premature to predict cuts to interest rates next year, particularly given some of the damaging developments noted in this column.

* For struggling students, the teacher's lesson notes calculation has been included below.

Exercise 5:

Explain in no less than 2,000 words how the quarry whisperer is deeply Xian, with reference to this text:

Ignorant activists make a profanity of joyous celebration 

By nick cater

5:00AM December 26, 2023

In the conventional nativity scene described in St Luke’s Gospel, the baby Jesus is wrapped in swaddling clothes and lies in a manger.

This year, in a photograph prominently displayed in the international woke press, a baby doll has been wrapped in the Palestinian keffiyeh and lies on broken breeze blocks and paving slabs.

Lutheran pastor Reverend Munther Isaac assembled this dispiriting tableau in Bethlehem’s Christmas Evangelical Lutheran Church. Jesus, claims Isaac, was “born among the occupied and marginalised. He is in solidarity with us in our pain and brokenness”. The true Christmas message, he continues, is that “this genocide must stop now”’. But the activists were not content with merely cancelling Christmas in Bethlehem this year.

They are determined to weaponise it, desecrating holy spaces, disrupting acts of worship and turning a story that is supremely sacred into something utterly profane.

Sacrilege of the nativity scene – purely for political purposes – was also on display in Melbourne on Christmas Eve at the Carols by Candlelight event broadcast to a national TV audience. A group of shallowly educated, morally jejune pro-Palestinian zealots decided it would be okay to storm the stage, insensitive to the spiritual beliefs of their fellow citizens or the presence of children entranced by the magic of Christmas.

It would be pointless to ask these deluded people to take a good, hard look in the mirror because they would only view themselves with undiminished admiration, revelling in the cheap grace they bestow upon themselves. The profanities committed in Bethlehem and Melbourne on Christmas Eve were not the worst sacrilege driven by the dogma of Islamism against the imagined enemy of Christianity.

The Nativity scene showing baby Jesus wrapped in a keffiyeh and placed in rubble to show solidarity with the people of Gaza in the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. Picture: Getty Images.

The Nativity scene showing baby Jesus wrapped in a keffiyeh and placed in rubble to show solidarity with the people of Gaza in the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. Picture: Getty Images.

Our minds go back to two terrorists who interrupted mass in the 16th-century church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray in Normandy in July 2016. The attackers forced 85-year-old Father Jacques Hamel to kneel at the foot of the altar and then slit his throat while screaming “Allahu Akbar”. They, too, justified their actions by referring to perceived injustice in the Middle East, warning: “As long as there are bombs on Syria, we will continue our attacks.”

Yet even this cruel act occupies a modest position on the league table of barbarism; sadly, it is far from the most bestial act one human being is capable of delivering on another in pursuit of a supposedly higher cause. There appears to be no limit to human innovation when it comes to the field of torture and death.

A protester adds a portrait on the wall during a rally for supporters and relatives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza 

The Hamas attacks of October 7 took methods pioneered by ISIS to a higher level. Hamas conducted beheadings, rapes, kidnappings and shootings on an industrial scale – the largest and most brutal slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, but this time posted across social media.

The anti-Semitic, anti-Christian nativity defilers appear wilfully blind to the atrocities of that day. They lack the moral courage and intellect to wrestle with the challenge of how Israelis should respond to a terrorist administration on its border, which is committed to wiping a country and its people off the map. What painful trade-offs are demanded? What risks must be taken? These are not the questions with which they are prepared to grapple.

They are also insensitive to spiritual matters, to the message of grace and forgiveness in the Gospel narrative, wherein lies our best hope for peace in a sinful world.

In theology, grace is the watershed that separates Judaeo-Christian philosophy from other forms of religion. Grace, a spontaneous gift from God of divine favour, love and clemency, underpins the obligation to forgive our neighbours and confront our human failings.

It fosters an inward-blaming attitude, rather than the outward-blaming culture characteristic of Palestine where introspection is excused, and the blame for misfortune is attributed to others, frequently long dead.

Isaac claims expertise in Palestinian Theology and the Theology of Land. He is a leading figure in Kairos Palestine, which maintains that the presence of Israelis on Palestinian land is a sin against God and humanity.

He demands that the international community stand with the Palestinian people in their struggle against oppression, displacement and apartheid.

His philosophy of retribution and vengeance runs contrary to the teachings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a fellow Lutheran pastor, theologian and dissident. The Nazis imprisoned him for his opposition to Adolf Hitler’s euthanasia program and anti-Semitic persecution.

Isaac’s redrawing of Jesus’ suffering as a pastiche of Palestinian repression is a denial of Christ’s true sacrifice and suffering that Bonhoeffer would have categorised as cheap grace, “grace sold on the market” in which “the sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices”.

Forgiveness is a virtue that has been regrettably lacking in civil debate in 2023. It was absent from the discussion on the voice to parliament, replete with the narrative of historical injustice and racial guilt.

The two-state dream in the Middle East, the peaceful coexistence of separate Palestinian and Israeli nations, is impossible to realise without the clemency that would allow the discharging of historic debt. The viability of the two-state solution was all but destroyed by the events of October 7 and the desire by Hamas to repeat the atrocity.

In his 1937 book, Discipleship, Bonhoeffer wrote: “Christian love draws no distinction between one enemy and another, except that the more bitter our enemy’s hatred, the greater his need of love.

“Be his enmity political or religious, he has nothing to expect from a follower of Jesus but unqualified love.”

Such overt references to the message of the Gospel go against the zeitgeist in this aggressively secular age. They are all the more potent for that.

A failure to note the use of "woke" as an indication of fuckheadedness will be marked down.

Exercise 6:

Outline in under 2,000 words why the craven Craven is an arrogant prick. Students who feel compelled to write more than 2,000 words will not be marked down. It might well take 100k+ words to evoke in a complete way the level of arrogant prickness revealed.

My Christmas gift to ‘Generation-Greed’: A dash of reality and a hint of perspective 

By greg craven

8:11PM December 26, 2023

Christmas is a time of love, joy and goodwill. Also, in its fuddle of hangovers, appalling family gatherings and insulting gifts, it’s the opportunity to nurse hatred, resentment and naked prejudice. I certainly do.

I’m 65. My body is disintegrating like a Qantas takeoff schedule. My relevance has fled like a serious reader from a Peter FitzSimons doorstopper.

The only consolation is my mind is deteriorating so fast I can’t take it all in.

So my deepest jealous loathing is for younger, fitter, bouncier generations. I contemplate them with a mixture of pure hate and eviscerating envy. Gen X, Y and Z, millennials and whatever an Alpha is, I wish you miserable lives punctuated with catastrophe.

A few plagues would be nice. The odd global conflagration directed by some bad-tempered AI robot would be amusing. An intense acceleration of climate change seems only just given your endless moaning on the subject.

Of course, it’s your fiscal whining on everything from house prices to the cost of living and the price of biodegradable, ethically sourced underpants that really purges the intestines. Don’t you understand? Nobody cares.

Or to put it another way, if we boomers – God, I hate that tired condescension – are rapidly dying out, it is only fair we leave your unrequited economic fantasies to haunt you like the ghost of Keating past. Your resentment is our joy.

It’s the low moaning over real estate that irks me most.

“We can’t buy a house.” “We’re excluded from the market.” “My mortgage is stifling my creativity.”

Listen, sonny. Yes, we bought our first house for a song, namely a tune from the darker recesses of Les Mis. And yes, it was in Brunswick. Or as it was called in those days, Obrunswick. As in: “Where do you live? Ohhhh, Brunswick?”

Our little slice of Hades was a predatory shack waiting to engulf us in its own collapse. It was indeed a funky terrace, but only in the sense that its wooden exoskeleton was held up only by the houses on either side.

And yes, the surrounding atmosphere was diverse and multicultural. Our first neighbours were regularly visited by family members escaping from Pentridge jail. Our second lot kept chickens in the kitchen and sacrificed sheep in their backyard. Really.

I do understand the personal violation inflicted on you by real estate tyranny.

You have a human right to live in Enmore. Those Uighurs should just stop complaining.

I know you have HECS debts from studying at university. You deserve them. We had to drudge through grim syllabuses in the law of contracts or structural engineering. You flitted your way through poverty law for the safely remote and postmodern physics.

No wonder your writing skills are like a self-help guide for narcissists from Newtown and your bridges fall down. You are the tinea of useful education.

Scott Morrison once said you should cut down on avocados to afford a house. How about eliminating aeroplanes from your diet? Most of you baby bludgers saw Paris before puberty and Rio during a primary school beach outing.

By bitter contrast, my wife and I first went overseas when we were 33. We packed two children under 10 and a six-month-old baby. Between shrill insubordination and projectile vomiting, the experience was a cross between a bad holiday vacation movie and The Exorcist.

One distressing reality is that Gen-Greed has developed its own entitled dialect to demand undeserved concessions and promote intergenerational guilt.

It is a doggerel patois mingling meaningless speech patterns drawn from every corporate human resources department, and the least profound pop psychology. As in “If you don’t buy me a car, Dad, I’ll feel really unsafe and gaslighted.”

When I told one of my professionally mendicant sons I was writing this, I received a sententious warning: “Don’t, Dad, my generation is really hurting, and lot of people will be triggered.” Dear God, I hope so.

You can plumb the intellectual depths of these generational malignants by visiting their favourite bookshops in Balmain or Carlton.

Those who are not permanently plugged into reality-cancelling headphones portentously read a melange of management porn for future jobs they will never get, fitness tomes they will never follow, and trite biographies of people who should never have been born. Think Katy Perry’s Guide to a Toned Midriff through Business Networking.

The politics of the generationally correct are as shallow as President Joe Biden’s memory. Forget a Labor Party moderately devoted to workers’ rights or a Coalition vaguely in favour of small business. Just so bourgeois and unimpactful.

Instead, alphabeticals and millennials gambol around the Australian Greens. They particularly enjoy the Greens’ messianic focus on climate change. It is the perfect issue for the generationally motivated because they cannot be held responsible for it and there really is nothing practical they can do about it. Nice lack of work if you can get it.

But the defining feature of the generationally enhanced is their loathing for their parents and their determination that the old folks should die quickly so the loot can be distributed.

These days, when some feckless 40-year-old gazes into their mother’s eyes, it is not love you see. It’s the steely gaze of an open cash register.

It’s not so much the fact they want you to die that gets you. It’s that they want it to happen so damn quickly. Many elderly Australians are being measured for their coffins before their wheelchairs.

Of course, in the meantime, there is the so-called Bank of Mum and Dad. This sounds like some sweet exercise in intergenerational co-operation but actually is a black market where ageing brats exchange their unearned longings for their parents’ hard-earned cash.

It’s the greatest extravaganza of rapacity since Alaric the Goth sacked Rome. Just made worse because the slaughtering hordes are your own children.

In fairness, though, I don’t want to unfairly malign subsequent generations. It’s just that they are shallow, grasping, uncaring and homicidally entitled.

Beyond these slight drawbacks, they’re as cuddly as funnel-web spiders.

Greg Craven was vice-chancellor and president of the Australian Catholic University from 2008 to 2021.

Teacher's notes:

* A: 12, many of them in this gobbet:

Parallels have been drawn with the post-war years of “populate or perish”, in particular the large migrant intakes that occurred during the 1950s. The truth is there is really no comparison because all the migrants in that earlier period were permanent and many of them initially were settled in already built migrant hostels. The vast bulk of these migrants were from Britain and Europe.

Most of the migrant intake now is made up of temporary entrants, mainly international students. The most common source countries are China and India, but recent rapid growth has come from Nepal, The Philippines and Colombia. The most common courses undertaken by international students are business and IT.

The failure of Treasury to anticipate this surge in the population is unforgivable. After the hiatus of the pandemic, there was always going to be a catch-up, with migrant arrivals vastly exceeding migrant departures. The modelling should have picked this up.

The pressures on the housing sector, in particular, and other infrastructure were easy to predict.

It was incumbent on Treasury to recommend action to ensure the migrant intake was manageable. Its ideological adherence to a big Australia and the supposed fiscal and demographic benefits of a large migrant intake seemingly prevented officials from offering this sage advice.

The fact is that Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil dithered about the stance of migration policy for most of the year, swinging from endorsing the historically high migrant intake to finally taking some very modest measures to rein in arrivals. In particular, the delay in ditching the Covid visa was inexcusable.

Students who noted five mentions of 'migration' will be given an "A".

Visual quiz:

As the university Xmas challenge on the Beeb always has an image test, these are the image questions.

Discuss the arguments regarding the relevance of running an Xmas-themed cartoon in the immediate post-Xmas season. Is it sufficient justification to see it as a prophecy as well as a summary of events preceding?

Explain why consideration of details might allow the use of this cartoon, though it is no longer Poxing Day ... (details are supplied to help slow students).  A suggestion that every day is Poxing Day in herpetology studies will be allowed as an argument, but evidence must be supplied.