In which there's only news of the world, and the latest prattling Polonius and Dame Slap, but there's still plenty of western civilisation gold ...

Consider this a follow up to the blather about Seinfeld yesterday ...

Yes, it's 'toon day at the pond, the day when reptile offerings are leavened by a scattering of 'toons. The pond realises that at times the pond must look like its clueless about what's happening in the world because it mirrors the bubble-wrapped lizard Oz hive mind, so today is also a chance to look around at things ignored by the hive mind ...

If you want to read about Conservatives crushed by ‘worst local election result’ in years, you have to head off to the Graudian, and if you need a commentary on same, you need the cracking Crace's Tories take refuge in fantasy as local election drubbing becomes clear.

If you want a note on sidebar events, you need Hyde marinating away in Did we really expect Tory MPs who fought for voter ID rules to follow them? Don’t be ridiculous.

She got off to a cracking start ...

Are you, like me, struggling to get a handle on the current government’s approach to empathy? It increasingly seems to be a commodity that many Conservative MPs believe should be available to Conservative MPs only. A few weeks ago the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, described William Wragg – fellow Tory MP and then-chair of the public administration and constitutional affairs committee – as “courageous”. By way of a reminder, “courageous” is the sort of word we would typically reserve for people who’ve singlehandedly held a bridge for the Allies against the Germans despite being wounded/posted a picture on social media of themselves without makeup; whereas Mr Wragg had simply shared MPs’ private phone numbers with a blackmailer in the current security environment. Is that brave? If it is, can the no-makeup girls please get a VC?

And then she turned to the capper ...

And with that, we can avoid the daddy of them all no longer. To South Oxfordshire, then, where Boris Johnson left his moated mansion on Thursday in order to vote, only to discover when he tried to do so that he himself was without the requisite voter ID that his own legislation had demanded. Stop me if you’ve had this vibe off Johnson before, but it seems he said one thing at a press conference during the pandemic, which was then undermined by events directly involving him. Back in 2021, Johnson was challenged that introducing voter ID would prevent some people from voting, a possibility he dismissed as “complete nonsense”. He had – of course – previously written that if any representative of the state ever asked him for an ID card he would “take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it”. Unclear whether that kind of consumption occurred in South Oxfordshire yesterday, when he returned to the polling station for a second time. (After Johnson’s Ozempic experiment failed, he may well be back to eating anything.)

And if you want a cartoon to go with that, you need the Graudian ...

Across the ditch, Hope Hicks has been and gone from that trial, studiously ignored by the reptiles..

The reptiles might have covered it somewhere in the deep in bowels of the site, but the pond always follows the song's advice to strangle the pond in the shallow waters before it gets too reptile deep.

It's just easier to revert to the Graudian and read Hope Hicks tells hush-money jury of Trump’s control over 2016 campaign.

The pond is also aware the liar from the shire's book is out and about, but why bother with a hunt through the reptile entrails, when you can read Joshua Black and Frank Bongiorno in The Conversation ...

...Plans for Your Good is a vintage Morrison performance. He claims he lost his job as director of Tourism Australia in 2006 because of the minister’s jealousy over the “increasing media profile” he enjoyed. The minister in question, Fran Bailey, is left unnamed.

The preselection contest Morrison lost in 2007 “was remarkably overturned”. We do not hear of the fibs about the victorious candidate Michael Towke, a Lebanese-Australian, that mysteriously found their way into the press, including the claim that he was a Muslim. For Morrison, God’s plan apparently kicked in and all was well.

There is nothing here about his role as architect of Operation Sovereign Borders and Robodebt, although he assures us that as treasurer, he and the prime minister Malcolm Turnbull “achieved a lot together”. Morrison became Turnbull’s successor in August 2018 “in a surprising plot twist”, not by way of any Machiavellian manoeuvre – he is careful to establish that point early in the book.

There are allusions to various crises that “threatened to end” his government, but these are almost never specified and, in the end, they don’t really matter because God’s plan trumps all.

There are no Hawaiian holidays or ministerial scandals – indeed, colleagues, opponents and political parties are nearly invisible in these pages, with only the occasional passing mention. Morrison discusses his state visit to Washington in 2019, but not the controversy about his efforts to ensure that his friend and mentor, Hillsong pastor Brian Houston, was on the guest list.

The pond could go on quoting all day, but it's there at the link, and it's deeply weird, and yet in the bubble-wrapped hive mind, it's as if none of it existed ...

Besides, the pond needed a little space for Tory's effort in The Graudian ... How good are memoirs? In his testimony to Christian faith, Scott Morrison talks to God and God talks back.

Morrison reveals that when he’s on his own, he likes to have an out-loud conversation with God. “Where are you, God?” he asked, when life as the nation’s leader got tough. “Things got pretty heated between me and God as I poured my heart out,” he writes.

But then he sensed God’s response, brought to him via Jesus. “So Scott, your enemies are getting the better of you, are they? You think you have been unfairly treated, have you?” Jesus said.

“You may have heard about some of my experiences … my friends deserted me … my people lied about me … I was betrayed by one of my closest friends.

“Scott, I get it. I’ve been there and worse, and you know what? I did it all for you, because I really love you … just follow me. Just believe in me and trust me.”

Morrison is quite impressed by this divine chitchat. “Now that’s a comeback!” he writes...

How good is it to be in the company of a man who talks to an imaginary friend. How much gooder is it to learn that he thought himself as Moses and was in a three way with his wife...

..He has already introduced readers to Moses as the guy who called out to God for help parting the Red Sea. “I mean, cut Moses some slack … come on, God, get behind the guy,” he writes, before explaining the need for faith, again.

On the day he became the prime minister, he sent a text to his pastor friends: “Staff is up, I am walking toward the sea.”

And then: “I suspect Moses liked his staff. It was probably very familiar to him, just like my favorite cap is to me. Let me tell you about my cap.”

(He wore a surf cap he liked better than an Akubra that he thought made him look “like a poser”, then someone gave him an even better cap, he writes.)

A lecture on the superiority of Christianity by a powerful man would not be complete without a warning that Christianity is under threat, and Morrison does not turn the other cheek when slapped with what he calls a growing hostility towards Jesus.

“We should continue to be bold in the confession of our faith and not be intimidated by the secularization of our society that will increasingly oppress Christians,” he writes, and: “We must be as wary as serpents and innocent as doves.

“There is so much pressure on Christians today to just adopt the secular ‘morality’ of our current age. We must resist … I believe there are things going on in Western society that we, as a church, can learn from to make ourselves a more faithful bride to our Bridegroom, Jesus.”

The other threat is Satan, he says, the “principalities and powers” that are often behind attacks such as the campaign to “humiliate, discredit, and cancel” him.

Morrison writes that he and Jen have “the strongest foundation for any marriage, a threefold cord between us and God”.

“In the Holy Spirit we have a housemate who indwells us. God has paid the mortgage and moved in.”

The pond's not quite done yet. There was the venerable Meade and a companion dropping another News Corp clanger in News Corp quotes anti-immigration TikToker but fails to reveal ex-One Nation MP adviser role.

An anti-immigration TikToker was featured in the Daily Telegraph as a spokesperson for his self-founded “Migration Watch” but the News Corp tabloid failed to reveal his role as political adviser to a former One Nation MP.

Last week, the Daily Telegraph quoted “Jordan Knight of Migrant [sic] Watch Australia” in an article which blamed the shortage of social housing in New South Wales on the number of “families from overseas”.

Knight is the founder of Migration Watch Australia which advocates for a “pause” on immigration. But the article did not reveal Knight is also a political adviser to Rod Roberts, a New South Wales independent who recently left One Nation.

At least the pond has worked out what was inspiring yesterday's polemic by nattering "Ned".

Dr Kurt Sengul, who researches media populism at Macquarie University, said the Migration Watch Australia website contained “stock standard rightwing populist immigration talking points centred around culture, safety and jobs for local workers”.

“The arguments put forth by Migration Watch in their ‘reasons we need to hit pause now’ are consistent with Australia’s long history of anti-immigration politics.”

There was one other item worth a read: Let us remember the last time students occupied Columbia University.

The last time was apartheid:

Today, creative, fearless and selfless Palestine-solidarity students at Columbia and elsewhere are part of this bright history of speaking truth to power in a self-perceived ivory tower. Palestinians are not asking Columbia and other complicit institutions for charity. Omar insists: “We do not even expect their solidarity. But we demand an end to their shameful complicity. Do no harm, at the very least.

That's so wrong. The entire point of Polonius's prattle is shameless complicity and the doing of harm, as the pond at last begins its herpetology studies ...

1969 in Quadrant? Ye ancient cats and dogs, he really is in his dotage, and then Sharri, disrespect intended, and the pond began to experience déjà vu all over again.

Was it only yesterday that the pond quoted the keen Keane in Crikey? And yet the message seemed extremely relevant to Polonius ...

...Peter Dutton put it very well a couple of weeks ago, when he said “central to Australia’s social cohesion is a social contract”. That is, social cohesion in Australia is based on a demand for compliance.

Indigenous peoples have never been part of our social cohesion; they have been deliberately excluded, and remain so after the majority of Australians last year rejected recognition of the historical reality that Australia is founded on invasion and dispossession. It is only within recent years that the most overt forms of exclusion of LGBTQIA+ Australians has ceased; trans people still remain targets of vilification. Muslim communities remain excluded, treated as a threatening Other, demonised by politicians and the media even as they’re handed money for integration programs and festivals and courted by political parties.

With two of our biggest media companies, News Corp and Seven, basing their business models on encouraging division, grievance and victimhood among white Australians, cohesion in Australia is a game only the powerful — powerful white people — are allowed to play.

The Hamas-Israel conflict has exposed just how exclusionary our idea of “social cohesion” is. Only pro-Palestine protesters have been targeted by politicians, law enforcement and the media, smeared and threatened with dramatic escalations in police powers. Only pro-Palestine activists who pushed back against attempts to destroy their careers have been singled out for “doxxing” and threatened with new laws.

“Political leaders are reluctant to say it in public,” one senior press gallery journalist sniffed recently, “but many feel that the protesters for Palestine are more aggressive and troubling than those in favour of Israel.”

“Troubling”. “Aggressive”. That’s people objecting to mass slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians, the murder of aid workers and the complicity of Western governments. They’re excluded from “social cohesion” for failing to accept the demands of a white government and media elite.

All the festivals and workshops and transformative peacebuilding processes in the world can’t paper over that social cohesion is a demand for silence and complicity.

Polonius has always been keen on silence, complicity and compliance...

Hang on a mo, hang on a nervous tic, James Bolt? Maybe not so young now, because it's six years ago that he became an IPA man, on the principle that it's unwise for a nepo apple to fall far from the rotten tree ... per Crikey ...

Before continuing with Polonius's own patented form of condescending smugness, best get an interrupting snap out of the way ...

The pond would have preferred a cartoon ...

Then it was on with the smugness ... self-satisfied, at that ...

Still fighting the 'Nam war, and never mind the current genocide,  and at that point the reptiles interrupted with a snap designed to terrify the aging readership of the lizard Oz ...

In short, it's more of what the keen Keane noted ... 

And so to the last Polonial gobbet, which doesn't disappoint ...

So much for any hope of sanity in a world run by bigots trained in the Sydney Institute School of Genocidal Celebrations...

While looking up the Bolter's spawn, the pond came across this quaint memory ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, the pond just had to take a sip of Milo back in May 2023 in Rolling Stone, Here's Who Kanye West Just Picket to Manage His Campaign...

...Yiannopoulos’ meteoric rise from fringe figure to mainstream political operative was truncated in 2017, when a series of comments he’d made defending sexual relationships between adult men and young boys were unearthed by a Canadian teenager who was tired of his shit. 

During a 2016 podcast appearance, Yiannopoulos argued that relationships between adults in  their late twenties and 13-year-old boys could “happen perfectly consensually.”

“Pedophilia is not a sexual attraction to somebody 13 years old, who is sexually mature” he said, “pedophilia is attraction to children who have not reached puberty.” Yiannopoulos went on to argue that homosexual boys could benefit from sexual experiences with older men as part of the “coming-of-age process.” 

The comments prompted a widespread backlash. The Conservative Political Action Conference canceled Yiannopoulos’ scheduled appearance at its 2017 conference, and the right-wing commentator was forced to resign from his position at Breitbart. 

In a separate 2017 appearance, on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Yiannopoulos discussed attending “boat parties” where “very young” boys had engaged in sexual activity with older men. 

Yiannopoulos insisted that as a 14-year-old he “was the predator” seeking relationships with adult men, and defended the dynamic. When he asked host Joe Rogan if he had ever seen a 15-year-old girl he thought was “hot,” Rogan rejected the notion, telling Yiannopoulos he was “trying to make it so I’m a fucking creeper like you, I’m not into 14-year-olds.” 

Too hot for Joe, but not for Dame Slap ...

In 2018, Yiannopoulos repeatedly advocated for violence against journalists. In one instance he texted a New York Observer reporter asking for comment on an article that he couldn’t “wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight.”

In another interaction, he emailed reporter Amy Russo, then working at Mediaite, that “if journalists keep lying, deceiving and manipulating the public, then they will reap the same hatred they are sowing against Trump and his voters. Truthfully I take no pleasure in the prospect; I’d rather beat you in a debate hall than a wrestling ring. But you did this to yourselves, and you deserve what’s coming.”

In 2018, after a series of pipe bombs were mailed to prominent Democratic lawmakers, Yiannopolous made a post on Instagram lamenting that the bombs “didn’t go off, and the Daily Beast didn’t get one.” 

Then again:

Yiannopoulos’ involvement in West’s recent plunge into antisemitic conspiracy-mongering is not surprising when viewed against his own history. 

In 2017, Buzzfeed obtained video of Yiannopoulos singing a rendition of “America the Beautiful” with a group of admirers that included avowed neo-Nazi Richard Spencer. Members of the group lauded the performance with a Nazi Sieg Heil salute. Yiannopoulos claimed that he didn’t see the salute due to his “severe myopia.”

Despite claiming Jewish ancestry, Buzzfeed’s investigation found that Yiannopoulos’ work at Breitbart was heavily influenced by the words and philosophies of prominent white nationalists, including Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer of the Daily Stormer, and Devin Saucier of American Renaissance.  

In 2018, Yiannopolous attempted to “troll” Jewish journalist Talia Lavin by sending her $14.88 via Paypal. “1488” is a common refrain among neo-Nazis, with the 14 representing the “14 words” mantra (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children) and the 88 being shorthand for “Heil Hitler.” 

His Racism, But Also His (Alleged) Use of Racism to Steal Money 

In response to what he called discrimination against white men in major universities, Milo established the “Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant” in 2016. He later told the Daily Beast that he had raised “somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000.” 

Despite his concern for the plight of the white man, no one reportedly received any money. 

Months after the funds were due to be distributed, Yiannopoulos admitted that the fund had been “mismanaged,” but asserted he had not spent any of the money. 

In 2018, the fund was declared defunct. “What started as a social experiment that also did some good — winding up social-justice warriors while also sending poor kids to college — became fodder for disingenuous, mouth-breathing retards in the press to baselessly accuse me of ‘white nationalism’” Yiannopoulos told NBC News.

Boy, do we need Milo? 

It's a reminder of all the unsavoury gutter trash that Dame Slap has followed into the gutter into her wretched career, and the pond only embarked on that lengthy preamble to heighten the irony of her blathering endlessly on about "western civilisation" ...

Intellectual renaissance? Presumably that was coming from that mighty book reader and deep thinker, for whom Dame Slap once doffed a cap and kissed his arse ...

Yes, the pond holds a grudge, and is determined never to forget Dame Slap's love for authoritarians and climate science denialists of the Lord Monckton kind ...

Ah yes, on the recommended reading list...

At this point there was a hagiographic snap ...

The pond would have preferred a cartoon ...

Then it was back to Dame Slap ...

What a profoundly stupid man, saying a profoundly stupid thing ...perhaps he should have added Mein Kampf to the reading list, or perhaps a few comic books ... after all, the fruits of western civilisation in the twentieth century were two world wars involving bystanders all around the globe, and a holocaust, and who knows what the morrow might bring...

Sorry, at this point Dame Slap is to be continued, doing a suck up so sublimely Slappian it defies commentary...

Actually there are other signs of sickness, of the kind much loved by Dame Slap ...

On and on she rambled...

Meanwhile, on another planet, perhaps planet Janet, above the faraway tree ...

And so to the last gobbet, and on the upside, at least this outing has allowed the usual Sunday cartoon parade, and the pond hasn't had to worry too much about the bubble-wrapped hive mind blathering on about tribal thinking undermining intellectual curiosity.

Tell that one to Milo ...and to the orange Jesus, and the finest flouring of western civilisation, celebrated  by the toga party-inclined Dame Slap (and let's not forget drug-crazed Jordan in that strange fever swamp of a mind).

Now for a news flash ... the war in Vietnam was enormously violent and destructive. The current genocide in Gaza is enormously violent and destructive, and likely could get much worse before it's done.

WASHINGTON — A top U.N. official said Friday that hard-hit northern Gaza was now in “full-blown famine" after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food deliveries to the Palestinian territory.

Cindy McCain, the American director of the U.N. World Food Program, became the most prominent international official so far to declare that trapped civilians in the most cut-off part of Gaza had gone over the brink into famine.

“It’s horror," McCain told NBC's “Meet the Press” in an interview to air Sunday. “There is famine — full-blown famine — in the north, and it’s moving its way south." (Time)

The glory of western civilisation in a nutshell, and yet it's a few demonstrations that the pond should be worried about?

Next step? Nah, it's too hard, it's actually impossible. 

No one could possibly challenge the conformism, ignorance and mediocrity at the lizard Oz, ostensibly a newspaper, but really just a gutter rag for lovers of Milo and the mango Mussolini ...and certainly not a deluded loon of the Haines kind, trapped somewhere in the British empire back in the nineteenth century.

And so to a celebration. The comedy item of the week was really Kristi ... and the pond''s memories of going rabbit trapping and rabbit shooting, 1s3d a rabbit, 2s6d the pair (and in those days you could get an icecream for thruppence).

These were swept aside by sad memories of the pond's favourite dog being "sent to a farm" because a passerby had raised a hand at the pond, fearing that the pond would knock over a pram as the pond jumped the front fence ...

If only there'd been a gravel pit nearby, there'd have been no need for the pond's mother to sob as she made the bed and explained the pond's dog had been sent to a nice farm...

Oh there was much comedy to be found...