In which the pond features a full house, with Lord Downer, the Caterist and the Major all imitating a one-eyed Aldi shopper ...

 

The other day the pond was in an Aldi aisle (the pond prefers the humans to the bots) when a one-eyed shopper (literally, she had an eye-patch) dramatically pointed to the pond's bottle of OJ, and said she was maddened by the way the juice had no pulp, despite the label. 

The pond thought differently. As a result of a recent medical procedure, the dietitian had told the pond to avoid juice with pulp, but caught short one day, the pond had tried to filter out the pulp. The result was a clogged sieve, and half the juice wasted, and the pond soon abandoned the experiment. 

An Aldi aisle wasn't the place for a discourse on the pond's scientific experiment - pack 'em yourself and get lost - so the pond merely pointed to the pulp visible at the neck of the bottle. The one-eyed shopper took that as a cue to repeat how she was driven crazy by the lack of pulp.

Okay, that's one of those tediously extended metaphors designed to suggest how we all live in different realities, and yet boring metaphors have a nugget of truth in them. 

The pond and the lizards of Oz have two entirely different reality sets. In the world of the reptiles, climate science and global warming and climate change simply don't exist (think pulp). That's why this day's digital edition can begin with a story about bringing back coal...

Sheesh, ye ancient succulent moggies and edible canines, the pond thought nuking the country to save the planet had stopped the idle chatter about dinkum clean virginal Oz coal, but the reptiles have been inspired by the new world order in America, where the effects of climate change simply can't be seen (or so the pond has been told by unreliable sources).

Over at the extreme far right, the usual assorted 'leet pundits assembled to discourse, in a one-eyed Aldi shopper way, on current events ...

The pond should probably give the cloistered Monk a Monopoly pass, because he concluded his piece with a little trepidation, as he scribbled about the end of the eternally blinking Blinken...

... it seems probable that the Trump administration will come in seeing competition with China as its single biggest foreign and defence policy issue. But beyond that there is a great deal that remains uncertain and there is a broad concern Trump may actually pull down a few of the pillars to which Blinken refers.
The first and most crucial is that which Blinken states regarding the defence of Ukraine against Russian aggression. If Trump leans on Ukraine to bow to Putin’s territorial and geopolitical aggression, the principles that have undergirded the international order under Pax Americana will be gravely abridged. That question is one prompted by Trump’s rhetoric and previous behaviour.
His attitude to NATO does not bode well for trans-Atlantic relations or European security. His critical and ill-informed remarks about Taiwan have raised concerns he might seek to cut a deal with China that would leave Taiwan swinging in the wind. And whereas Blinken writes that the Biden administration made clear it did not seek regime change in Iran, only an understanding that Iran refrain from building nuclear weapons, Trump may well take a different tack entirely – as in his first term.
Blinken writes positively of AUKUS. It remains to be seen how high it sits in Trump’s priorities. We have a lot of skin in this game. We’re about to discover whether Blinken has just done a Jake Sullivan – stuck his foot in a geopolitical rabbit hole.
We are about to learn the old rules have been thrown out the window.

Not so Lord Downer, who begins with a preposterous headline ...

At first, Reagan and Thatcher seemed extreme, but their ideas worked and the old Soviet Union failed in the face of their strengths.

Success is the current state of the UK? Well done Maggie. And Ronnie Raygun defeated the Soviet Union? So Russia under Vlad the sociopath invades Ukraine to restore it? Well break danced Raygun...

As if aware that asking even devoted members of the hive mind to waste four minutes on Lord Downer, the reptiles began with an AV distraction, neutered by the pond...

President Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the war with Russia ends next year through diplomacy, commenting at a decisive moment after Donald Trump's U.S. presidential election win and Russia's grinding battlefield gains. He said the conflict could end more quickly under Trump's leadership. Lucy Fielder has more.

Poor Zelensky, what else could he say or hope for? 

Lord Downer wasn't in his situation, but decided to go all in on the mango Mussolini and began with an extremely tired metaphor of his own ...

The Overton window is a concept in political theory that describes the range of ideas and policies deemed acceptable or mainstream at a given time. It represents the spectrum of topics the media and policymakers consider reasonable or viable, often shifting over time in response to societal attitudes, influential voices, and broader cultural trends.
Named after Joseph P. Overton, the Overton window suggests that ideas fall along a spectrum from unthinkable (far outside the window) to radical, acceptable, sensible and popular. As the “window” shifts, ideas that were once seen as extreme or radical can become mainstream, while formerly accepted ideas might move outside the window and become “unthinkable”.
This model is often used to understand how political movements or activists push ideas toward the mainstream by advocating for them persistently, even if they’re initially unpopular. Once the Overton window shifts, policymakers may feel more comfortable introducing legislation or reforms previously considered out of bounds.
In essence, the Overton window illustrates how social and political norms evolve, influencing which policies are possible or impossible at any given time.
In the 1970s, the idea of détente between the West and the Soviet Union was in the Overton window. Contemplating abandoning deterrence and the containment of the Soviet Union was regarded as unacceptable. But so was another idea: that the Cold War with the Soviet Union could be won.

As a reminder that Lord Downer lived long in the past, the reptiles had to remind vulgar youff members of the hive mind who Ronnie Raygun was ...Former US President Ronald Reagan ended the stalemate with the Soviet Union with what was then a shocking move.

Inspired, Lord Downer wandered down memory lane ... and bien pensant that he is, even tossed in a fond reminder of his ability to accept conventional notions without a great deal of critical thought ...

Then along came Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. They thought détente would never bring lasting peace and was a demonstration of Western weakness.
When Reagan deployed intermediate-range and potentially nuclear-armed missiles to Europe, and started to develop the missile defence system known as Star Wars, the establishment was shocked. It was extreme, outside the Overton window, unacceptable. Except it worked, leading to the end of the stalemate with the Soviet Union. Eventually the Soviets realised their system could not compete with the overwhelming prosperity, military technology and determination of America.
I was a young diplomatic officer at the Australian mission to the European Communities – as the European Union was then known – in the lead-up to the 1980 American election. The bien pensant of the West were horrified at the thought that Ronald Reagan would win. He was seen as way outside the Overton window. They hoped and prayed the Democrats’ Jimmy Carter would prevail.
Well, the question is: Are we at another moment in history when the Americans are going to shift the Overton window? I think we are.
The unforgivable decision by President Joe Biden to leave the Afghan people in the hands of the Taliban, the failure of the Americans and the West to deter Putin’s aggression in Eastern Europe and not least the invasion of Ukraine, the failure to stop Iran using its proxies to expand Iranian power through the Middle East and threaten the very existence of Israel, and the failure of the West to deter Chinese adventurism in the South China Sea must make even the most partisan Democrats wonder about the wisdom of their strategy.

Just a quick point here because Lord Downer was never good at matters of history. 

It wasn't jolly Joe's decision to leave the Afghan people in the hands of the Taliban. The mango Mussolini's mob set that in motion. Lord Downer probably never looks at Aljazeera, but maybe he should. US general says Afghanistan collapse rooted in Trump-Taliban deal, Head of US Central Command says collapse of the Afghan government can be traced to US troop withdrawal deal.

Once that deal was done, there was little chance of avoiding another incompetent 'Nam moment, and so it came to pass.

Meanwhile the reptiles interrupted with another bizarre notion, US President-elect Donald Trump offers “peace through strength” as an alternative to the unsuccessful “de-escalation”. Picture: Allison Robbert/Pool/AFP

Peace through strength? You mean kicking Ukraine in the nuts, abandoning NATO and Europe, and mounting a trade war on the world with tariffs, not to mention appointing a climate science denialist as head of the energy department? 

But Lord Downer, never a bear with a big brain, is all in and sees new pots of honey ...

Donald Trump has an alternative and it’s called “peace through strength”. That involves demanding allies wake up and pull their weight rather than leaving all the hard work to the Americans.
Just as the apologists for détente thought Reagan’s determination to win the Cold War against the Evil Empire was dangerous, so too the proponents of the Obama/Biden security policy paradigm built around the notion of “de-escalation” see Trump’s aggressive approach as a dangerous.
I think Trump is right. The West has to show a new determination to stand up to its adversaries, and instead of the West, and the Americans in particular, demanding “de-escalation” by their allies, the Americans should demand that their adversaries de-escalate. The policy of de-escalation is precisely the policy Neville Chamberlain pursued in the late 1930s. It had a different name then. It didn’t work then and it isn’t working now.

Of all the feeble illustrations, this perhaps is the most feeble, Then British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s “Peace In Our Time” didn’t work then and it isn’t working now.

FFS, the mango Mussolini is an isolationist. He sold out Afghanistan, and likely he's about to sell out Ukraine, but what a relief to know that this Pooh is not a member of those dangerous 'leets. 

Why he's just a 'umble scribbler for the lizard Oz, a veritable Uriah Heep, ever so 'umble, certainly not 'leet...

Trump’s election also has the potential to change the Overton window in economic policy. At the moment the prevailing Western policy is high taxes particularly on the successful entrepreneurial, industrious classes, high welfare spending, heavy financial and environmental regulations, and, importantly, policies of climate austerity. Cost hasn’t worried governments.
The results are clear. That formula in Australia has led to a 6 per cent decline in labour productivity over the past two years, falling real wages and rapidly rising energy prices. Europe’s performance has been equally poor, although America has done somewhat better, aided by cheap energy. But all Western countries have ended up with eye-watering levels of debt.
Trump wants to dump these policies. His plan includes cheap energy, dramatic reductions in taxes, a much reduced bureaucracy, and tariffs. While the tariffs won’t help the economy, the rest of his initiatives will substantially boost private sector investment and that in turn will raise living standards.
Of course, the elites of Europe, and for that matter our own country, will denigrate Trump. They regard themselves as morally superior. But the problem for them all, including the Australian government, is that Trump will have shifted the Overton window.
Expect the political class in Australia to respond to this. My prediction is that it will. Even the Labor Party will do its best to distance itself from woke cultural initiatives and language, it will more or less fall into line with Trump’s peace-through-strength foreign policy.
And expect the debate in Australia to shift, particularly on climate change policies. If the US cuts its corporate tax rate to 15 per cent and Australia’s remains at 30 per cent and 28 per cent, there will be a huge sucking sound as capital heads across the Pacific to the low-taxing United States.
More dramatically, high-taxing Europe will see capital flood to the US. Either Australia and the Europeans will respond to this by adopting at least a variation of the Trump economic model – hopefully without tariffs – or the United States economy will boom while the rest of the Western world flags.
The point is, the election of Donald Trump in America will substantially change the global status.

Nah, the point surely is ...

And so to the reptile regulars, and first up requires wasting four minutes (so the reptiles say) of life reading a bog standard Caterist emission under the header Australia’s CO2 emissions have flatlined under this Labor government, The rush towards renewables is driving a dangerous new dependency on China – it’s cornered 80 per cent of the global solar market.

The pond isn't going to waste time arguing with the Caterist - the Major is yet to take the stage - and there's about as much point to it as standing in an Aldi aisle and arguing with a one-eyed loon ...

Once again the reptiles started with an AV clip which suggested members of the hive mind might be better off watching than reading...

A group of former leaders and climate experts said the annual U.N. COP climate talks were no longer fit for purpose and needed to be reformed, publishing a critical open letter midway through what has so far been a fractious summit. Fiona Jones reports.

As usual the Caterist began with a mindless aeroplane factoid, of the kind you can pick up with a quick google, and so much easier than having to deal with climate science.

The average cruising speed of a Boeing 737-700 is 828km/h, no matter which end one flies in. So it was hard not to feel some sympathy for the Prime Minister when he was badgered to explain why he wouldn’t be attending the COP27 climate conference in Egypt in November 2022.
“I can’t be in all places at once,” Anthony Albanese told journalists. “It’s as simple as that.”
The spatiotemporal limitations that apply to every prime minister hadn’t stopped Albanese from calling Scott Morrison “weak” a year earlier when he initially decided not to attend COP26 in Glasgow.
“He should represent Australia,” Albanese said. “If he doesn’t, that’s because he’s embarrassed about Australia’s position.”
As it turned out, Morrison changed his mind and attended Glasgow, only to be further mocked by Albanese for failing to increase Australia’s 2030 target.
For the record, Albanese didn’t turn up at COP28 in Dubai and he has not shown his face at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, which draws to a close at the end of this week.

For the record the reptiles decided to remind the world that we have a PM ...Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: Clare Armstrong

Also for the record, the pond isn't happy with cliff top Albo or his government's record on emissions, energy and the whole damned thing, but equally, seizing on the sorry record as an excuse to abandon renewables is a very Caterist, one-eyed Aldi shopper thing ...

Could it be embarrassment keeping Albanese away? Indeed, he has reason to feel sheepish, judging from the latest quarterly National Greenhouse Accounts published by the Department of Climate Change and Energy.
Australia’s annual CO2 emissions have flatlined under Labor. We were responsible for 438 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in the year to June 2022, a 28 per cent reduction on 2005 emissions. Emissions in the year to June 2024 totalled 440 million tonnes.
So, despite Labor’s bragging and despite all the pain, it has yet to make a gram of progress towards reaching its target of a 35 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. Energy prices have rocketed, thousands of hectares of remnant vegetation have been despoiled, the ugly stick has hit landscapes, and farmers have been trussed with green tape. Yet there has been zero progress towards net zero in a mere 26 years.
The government might trot out excuses such as the post-Covid boost to the economy or the self-inflicted surge in immigration. The underlying explanation, however, is that reducing carbon in the atmosphere is extraordinarily difficult. Setting targets is one thing, achieving them quite another.
The electricity sector was responsible for 39.8 million tonnes of emissions in the March quarter of 2022 under Angus Taylor’s watch. In the March quarter this year under Chris Bowen, the total was 39.2 million, a fall of a miserly 1.5 per cent. We can safely say Labor’s 2030 target of an 82 per cent carbon-free electricity grid will not be met. Neither will it hit its overall emissions reduction target of 35 per cent without a moratorium on immigration coupled with a humungous economic recession and a few pandemics.
Australia isn’t the only country struggling to meet the absurd expectations of the global climate elite. In 1995, when the first Conference of the Parties was held in Berlin, the world was emitting 23.5 billion tonnes of carbon. Last year’s total was 37.5 billion tonnes, an increase of 60 per cent.

Around this point in proceedings, it's often time to terrify the hive mind readership with shots of outrageous protestors disrupting things and sure enough ...

Activists gather with banners, including one that reads “Pay Up”, outside the plenary halls of the COP29 Climate Conference to voice their demands for a variety of climate-related issues, including labour rights, indigenous peoples' rights, loss and damage financing, and the expulsion of fossil fuel lobbyists from the conference. Picture: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Oh dear sweet long absent lord, please pass the pond some smelling salts ... they look so very, very threatening.

Then it was time for the taxpayer-funded Caterist to rail at caviar consumption ... as you'd expect from a Gina fellow traveller...

By any measure, the COP process has been a total failure. The annual nagfest has been hijacked by groups with divergent political agendas, like the redistribution of wealth from rich to poor nations. It is a honey pot for renewable energy rent-seekers, who want governments to skew energy markets in their favour, squeeze out their competitors, subsidise their businesses and fatten their profits.
If the 67,000 delegates at COP29 had an ounce of shame, they’d polish off the caviar and head home with their tails between their legs. The vanity targets set under the Paris accord won’t be met.
The unintended consequences of the zero-2050 fantasy have been severe. Trillions of dollars in global capital have been allocated towards achieving a singular, unachievable goal using unproven technology. It has distracted Western governments from the strategic challenge of energy security. Many European countries were deeply exposed to the disruption of oil and gas imports after Russia invaded Ukraine.

It's the fault of renewables that Vlad is a sociopath dreaming of restoring lost empires?

At this point the pond began to feel some sympathy for the remnants of the lizard Oz graphics department. How to join renewables and China together to complement the Caterist's closing FUD rant?This was the best they could manage ...

A worker checks solar photovoltaic modules used for small solar panels at a factory in Haian. China, the heaviest carbon emitter by some way, is on track to become the world’s only green energy superpower. Picture: AFP

China is on the way to becoming a green energy superpower? Don't blame renewables, blame the enormous stupidity of other countries and legacy media still announcing on their front digital page that a return to coal is the answer ...

The rush towards renewables is driving a dangerous new dependency on China, which processes 67 per cent of the world’s lithium and has cornered 80 per cent of the global solar market. Paradoxically, China, the heaviest carbon emitter by some way, is on track to become the world’s only green energy superpower. Yet the heavy manufacturing involved has increased the country’s consumption of coal. A notional reduction of emissions in the Californian transport sector from switching to electric vehicles, for example, will correspond to a rise in emissions in China’s manufacturing sector.
In the absence of progress towards the Paris targets, the climate mafioso’s standover tactics have turned away from emissions and towards finance.
“Pay up or humanity will pay the price,” UN secretary-general António Guterres warned delegates last Tuesday. “It is time to deliver.” Guterres called for more government spending. “Tear down the walls to climate finance,” he said. “Public finance will mobilise the trillions of dollars developing countries need.”
Guterres is a member of the Portuguese Socialist Party and served as prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002, presiding over a rise in government spending from a record low of 6.2 million euros when he entered office to 8 million euros when he left. Guterres is not the kind of person you’d want as treasurer of your local bowls club, let alone as a global leader on fiscal policy.
It is little wonder pulling out of the Paris accord is one of the priorities of Donald Trump’s second presidency, along with scrapping EV mandates and green energy welfare subsidies.
With the US withdrawal, none of the world’s four largest emitters – China, the US, India and Russia – will be on board with the 2050 target and, given that they produce 60 per cent of the world’s emissions, zero 2050 must be recognised as an ex-target, nailed to the perch like a Norwegian blue parrot whose days of pining for the fjords have expired.
Nick Cater is a senior fellow at the Menzies Research Centre.

What a tiresome, boring, predicable, endlessly repetitive ponce he is, how easily he aligns with the mango Mussolini's climate science denialism.

The pond has no time to argue - pack 'em yourself and keep on the move - because room must be made for the Major. 

Must it, the pond can hear some punters wondering, and it's true you'll be wasting five minutes of your life (so the reptiles say), which you'll never get back if you read Amsterdam soccer attacks are a wake-up call for left-leaning media, Many journalists in the left-leaning media initially denied anti-Semitism motivated the attacks in Amsterdam against Israeli soccer supporters.

First came an obligatory snap, Groups of Dutch Muslims attacked Israeli soccer supporters in Amsterdam.

Then came the Major, and that requires first of all forgetting everything you might have heard about mass starvation, collective displacement, gulags, land grabs and an ongoing genocide ...

You certainly mustn't waste time reading Haaretz, or Dahlia Scheindlin on recent developments ...

Trump's designated U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, is a Southern Baptist minister with a messianic appetite for Jewish supremacy in the West Bank. He gushes over Israeli land grabs, and breezily denies the existence of the Palestinian people with a divinely infused arrogance that reminds me of Bezalel Smotrich. They certainly agree about full Israeli conquest of the West Bank.
If Huckabee is Smotrich's metaphorical (and metaphysical) twin, Israelis can't be too happy about him: Smotrich is so unpopular that he only sometimes scrapes past the electoral threshold in polls – many times dipping below.
Meanwhile, Trump's choice of secretary of defense is the army veteran and Fox News commentator Pete Hegseth. One of his claims to fame is defending U.S. servicemen accused of committing war crimes in Iraq. That gives him some overlap with the Israeli public, when a majority of Israelis (Jews) broadly supported Elor Azaria, the soldier who executed an incapacitated Palestinian attacker in 2016.
But even some right wingers in Israel (and most others) were disgusted by the allegations against reservists in Sde Teiman who tortured and raped a prisoner. We don't have hard data, but many were horrified at the riots of far-right extremists, who banged on the doors of Israel Defense Forces bases, infiltrated and roamed around seeking to free the suspects. Hegseth would have been on their side.

And yet Benji remains in power and alleged disgust matters little.

It's also best to avoid Gideon Levy repeating the dose in Trump's 'pro-Israel' Appointees Are the Worst of Our Enemies:

Tragedies are befalling Israel one after the other. The next impending one will occur on January 20, when Donald Trump is sworn in as president. If the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the National Security Adviser and the U.S. ambassador to Israel stick to their words, the coming years spell disaster for Israel. The next period will determine its fate as a perennial apartheid state thanks to its ostensible friends, who are no more than blood merchants, dealers who will deepen Israel's addiction to occupation, bloodshed and power, irrevocably.
They should not be labeled "friends of Israel," they are the obverse. They are the worst of its enemies. The new people in charge of the U.S.'s foreign policy are friends of apartheid, occupation, the settlements and war. Trump is the most moderate and restrained of this lot. He may restrain them somewhat. Itamar Ben-Gvir may also take part in restraining this group of wackos in Washington, if only he overcomes the language barrier.
Someone has already tweeted on X that the U.S. may yet impose sanctions on Israelis who don't move to a settlement. Imaginary? That's not so certain, judging by the delusional stances of these people. All of them could be panelists on [Netanyahu's mouthpiece] Channel 14's flagship program "The Patriots," even though they are even more extreme than its current participants. Their casting as the top echelon of American foreign diplomacy is horrifying. Imagine Channel 14 presenter Yinon Magal as foreign minister.
Racist and ignorant, they know nothing about the reality in the Middle East other than settler propaganda they have been brainwashed with in evangelical churches and on visits to settlements. The most criminal of Zionist enterprises, the settlements, has never had such adamant propagandists. Settler leader Yossi Dagan is already justifiably celebrating their appointment in front of every camera.
They will push Israel into annexation, population transfer, war crimes - which are not crimes in their eyes - ethnic cleansing and genocide. They will dismantle the last global watchdogs, empty of content the international community's institutions and arm Israel even more than their predecessors. They will put a stop to the International Court of Justice and with it the remnants of global justice. The bell may also toll for NATO and the United Nations. On January 20, Israel will receive a permit to kill, cleanse and deport. The addict will get the keys to the pharmacy's drug cabinet...

And so on, and instead of the realities on the ground, it's on with the Major ignoring the genocide while indulging in the bashing of Muslims...

News organisations, politicians and police may need to rethink engagement strategies with local Muslim communities put in place in Australia after al-Qaida’s 2001 World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks in the US.
ASIO, the Australian Federal Police and state police services built connections with Islamic communities to guard against radicalisation of young Muslim (mostly) males attracted to the anti-American message of Osama bin Laden. Several domestic terror plots were foiled thanks to such work.
Not since the collapse of Isis in 2015 has the West seen the sort of violence in large cities that broke out in Amsterdam on November 8, as groups of young Dutch Muslims attacked Israeli soccer supporters in town for the Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv.
The danger today sits not with a radical Islamist ideology that in Sunni Arab lands traces its origins back to the late 19th century and in the Shia world to the Iranian revolution of 1979.
The Dutch violence has not much to do with Islamism. It is partly inspired by a much older hatred in the Middle East – the anti-Semitism that has thrived there for 1500 years and crippled western Europe under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany until the end of World War II.
Remember many Middle East leaders, including the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, supported Hitler. Much of the fiercest anti-Israel media commentary in the region today still echoes support for a modern-day genocide against Jews.
Iran-based Lebanese academic Hadi Dalloul discussed the events in Amsterdam on November 8, suggesting that after the liberation of Palestine there would have to be either another genocide against Israel’s Jews or they would have to be allowed to flee to Europe. He claimed Europeans would be unwilling to accept them. What happened in Amsterdam was a pointer to their likely fate if they were accepted.
This is the mindset of many in the Middle East media.
This column has had dozens of briefings over the years about strategies to build bridges into our Muslim community. Yet only a decade ago many people well known to the security services went illegally to Syria to fight with ISIS.

At this point the reptiles slipped in a snap of Former NSW premier Bob Carr and Jamal Rifi. Picture: Alexi Demetriadi

For some reason the reptiles only allowed the Major a couple more lines and then they slipped in another snap designed to evoke fear in the hive mind readership ...

It’s one reason this newspaper made western Sydney doctor Jamal Rifi its Australian of the Year in January 2015.
Rifi was instrumental in helping parents and families counsel young Muslims thinking of following now dead former criminal Khaled Sharrouf and his family and friends to Syria. Sharrouf and his son were pictured holding a severed head on this masthead’s front page in August 2014.

There it came, IS fighter Khaled Sharrouf, who is thought to have been killed by a drone strike in Iraq in 2015.

The Major is certainly pulling out all the stops this day, what with severed heads, 2001, endless reminders of Islamic extremism ... and it almost goes without saying, absolutely nothing but the ongoing humanitarian disaster and genocide that is Gaza, not to mention the destruction of Lebanon.

At this point the reptiles gave up interrupting the Major with snaps and just let him rant, and so will the pond ... with a reminder of what Amir Tibon suggested in Haaretz was in play, 'MBS Was Willing to Go a Long Way Toward Israel, but Netanyahu and His Coalition Have Become Unhinged':

To understand the source of the Saudi frustration, one should look no further than another public statement made on Monday, this time in Jerusalem, by Israel's Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich. Standing in front of the cameras in the halls of the Israeli Knesset, Smotrich announced that, due to Trump's victory in the U.S. presidential election, the year 2025 will be "Israel's year of annexation."
His plan is to officially annex the occupied West Bank, turning the disputed territory into an official part of Israel – but, of course, without giving citizenship or equal rights to the millions of Palestinians living there.
And it's not just the West Bank. Smotrich is also pushing for Israel to build new settlements in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, in areas from which the Israeli military has displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

There was also a map, A map of planned Jewish settlements in Gaza distributed at last month's 'Preparing to Resettle Gaza' conference, which was attended by far-right ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir

His far-right party, which has been collapsing in the polls but still enjoys a strong position inside Netanyahu's current coalition, isn't trying to disguise this plan, which is not supported by any of Israel's allies abroad. To the contrary: the Smotrich camp is openly celebrating the possibility of a depopulated northern Gaza ripe for Jewish settlement.
Netanyahu is silent in the face of their extremism, too weak and afraid to confront Smotrich, who could bring down the government if the prime minister dared to speak out against him.
The split-screen between Riyadh, where a disappointed MBS described Israel's extremism, flanked by Arab and Muslim leaders, and Jerusalem, where the extremist Smotrich prepared his next steps to prolong the Gaza war and expand the conflict, tells a sad story about the Biden administration's failure in the Middle East. Israeli-Saudi normalization, building on the 2020 Abraham Accords, was Biden's top policy goal in the region and, for a brief moment in 2023, it even seemed possible. But today, it is more distant than ever.

The pond could go on endlessly quoting alternatives to climate science denialism and genocide denialism, but instead let the Major have at it for a long, lengthy, but last! - huzzah! - rant ...

The impulse to fully fledged jihad has never been mainstream here in the Muslim community. Attacks inside Australia were by young males who had self radicalised watching terror propaganda online.
Think the 2014 Melbourne stabbing attack on two counter-terrorism police by 18-year-old Numan Haider, the 2015 shooting of police worker Curtis Cheng at Parramatta by 15-year-old Farhad Mohammad Jabaror, and last April’s stabbing of Assyrian bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, allegedly by a 16-year-old during a mass at Wakeley in western Sydney.
What’s different today in Australia, and in much of the Western world, is the mainstreaming of Islamic activism in response to the 14-month toll on civilians by the Israel Defence Forces in Gaza after the attack by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7 last year.
While military experts blame the civilian toll on Hamas for hiding in tunnels beneath hospitals and schools, this cuts little ice with Muslims around the world who have been flooded with photos and stories of the heartbreaking tragedy hitting ordinary Gazan families.
This is where Amsterdam is a warning shot to governments, law enforcement and media often more concerned about Islamophobia than anti-Semitism.
Many journalists in the left-leaning media initially denied anti-Semitism motivated the Amsterdam attacks, claiming what happened was football hooliganism kicked off by Tel Aviv supporters who had ripped down a Palestinian flag, chanted anti-Gaza slogans and committed some acts of vandalism.
It was only later after evidence emerged of social media co-ordination for a “Jew hunt” and subsequent apologies by city mayor Femke Halsema, Prime Minister Dick Schoof and King Willem-Alexander, that left-wing media began to accept this was indeed a pogrom in the city where Anne Frank hid from the Nazis.
The Times of Israel quoted from a call by the King to Israel’s President Isaac Herzog the Friday morning after the attack. “We failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during World War II and last night we failed again,” the King said.
Protests globally since the “where are the Jews” demonstration at the Sydney Opera House on October 9 last year will eventually necessitate a new law enforcement paradigm that needs to account for modern-day calls for genocide against Jews.
Where al-Qa’ida and ISIS sought a caliphate and preached against what they saw as Western imperialism, Hamas openly called for genocide against Jews and the destruction of the State of Israel. Its racism is served by social media feeds flooding websites with images of child victims and by the pro-Hamas Al-Jazeera news service.
The Somalian-born former Muslim and once Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, on her website, summed up what Amsterdam will mean for law enforcement in the Netherlands and globally. “Globalise the Intifada is one of the slogans of pro-Palestinian organisation in the United States. We now see what it means as a brutal pogrom fouls the streets of Amsterdam.’’
She goes on to describe 20 years of writing books warning about the dangers of “large scale migration from Muslim-majority countries, especially when combined with the naive politics of multiculturalism rather than integration”.
She says Islamists have been able to infiltrate Amsterdam’s “internal security apparatuses” because of deliberate policies to address perceptions the Amsterdam police service was too white. Entry standards were lowered so the police represented all groups in Dutch society.
“Today a large part of the force is made up of second-generation migrants from North Africa and the Middle East. Since October 7 last year some officers have already refused to guard Jewish locations such as the Holocaust Museum.”
Now reflect on evidence from an investigative journalism project, details of which were published in The Jerusalem Post on November 10. It reveals one of the organisers of the Amsterdam attacks, Ayman Nejmeh, had declared on his social media that he was a former teacher employed by UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine. He works as a social media co-ordinator for a Dutch branch of Hamas that helps organise regular protest marches.
As one former senior security expert told this column on Wednesday about Palestinian protests in Australia, some organisers are clearly professional protesters rather than ordinary community members.
Think the cancellation by Myer of the launch of its annual Christmas windows display on Sunday after Victoria Police allowed a pro-Palestinian protest in Bourke St Mall. The protest group, Disrupt Wars, immediately cancelled its march in response to Myer’s cancellation. The group posted on social media: “Christmas is cancelled and there will be no joy or frivolity while children in Gaza are massacred.”
As Premier Jacinta Allan said: “Blocking Christmas windows won’t change a thing in the Middle East, but it will let down a bunch of kids in Melbourne.”

Oh FFS, there's a genocide going down, and all the Major can think of is the mob in the Bourke street mall not getting their Xmas jollies?

Is it any wonder that the pond turns to the immortal Rowe for consolation?

Some bloody consolation Mr Rowe ... that volcano's looking pretty dangerous, and all the reptiles can do is wait, agog with excitement, for the fireworks to start ...