Nothing to see here, just the bromancer celebrating the trade war, the Major taking a walk down memory lane, and the Brexiting Caterist honoured in absentia ...

 

Devastating news for those who like to keep up their loon quota on a Monday ... no sign of the Caterist early in the day ...

There was the bromancer, doing his level best to cope with mango Mussolini madness, while over on the extreme far right, that old dog, the Major, was top of the reptile pile ...

The pond did appreciate the attempt by Jenny to lather up hysteria in favour of the mango Mussolini on the matter of the Panama canal - her fear of China had an almost bromancer fragrance to it - but the pond will accept no substitutes and turned to the bro ...

This North American trade war is silly and wrong, but expect Donald Trump to win it easily, Canada and Mexico taking on the US on tariffs is a bit like me picking a fight with Mike Tyson. It’s barely possible I might get one punch in, but the result is not remotely in doubt.

So much winning, but surprisingly the bro could only spend three minutes on the winning, together with an opening snap of the winner, Donald Trump to win trade war against Canada’s Justin Trudeau. Picture: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images via AFP

As usual, the bro tried to spin it all as best he could ...

Donald Trump has instigated what is surely the silliest trade war in living memory, with close friend and NATO ally, Canada, and with the most important economy in Latin America, Mexico.
But this is the shape of things to come.
And incidentally, Trump has begun the great saga of all the tariffs he will in time threaten and impose on China.
Trump loves tariffs. He has decided that tariffs and sanctions are his coercive measure of choice, his preferred revenue raising mechanism and the means by which he will reshape the international economic order and restructure the American economy.
The world will see a lot more of Trump’s tariffs, and no country, not even Australia, can consider itself immune.
Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, and Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, have announced retaliatory tariffs on the US.
This is more or less a necessary move, but it’s not going to work.

At this point the reptiles slipped in an AV distraction ...

U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday (February 1) ordered 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports and 10% on goods from China starting on Tuesday (February 4) to address a national emergency over fentanyl and illegal aliens entering the U.S., White House officials said. Alex Cohen reports.

Ah yes, look at all the trucks, look at all the winning ...

The bro pressed on ...

It would be a bit like me picking a fight with Mike Tyson. It’s barely possible I might get one punch in, but the result is not remotely in doubt.
Nonetheless, it’s more than likely that this will be solved within weeks rather than months.
As ever with Trump, the action is outrageous, over the top, slightly mad, breaks all kinds of norms, and yet there is a genuine grievance he’s addressing and his actions, as unsubtle as they are, will likely have more or less the desired effect.
It’s true that Mexico has been happy enough to let illegal immigrants flow through its territory to the United States. That’s a problem. For every nation, including the US, has a right to protect its borders.
When Tony Abbott stopped the boats coming illegally to Australia from the north, at first this was a nuisance to Indonesia. It meant that people who would have come to Australia stayed in Indonesia. However, as a figure at the very top of Indonesian Government once remarked to me, it ultimately meant that the people stopped coming illegally to Indonesia in order to come to Australia. Once the boats stopped the issue between the two nations disappeared and no-one was happier about that than the Indonesian Government.

Then the reptiles decided to insert a snap of a major villain, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. (Photo by Dave Chan / AFP)

That's unfortunate, because it reminded the pond of data that the bromancer studiously ignored. Per Forbes ...  Tariff On Canada Not Justified By U.S. Immigration And Drug Claims

President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that Canada has allowed "millions and millions" of people to illegally enter the United States. However, with regard to Canada at least, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data for Fiscal Year 2024 tells a different story. In that period, Border Patrol apprehended 23,721 people who illegally crossed the U.S.-Canada border, representing just 1.5% of nationwide Border Patrol apprehensions. In contrast, at the U.S.-Mexico border, Border Patrol reported more than 1.5 million apprehensions in the same year.
While illegal crossings from Canada have increased in recent years, they are still nowhere near the levels seen at the southern border. Furthermore, the migration flow is not one-sided. In 2023, the last year for which we have statistics at the moment, more people crossed illegally from the United States into Canada than in the opposite direction. With Canada experiencing a labor shortage and increasing economic opportunities, it is likely that the number of individuals moving north in 2025, both legally and illegally, will continue to surpass those moving south.

And again ...

Another major argument behind the tariff is the assertion that Canada is a major source of fentanyl entering the United States. While fentanyl trafficking is undoubtedly a critical issue, the data does not support the claim that Canada is a primary source of the drug entering the U.S.
In Fiscal Year 2024, USCBP seized 21,148 pounds of fentanyl at the southwest border, mostly smuggled from Mexico. In contrast, only 43 pounds were intercepted at the northern border. This means that less than 1% of all fentanyl seizures occurred at the U.S.-Canada border.
Furthermore, drug flows are not a one-way street. In 2024, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) seized approximately 10.8 pounds of fentanyl coming into Canada from the United States. In comparison, CBSA reported that 17.6 pounds of fentanyl were smuggled from Canada into the U.S. This suggests that the trafficking issue is not as one-sided as the administration claims.

And so on ... not mentioning that the MM is also breaking his own trade agreement, and that the notion of "winning" is absurd not just in the context of what Canada might do, but also by the bromancer's account, what Mexico might be able to do to satisfy the surrealist-in-chief...

It’s also the case that prodigious amounts of fentanyl come into the US across the Mexican border. Much of the fentanyl, and the chemicals used to construct it, come from China.
Trump has told confidantes that he believes this is a deliberate policy by Beijing designed to weaken and undermine the United States.
One problem for Mexico, however, is that it’s pretty unclear what level of action on Mexico’s part will satisfy Trump.
The equation Trump wants is for the pain he inflicts to outweigh the gain from turning a blind eye, or worse, to fentanyl smuggling and facilitating illegal immigration.
But solving these issues may be beyond Mexico’s capabilities. Even Mexico’s best friend would not say it’s an especially effective state.
It may also be that all this drama, and promise of action by Trump, is too good a performance for Trump to give it up.

Cue a snap of Mexico's President Claudia Sheinbaum. (Photo by Alfredo ESTRELLA / AFP)

The bromancer's advice, surrender somehow to the madness! Though the bromancer never seemed certain how to do the surrendering, or what might constitute all the winning ...

On the other hand, disrupting Canadian energy imports to the US, in particular, could dislocate tens of thousands of American jobs. Trump wants to use tariffs and corporate tax cuts to attract huge foreign investment into the US.
He’s likely to be successful in this. However, if he gets the reputation of creating too much instability in American trading life this could be a disincentive to investment.
In the end, these tariffs could be disruptive for the US, but they are potentially devastating to Mexico and Canada.
So, much as they might dislike Trump personally, much as domestic politics might require them to put up some show of defiance, Mexican and Canadian leaders have an overwhelming incentive to find a way to placate Trump.
As did Colombia on the issue of receiving its citizens back who had been deported from the US.

Cue another snap of the alleged winner, US President Donald Trump . (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP)

What could the bromancer do but offer passive submission? After all, it's just a jolly spat amongst chums ...

This trade spat involving the US, Canada and Mexico will have global consequences. The new president is known for his stubbornness. If he goes through a serious episode in which tariffs are clearly a successful play for him, he will be stubbornness on steroids. The tendency wto (sic) use tariffs for many other policy ends will be monstrously reinforced.
And let’s not for a second think Trump is alone in this. China for years nakedly used trade restrictions as a measure of political intimidation against Australia. Many nations honour free trade mainly in the breach.
Trump has declared the age of tariffs. There is much much more of this to come.

Oh yes, there'll be much more to come ...

So much winning ...

At this point the pond was reminded of a recent WSJ editorial. 

Unlike the bromancer, his kissing American cousins didn't hold back in The Dumbest Trade War in History, Trump will impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico for no good reason.

The pond skipped past the illustration, only pausing to admire the caption ...An employee aseembles automobile plastic components at an ISGO Manufacturing SA facility in San Luis Potosi, Mexico

The Murdochians sounded mad as they aseembled their arguments...

President Trump will fire his first tariff salvo on Saturday against those notorious American adversaries . . . Mexico and Canada. They’ll get hit with a 25% border tax, while China, a real adversary, will endure 10%. This reminds us of the old Bernard Lewis joke that it’s risky to be America’s enemy but it can be fatal to be its friend.
Leaving China aside, Mr. Trump’s justification for this economic assault on the neighbors makes no sense. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says they’ve “enabled illegal drugs to pour into America.” But drugs have flowed into the U.S. for decades, and will continue to do so as long as Americans keep using them. Neither country can stop it.
Drugs may be an excuse since Mr. Trump has made clear he likes tariffs for their own sake. “We don’t need the products that they have,” Mr. Trump said on Thursday. “We have all the oil you need. We have all the trees you need, meaning the lumber.”
Mr. Trump sometimes sounds as if the U.S. shouldn’t import anything at all, that America can be a perfectly closed economy making everything at home. This is called autarky, and it isn’t the world we live in, or one that we should want to live in, as Mr. Trump may soon find out.
***
Take the U.S. auto industry, which is really a North American industry because supply chains in the three countries are highly integrated. In 2024 Canada supplied almost 13% of U.S. imports of auto parts and Mexico nearly 42%. Industry experts say a vehicle made on the continent goes back and forth across borders a half dozen times or more, as companies source components and add value in the most cost-effective ways.
And everyone benefits. The office of the U.S. Trade Representative says that in 2023 the industry added more than $809 billion to the U.S. economy, or about 11.2% of total U.S. manufacturing output, supporting “9.7 million direct and indirect U.S. jobs.” In 2022 the U.S. exported $75.4 billion in vehicles and parts to Canada and Mexico. That number jumped 14% in 2023 to $86.2 billion, according to the American Automotive Policy Council.
American car makers would be much less competitive without this trade. Regional integration is now an industry-wide manufacturing strategy—also employed in Japan, Korea and Europe—aimed at using a variety of high-skilled and low-cost labor markets to source components, software and assembly.
The result has been that U.S. industrial capacity in autos has grown alongside an increase in imported motor vehicles, engines and parts. From 1995-2019, imports of autos, engines and parts rose 169% while U.S. industrial capacity in autos, engines and parts rose 71%.
As the Cato Institute’s Scott Lincicome puts it, the data show that “as imports go up, U.S. production goes up.” Thousands of good-paying auto jobs in Texas, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan owe their competitiveness to this ecosystem, relying heavily on suppliers in Mexico and Canada.

So much winning ...

But freedumb seemed to have a hollow ring to it ...

Tariffs will also cause mayhem in the cross-border trade in farm goods. In fiscal 2024, Mexican food exports made up about 23% of total U.S. agricultural imports while Canada supplied some 20%. Many top U.S. growers have moved to Mexico because limits on legal immigration have made it hard to find workers in the U.S. Mexico now supplies 90% of avocados sold in the U.S. Is Mr. Trump now an avocado nationalist?
Then there’s the prospect of retaliation, which Canada and Mexico have shown they know how to do for maximum political impact. In 2009 the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats ended a pilot program that allowed Mexican long-haul truckers into the U.S. as stipulated in Nafta. Mexico responded with targeted retaliation on 90 U.S. goods to pressure industries in key Congressional districts.
These included California grapes and wine, Oregon Christmas trees and cherries, jams and jellies from Ohio and North Dakota soy. When Mr. Trump imposed steel and aluminum tariffs in 2018, Mexico got results using the same tactic, putting tariffs on steel, pork products, fresh cheese and bourbon.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to respond to U.S. tariffs on a dollar-for-dollar basis. Canada could suffer a larger GDP hit since its economy is so much smaller, but American consumers will feel the bite of higher costs for some goods.
***
None of this is supposed to happen under the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that Mr. Trump negotiated and signed in his first term. The U.S. willingness to ignore its treaty obligations, even with friends, won’t make other countries eager to do deals. Maybe Mr. Trump will claim victory and pull back if he wins some token concessions. But if a North American trade war persists, it will qualify as one of the dumbest in history.

And if a North American trade war persists, the bromancer will surely qualify as the best to provide the dumbest coverage in history, though he'll have to work hard to match all the dumbness on parade.

And so to the Major ... still in election mode, and reaching for the usual slurs, in The Albo and Jim show is a reckless sequel to Rudd-Swan, Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers are making the same mistakes Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard did – minus the public leadership instability.

After the wild-eyed excitement provoked by the MM, the best the reptiles could offer was a snap of a shifty looking, grimacing, surly Albo, Anthony Albanese at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It was a standard reptile ploy, part of the election mode playbook, and the Major was in bog standard form ...

Informed readers know media coverage of the annual federal budget involves “locking up” journalists inside Parliament House without their phones or computer access to the outside world until the Treasurer begins his budget speech at 7.30pm.
Originally this was to prevent reporters from capitalising on inside knowledge that might move financial markets. Nowadays budgets are so comprehensively leaked the only reason to continue with lock-ups is to try to influence media coverage.
Back in the Gillard years – during which time I was editor-in-chief of The Australian – I phoned my cartoonist, the late great Bill Leak, at 7.31pm at his home on the NSW central coast to discuss a page one cartoon that might reflect the actual content of that 2011 budget.

That's how it goes these days, with the Major sounding more and more like a barfly indulging in the mammaries and trotting down memory lane ...on and on he meandered as the pond did its best to focus on the blather ...

Treasurer Wayne Swan had promised tough spending cuts after the blowouts under Kevin Rudd during the 2008-09 Global Financial Crisis. We did not think Swan had delivered.
An hour later Bill emailed a rough drawing of Swan as Crocodile Dundee with a small oyster shucker in one hand and a toy crocodile in the other. The page one headline read: “That’s not a knife, Treasurer”.
Present Labor Treasurer Jim Chalmers was Swan’s chief of staff. Like Swan and Rudd, Chalmers kicked off as Treasurer by writing a long essay about making capitalism kinder. The original Labor model for such posturing was former Labor opposition leader Mark Latham, who in 1998 wrote a whole book on the issue, titled, Civilising Global Capital.
The country was lucky to dodge Latham, but not so lucky with Rudd, Swan and Chalmers who all thought themselves “economic seers” but never achieved the reforms of previous treasurers, Paul Keating or Peter Costello.
Partly paraphrasing economics Professor Richard Holden in The Australian Financial Review on January 2, Chalmers (and in this column’s view Rudd and Swan) fought the laws (of economics) but the laws won.
In Rudd’s case it was huge spending to prevent a GFC-induced recession Australia was never going to have because of the revenue boom flowing from coal and iron ore sales to China.
Swan in 2012 announced four surpluses that became large deficits. Then, in 2013, ahead of an election Labor expected to lose to opposition leader Tony Abbott, Swan’s budget included the greatest Labor debt bomb of the past two decades: the National Disability Insurance Scheme, that is set to cost $100bn a year by the middle of the century.
In addition to the NDIS, that last Swan budget included projected funding for 10 years of Gillard’s Gonski education reforms, paid for with cuts that Labor knew Abbott would find unpalatable.
Leak that year drew Swan in a Queensland Reds jersey kicking a debt bomb rather than a rugby ball to Abbott in a blue NSW jersey. Chalmers too is kicking the national debt down the road: MYEFO in December predicted a deficit of $27bn and no return to balance for a decade.

The pond rarely yearns for the reptiles' bog standard from the archives visual interruptions, but even a Swannie interruption was appreciated, Former Labor treasurer Wayne Swan delivers his valedictory speech in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in 2019. Picture: AAP

Was there a side order of Cold Chisel with that? Or maybe the Boss?

Never mind, the reptiles could have taken the trouble to read the Major's text and wandered down memory lane with him and discovered those Leak cartoons, but in the end, they couldn't be stuffed, and the pond was pleased that nothing Leakian had managed to dribble its way into the pond ... so many bad memories, so much horror ...

These days the Major is a bit like "Ned", and when not recycling his memories, is inclined to recycle the thoughts of others, provided they suit his election campaign mode ... and so it came to pass ...

Chalmers’ Future Made in Australia plans, government underwriting of private sector wages in aged care and childcare, and the extension of childcare subsidies to families earning as much as $530,000 a year all contribute to exploding government debt.
On Friday, Clare Armstrong in the News Corp tabloids reported most of the childcare subsidy increase introduced in September 2023 had already been eaten up by fee rises, just as this column predicted.
Chalmers has presided over record growth in federal and state public service job creation. He has run expansionary fiscal policy that he says shows Australia can beat inflation without destroying jobs.
Never mind per capita incomes have been in recession for a record seven consecutive quarters. Or that without more than a million migrants in two years the nation would be in recession.
Chalmers and his Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, have used public spending to avoid being tossed out of office after only one term. Just as both did when part of the first Rudd government 15 years earlier.
Yet, despite the fall in inflation revealed last Wednesday, it is not clear a single 0.25 per cent rate cut in February, which is no certainty, will save Albo.
Economist Steven Hamilton, writing in The Australian Financial Review on December 8, nailed the problem: prosperity is driven by the private sector.
Hamilton argued there were now two economies in Australia: the very sick private sector (“Consumption went backwards over the past six months. Investment has ground to a halt. Employment growth is anaemic.”) and the parasitic healthy public sector economy “that is sucking the life out of” the private economy.
In the public economy, “consumption has grown 10 times faster than in the (private) economy. Investment is at its fastest in six years. Employment growth is at its fastest in at least 30 years outside the pandemic”.
Disputing Chalmers’ claim that without this public spending the economy would be worse, Hamilton explained, “what’s missing from the Treasurer’s (analysis) is that, had he and his state colleagues showed a modicum of restraint over the past two-and-a-half years, interest rates would be lower (now)”, stimulating private sector activity and employment.
While unemployment is low at 4 per cent, 87 per cent of all jobs growth in the past two years has been in the non-market sector – many in the NDIS, aged care and child care.
Add to that the deliberate wage rises engineered by former industrial relations minister Tony Burke. Figures released on November 7 show the number of federal public servants rose 3.6 per cent in the year to June 30 and their wages climbed eight per cent to $232bn.
Still Chalmers claims things are better here than overseas. Is he right?
Chalmers believes in a new world driven by the opportunities of power price falls from renewable energy and the growth of the care economy. He sees government at the centre of the economy – a European social democratic model.
But as Judith Sloan wrote in The Australian on January 15, Europe is in trouble. Its engine room, Germany, is in recession largely because, like our government, it has plunged headlong into renewable energy, losing its comparative advantage in manufacturing to China.
Yet the US, where capitalism and fossil fuels are about to be turbocharged by President Donald Trump, boasts “median disposable income … 25 per cent higher than in Germany and 60 per cent higher than in Italy”, Sloan wrote.

Fossil fuels remain the future?

The Major needed no urging, he was surging ...in the grip of a fit of Trumphalism, the way forward ...

Productivity is surging in the US, but in the doldrums in Australia, Germany and France.
On most measures – growth, unemployment, productivity and business investment – US capitalism is proving much more resilient than Labor’s essayists foresaw.
Apparently open economies, free markets and deregulated wages work well to allocate scarce resources. Who knew?

Who knew? A tariff war is the new turbo charger? 

Apparently the MM didn't ... just tune your banjo for an immortal Rowe ...

And so to a few final words from the Major ...

After gloating about two surpluses entirely built on record revenue from mining exports, Chalmers is going to have to spin hard to make the budget look good next month.
He and Albanese are making the same mistakes Rudd and Gillard did – minus the public leadership instability. Voters wanting prosperity need to hope they don’t do a deal with the Greens to form majority government the way Gillard did in 2010.

It's going to be a year to remember, with the MM in full stride ...

But it does give the cartoonists much fodder ...

And so to the reason the pond was devastated by the Caterist this morning. 

The pond had completely forgotten to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Brexit, and the Caterist was bigly on Brexit ... and if the Caterist had turned up, the pond would somehow have managed to celebrate both him and Brexit.

No mind, the pond can celebrate the Caterist in absentia ... with a flashback to his glory days ...

The pond could have celebrated with him ... especially as the 'leets were sounding disgruntled ...per Millie Cooke in The Independent, Number of Britons who think Brexit was right decision hits new low, new YouGov poll shows, On the five-year anniversary of Britain’s EU exit, new YouGov polling lays bare damning public sentiment on the decision

Five years after Brexit, the proportion of Brits who think it was right to leave the EU is at its lowest-ever point since the referendum.
Just three in 10 Britons (30 per cent) say that it was right for the UK to vote to leave the EU, compared to 55 per cent who say it was wrong, a new YouGov poll has shown.
This is the lowest proportion of the public saying that Britain was right to vote to leave since the pollster began asking this question in the aftermath of the referendum.
In January 2020, when Britain officially left the bloc after voting to leave four years earlier, 40 per cent of people said it was the right decision, while 47 per cent said it was wrong.
Now, more than six in 10 Britons (62 per cent) say that Brexit has so far been more of a failure, against just 11 per cent who feel that it has been more of a success, though a more noncommittal 20 per cent of Britons consider it to be neither a success nor failure.
Notably, even Leave voters are more likely to consider Brexit to have gone badly than well, with 32 per cent labelling it more of a failure so far, compared to 22 per cent describing it as more of a success.

Ah they FAFO'd, but the Caterist didn't see it coming ...

It's true that there were a few levels and bevels to the data ...

However, just one in six (18 per cent) Leave voters say that it was the wrong decision, with 66 per cent still saying it was the right choice.
By contrast, 88 per cent of Remainers think a vote for Brexit was wrong, with just 7 per cent saying it was the right choice.
Meanwhile, among 18-24-year-olds – who were unable to vote in the referendum - there is little belief that it went the right way – with three-quarters saying it was the wrong choice. Just one in 10 (10 per cent) say the UK made the right choice.
The latest polling comes after a damning report to mark the fifth anniversary of Britain’s departure from the EU, UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE) said it appears that EU policy appears “peripheral to Starmer’s government”.
“The Brexit Files”, published on Tuesday by UKICE, lays bare the impact of Brexit on areas of the economy such as trade, immigration and defence, as well as the state of Sir Keir Starmer’s attempts to rebuild ties with Brussels.
The report branded the prime minister’s post-Brexit reset of relations with Brussels as anaemic, warning that his EU policy is vague and unambitious.
And, despite the PM and Rachel Reeves relentlessly focusing on economic growth, the EU relations think tank said it was remarkable that the chancellor’s October Budget failed to mention the impacts of Brexit once.
The YouGov survey, conducted on 21-22 January, spoke to 2,225 adults.

... but the results seemed to point conclusively to the notion that Brexit was a gigantic dud, a flop of the first water, that nobody was very happy about it all ... and that the Caterist had pointed the way for Britain to match those who thought he knew all there was to know about the movement of flood waters in quarries ...

So this is to honour the Caterist in absentia, and may he long continue to flourish, and if in absentia, so much the better...

In which there's a triptych of reptiles, not so much a Sunday meditation as a Sunday massacre of infants and truth ...

 

On the upside this meditative Sunday, Polonius usually tends to offer reads that are four minute reptile rated, so the standard ranting at the ABC can be swallowed quickly.

The pond has already noted the irony of Polonius deep in an echo chamber and in the same breath blathering about and deploring echo chambers, but that's the irony to be expected from reptiles, who love to project ...

There's more projections in the lizard Oz than in a multiplex, and Polonius is routinely awash in projections ...

Diversity not on agenda in leftist echo chambers, The fact is there is more genuine political debate on Sky News in Australia and Fox News in the US than there is on the ABC or at the various taxpayer-funded literary festivals in Australia.

Faux Noise in the US? By golly he's been drinking deep on the MAGA swill of late, but first a snap of a fiend occupying a position that should rightfully have belonged to Polonius ...

Kim Williams, chairman of the ABC, addresses the National Press Club in Canberra in November. Williams has not addressed the ABC’s lack of viewpoint diversity, writes the author. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Or should his magnetic personality, his riveting presence, been in front of the camera? A newborn B. A. Santamaria for the ages... Hendo's POV...

Alas and alack, we'll never know ...but fuelled with resentment, he remains transfixed in front of the wireless and the goggle box, always ready to use a Poirot cliché to open with a flourish. Merde ...

Quelle surprise! – as the saying goes. Nick Bryant, the former BBC journalist, is the new presenter of Saturday Extra on Radio National.
Bryant’s first show as presenter was last Saturday. In introducing the program, he declared: “We’re committing to bringing you a diversity of voices – some of whom you will agree with, some of whom you won’t; but, hopefully, all of them will be insightful and make more sense of our world.”
Bryant added that Saturday Extra “will try to abide by one of the first rules of journalism – never be boring; I hope you’ll enjoy the new Saturday Extra”. Here’s hoping. The old Saturday Extra, on Fran Kelly’s watch, was boring primarily because there was scant viewpoint diversity – in that everyone essentially agreed with everyone else on essentially everything in a left-of-centre way.
The fact that an experienced journalist such as Bryant believes it is “new” for the ABC to cover a “diversity of voices” speaks volumes for the state of the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster. It remains to be seen whether this commitment will be followed in the face of objections by “Friends of the ABC” types who frequently demand that conservatives not be heard. But at least Bryant has raised the issue of viewpoint diversity.

Ah, the new Polonial hope for both siderism, Former BBC correspondent Nick Bryant will present Saturday Extra on Radio National.

Well he knows how to fold his arms, that's a positive sign, and Polonius took heart and hope ...

In any event, Bryant honoured his promise on January 25. Covering the United States during Donald Trump’s second administration, Saturday Extra interviewed National Review’s Noah Rothman and the BBC’s Katty Kay. They presented divergent views in a considered way.
Kim Williams, who took up the position of ABC chair last March, has given numerous public talks over the past year. He has made some criticisms of the ABC. But he has not addressed the ABC’s lack of viewpoint diversity. This is its greatest weakness, and explains why the ABC lost so much of the conservative audience it used to have.
Expect more of the same when Williams appears at the Adelaide Writers’ Week, which commences in a week’s time.

"Lack of viewpoint diversity"? Allow the pond to decode. "Lack of Polonial diversity" is the real meaning. Cast out of Insiders Valhalla, he's brooded ever since. True he brooded before, and has stayed ever brooding, but there's no doubt it stung. 

Just like the sandflies and low lifes who keep on stinging him with their presence ... Louise Adler is the director of Adelaide Writers' Week. Picture: Kristoffer Paulsen

That was in the original a huge snap, designed to terrify the hive mind. That brings Polonius to another sore point. The terrible treatment he's suffered at the hands of literary festivals. 

Once he's got that bee in his bonnet, he can never let go, and his suffering has spread far into the world ...

Not for Polonius is the Mark Twain injunction about not opening your mouth, lest opening it removes all doubt you're a tedious and repetitious fool.

Polonius is all about tedious recital after recital of a litany of long standing grievances, explaining why his keyboard is rife with short cuts ...

Once again, Louise Adler is director of the AWW. And, once again, the taxpayer-funded festival in 2025 is a leftist stack. Among the Australian contributors to the event, I cannot identify one political conservative – although there are some speakers who seem non-ideological.
Yet the program is replete with leftists and left-of-centre types, including Josh Bornstein, Mike Carlton, Richard Denniss (of the leftist Australia Institute), Mark Kenny, Thomas Mayo, Amy Remeikis, Emma Shortis and so on. Boring? For sure. But left-of-centre types for the most part want to hear from comrades they agree with.
There are Labor types, including Bob Carr, Kim Carr and a couple of senators from the Greens political party – Sarah Hanson-Young and Barbara Pocock. But no conservative politician.

At some point Mandy always crops up in this litany, and she's always disposed of in the same LINO way (close non-conservative cousin to RINO) ...

The Adelaide-based Amanda Vanstone, formerly a Liberal Party senator from South Australia, who is on the board of the Adelaide Festival that oversees the AWW, is listed as a speaker. But it is not clear what her topic is. In 2023, Vanstone was given a gig discussing cuisine. Moreover, she regards herself as a “small-l” liberal and not as a conservative.

Oh the gnashing and the wailing, and, in truth, how can there be diversity if Polonius is absent?

It so happens that Williams is chairing the session titled “The Men of the Media”. There is no gender diversity here – let alone viewpoint diversity. Eric Beecher, owner of the left-wing Crikey website, is on the panel, along with Martin Baron, the former executive editor of the left-of-centre Washington Post and Alan Rusbridger, former editor-in-chief of the avowedly leftist Guardian newspaper.
Williams’s book, Rules of Engagement, was published by MUP in 2014 when Adler was its chief executive. The book is highly critical of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. So is Beecher’s The Men Who Killed The News (Scribner, 2024).
For his part, Baron told a function at the Harvard Kennedy School in May 2024 that “cable networks – particularly the introduction of Fox” – present “so-called facts”. Fox News in the US is controlled by News Corp. It is not known whether Williams agreed in advance to chair an AWW panel that is so devoid of viewpoint diversity.
And then there is the matter of Israel-Gaza. In recent years, Adler has been accused of stacking the AWW with critics of Israel. It’s much the same in 2025.
The American Jewish critic of Israel, Peter Beinart – who recently did a long interview with David Marr on ABC’s Late Night Live – has a platform at the 2025 AWW. His topic is “Being Jewish after the Destruction of Gaza”. Enough said. And John Lyons, the ABC’s global affairs editor – a long-term critic of contemporary Israel – will be speaking on the topic “Balcony Over Jerusalem – Israel, Iran and the New Middle East”.
I am not aware that any supporter of Israel’s defensive war against the terrorist Hamas organisation has been invited by Adler to express a divergent view.

Ah yes ... who wouldn't be in favour of ethnic cleansing and real estate opportunities...

Sadly all good whining must come to an end, even the top notch whingeing and whining at a Polonial level, and so it came to pass ...

The fact that such an event as the AWW, along with the literary festivals in Sydney, Melbourne and elsewhere, lack viewpoint diversity demonstrates that the left intelligentsia is uncomfortable with political debate. The fact is that there is more genuine political debate on Sky News in Australia and Fox News in the US than there is on the ABC or at the various taxpayer-funded literary festivals in Australia.
In her introductory message to the 2025 AWW, Adler regrets what she terms the “consensus among a political class committed to the status quo” in Western nations. It’s not clear that such a consensus exists in the politics of such nations as Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand or the US – or, indeed, in the likes of France, Germany and Italy.
Rather, a consensus of views and the lack of viewpoint diversity can be found in Adler’s AWW. However, the AWW director is in denial about this. She maintains that the “AWW has long been able to host civil and generous conversations that inform, engage and inspire our audience”. There may be such conversations – but there is no genuine debate.
By the way, Bryant is scheduled to appear at the 2025 AWW. If he stands by his embrace of a variety of views, he will surely find the lack of same boring.

For some peculiar reason - perhaps the ghost of our Henry lightly brushed the pond's shoulder - the pond was reminded of Cicero...

“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do."

Amen to that ... amen to Faux Noise, insisting that others must believe and live as they demand, and never mind the bizarro world that results ...

The ranting about the ABC cardigan wearers didn't end there. 

The dog botherer was also out and about, ranting away ... For ABC viewers, reality must come as quite a shock, The Auschwitz fail may be the last straw for our toxic, taxpayer-funded broadcaster and its warped anti-journalism.

The pond confesses that it missed the return of the dog botherer, on 25th January with Political winds behind Dutton in new Trump age of optimism, The election of Donald Trump is blowing the Coalition’s way as we sail towards an election. MPs are now rightly questioning Peter Dutton’s commitment to net zero.

The pond had also missed the previous week's Stuck on a horse-drawn buggy as world speeds past, The suggestion we can power modern economies at scale on renewable energy is farcical. This is why Australia is the only country pretending that it can do it, which offered blather about the need to nuke the country to save the planet, and explained the dog botherer's absence.

For three weeks over Christmas and New Year’s I enjoyed a family holiday in New York City, Washington DC and other parts of the US east coast around New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. We are talking about a region that includes cities such as Philadelphia and Baltimore and is home to about 60 million people with a combined share of US gross domestic product topping $6 trillion – more than double Australia’s population and almost four times our economic output.
Many years ago, the first time I saw Manhattan from across the Hudson River, I thought its built density was astonishing and joked that it looked as if the mass of buildings should sink the island.
The energy and ingenuity evident in this part of the world is palpable – from the vigour of the salespeople to the crush of the freeways, from the eagerness of the hospitality to the extent of manufacturing industries, and from the astounding complexity of the infrastructure to the availability of all your shopping and entertainment needs, all the time.
We took our boys to the home of Hershey’s chocolates in Pennsylvania and what we thought was an indulgent diversion turned into a revealing education about Milton S. Hershey’s extraordinary business acumen and incredible philanthropy that each year, to this day, educates thousands of disadvantaged children. 

Fun fact, Hershey's isn't real chocolate. A Hershey bar contains only 11% cacao, only 1% more than the FDA legal minimum required to be able to use the word, but it does contain 17% total fats ...

Eating a Hershey bar is a bit like thinking the dog botherer offers food for the brain.

The pond refuses to go below 60% cacao, despite the rising cost, but must expect no more than 10% truth with the dog botherer and some 20% or more of extraneous fat.

Enough already with the distractions.

The pond has delayed its pleasure, and must now accept the bit applied to the teeth, and get on with it ... and the reptiles began with an epic troll, Sharri, full disrespect ...

Sky News’ Sharri Markson and her reporting on the origins of Covid-19 have been the victim of the ABC’s anti-journalism, but there are examples abound.

The pond is incredibly bored by Sharri, full disrespect, and her constant Covid claptrap, and even more so by the dog botherer repeating her tired, tiring talking points...

When world leaders gathered at the Auschwitz concentration camp this week to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the ­liberation that first revealed the horrors of an industrial-scale extermination program aimed at eliminating Jews, our national broadcaster did not have a camera crew or reporter in attendance.
The previous night, when Palestinians celebrated the release of Hamas terrorists from Israeli jails in lopsided and repugnant deals to free Israeli hostages taken during the October 7 atrocities, the ABC was there. Senior reporter John Lyons shared joyful scenes in the West Bank, gave one Hamas terrorist a platform to criticise Israel and aired unverified claims of ­torture against Israel.
A starker example of the ABC’s warped priorities could hardly be found. There are many more.
Take the Covid-19 pandemic. Rather than interrogate the draconian measures imposed by state and federal governments, and the alarmist claims made by some medicos, the ABC appointed itself panicker-in-chief and lockdown cheerleader.
It also showed a worrying lack of curiosity about the origins of the virus, rejecting out of hand the theory it escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, even though publicly available information from early 2020 showed that to be the most likely source. When Sharri Markson broke world exclusive stories detailing further evidence to buttress this theory, the ABC should have followed her lead, but instead it attacked her.

The reality is that no one knows for certain - lab or bat - and Sharri, full disrespect, has always been on the side of the clueless... and this has already been done to death, over and over again, without any new information or insight.

The point of course is that it's part of a dog bothering litany, a favourite reptile tactic, the rolling out of one grievance after another ...

This was anti-journalism as often practised by the ABC’s Media Watch program, with host Paul Barry smugly mansplaining that Markson should have told readers that “almost every virus expert had dismissed the lab escape theory”. Barry dubbed the lab leak a “conspiracy theory” and said there was “no evidence” that the virus originated in the Wuhan lab, as he returned to the topic repeatedly with pompous admonitions for Markson.
This was a national broadcaster misleading the public and attacking the diligent reporting of other media. The ABC told audiences the virus probably came from animals in a natural setting – but the CIA has now confirmed that its intelligence assessments have long determined the Wuhan lab as the most likely source.

No one knows, and then for some bizarre reason, the reptiles came out with this AV distraction...A whistleblower has come forward to claim CIA analysts who favoured the COVID-19 lab leak theory were bribed to change their position.

Couldn't they have just recycled Sharri, full disrespect, shouting triumphantly from the rooftops ...

And yet she doesn't know, she proved diddly squat, the jury is still out, and between Fauci and the mango Mussolini, only a loon would demand Fauci take the Ivermectin rap.

Any definitive answer to the lab v bat riddle is likely to be out for a very long time, thanks in no small part to Xi's ability to control the narrative ... but that doesn't stop the reptiles from indulging in any passing internet fad ...

Sorry, the pond was forgetting it's all the ABC's fault. Back to the cardigan wearers' thought crimes ... time to abolish them so that there's a Murdochian hegemony in service to the oligarchs ...

The ABC’s misleading coverage is all still available online, without corrections and apologies. Here is a public broadcaster established to inform the nation and bind it together having the ­opposite effect.
If the ABC fails to unite the ­nation and instead amplifies the liberal-left elite’s criticism of mainstream concerns and priorities, and if instead of informing the nation it distorts debate based on ideology and partisanship, then what is the point of having it? I have worked at the ABC, dealt with its journalists as a political adviser, appeared as a guest and regular contributor, and confronted it in public debates and courtrooms.
For the past decade or so I have been one of Auntie’s most prolific critics in print and on television, but I have always argued that the national broadcaster needs to be reformed and refocused rather than relinquished. Now I am not so sure.
We need to stop pussyfooting around when discussing its toxic effect on national debate. It is counterproductive to spend taxpayers’ money on a broadcasting behemoth that hurts the country more than helps it.
To illustrate the point, consider the Environmental Defenders Office which has received $8.3m over four years from the Albanese Labor government. This is one of the most scandalous uses of public money imaginable.
Projects like the Blayney goldmine in NSW or the Barossa gas project off the Northern Territory coast passed state and federal approval processes before facing legal challenges from the government-funded EDO. So, having issued approvals, the government, through the EDO, has funded attempts by environmental activists to overturn those same decisions.
This is government using our taxes to attack their own legitimacy. This is national government undermining the nation – equal parts absurd, anti-democratic and damaging. (Peter Dutton has promised to scrap the funding if elected.)

At this point the reptiles slipped in an AV distraction, Executive Council of Australian Jewry Co-CEO Alex Ryvchin has shared his poignant experience of visiting the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz in Poland. Mr Ryvchin joined world leaders to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp which also marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Mr Ryvchin described the camp as a place that is "beyond human comprehension."

Meanwhile, Malak A Tantesh has shared her poingant experience of visiting her old home in Gaza, in the Graudian in 'My memories are crushed and buried': a long walk home in Gaza:

We decided to visit our own home for the first time since the war started. I grew up in this area but it had been so devastated, buildings and streets and gardens bombed and demolished, that we could no longer find our way to the house. We were wandering lost and confused, when a neighbour appeared and guided us.
The only things still standing were the trunks of a walnut tree, and some olive trees that used to be in our yard. Seeing them there, surrounded only by rubble, I felt like I had been stabbed in my heart.
Our home was a three-storey building, and the levels had collapsed on top of each other like layers in a cake. I walked around and over the ruins to see if there was a way in, to recover anything from our life. It was dangerous but our memories deserve it.
I couldn’t find even the smallest hole. Nothing had survived. My memories, my family’s memories and everything we owned have all been crushed and buried.

There was a snap too ... so many snaps of misery, despair and ethnic cleansing ...

But the reptiles never have any time, not when there's climate science denialism and ABC bashing to be done, as ritualised as snake bashing day in Springfield ...

It is the same story with the ABC. If it does not illuminate our public debate, if it is not an antidote to toxic debate but often poisonous itself, then we are spending $1.2bn on national self-harm.
Our national energy self-harm is another case in point. There is probably no issue more important to our country’s future than the energy transition.

It isn't just the ABC, but when you want a straw dog, these cardigan wearers are always the reptiles first pick. 

You might read Adam Simpson in The Conversation, Nuclear power makes no sense for Australia - but it's a useful diversion from real climate action.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton argues Australia needs nuclear power to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

But nuclear power is not feasible for Australia. It is too slow, too expensive and inappropriate for our energy needs.

As a result, plans to build nuclear power plants, big or small, are completely unrealistic.

What’s more, insisting that nuclear power is the only answer to Australia’s net zero commitments is a classic move from the playbook of those who oppose urgent action on climate change.

But do rabbit on ...

Driven by UN emissions reduction goals, the transition involves abandoning our cheap, plentiful and reliable fossil fuel bounty and switching to a world-first renewables-plus-storage model. Less than halfway to the target, we already face record electricity prices and perilous energy security.
The ABC has failed to evaluate energy alternatives, examine the practicality of the renewables rollout, or attempt to assess the cost in dollar terms or economic impact. Instead, the national broadcaster has advocated for the renewables plan, ignored the difficulties and set about demonising the Coalition alternative of adding ­nuclear energy to the mix.
Four Corners ran a piece last year clearly setting out to debunk Dutton’s nuclear option, amplifying the views of renewables enthusiasts and Dutton protagonists like Malcolm Turnbull and Simon Holmes a Court. “Is nuclear a ­viable answer to Australia’s energy woes or is it a quixotic quest never to be realised?” the ABC asked (spoiler alert, you can guess the answer).
Needless to say, the ABC has never run a similar ruler over the engineering and economics behind the renewables plan, nor has it focused on the communities up in arms about the damage to their environments and farmlands from solar, wind and transmission projects. In perhaps the most consequential economic debate of our time, the ABC has skewed the ­debate in a way that avoids rational evaluation and only encourages the unbridled self-harm advocated by Labor, the Greens and the teals.

Well yes, but that's the dog botherer, climate science denialist and so enthusiastic nuke spruiker. It turns out that everything continues to be the ABC's fault ...

On the Indigenous voice, which was destroyed by Labor’s refusal to find a bipartisan compromise, provide details or mount arguments beyond an emotive plea, the ABC only fuelled the folly. It did not provide a valid ­critique of the proposal’s flaws or make more coherent arguments in favour of it, and it did not even run forensic rebuttals of fallacious opposing arguments – it simply barracked.
This lack of intellectual rigour seems to be a result of its ideological monoculture. When you are conditioned to going with the green-left zeitgeist, there is little need for critical thinking.
The public loses out terribly in all this. The national broadcaster only confirms their biases, misleads or alienates them.
Consider also the ABC’s entrenched delinquency on Donald Trump. Like the worst of the US media, the ABC has been constantly outraged by Trump, exaggerating his faults and mischaracterising his words, as if the political maverick’s unvarnished words and deeds are not newsworthy enough.
The obsession continues and is accompanied by deference to his opponents – the ABC has shown little interest in Hunter Biden’s escapades, the cover-up of his laptop revelations or the enrichment and pardoning of the Biden clan.
Instead, Four Corners spent months in 2018 and probably at least a million dollars on Sarah Ferguson’s “investigation” of claims Trump “actively colluded with Russia to subvert American democracy”. This series promoted rather than tested this conspiracy theory, now debunked by a series of inquiries.

That mention of the mango Mussolini reminded the pond of Catherine Rampell's piteous cry in WaPo, where democracy went to die in darkness, A new era of government censorship has dawned. Donald Trump fancies himself a champion of free speech. Oh, really?

Amid all the noise, an eerie hush is spreading across America. Trump critics, companies and scientific researchers are clamming up as the MAGA movement ushers in a new era of government censorship.
On Day 1, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” This might have sounded like banal lip service, reaffirming commitment to the First Amendment. In reality, it was the start of an Orwellian effort to root out wrongthink from government ranks and the private sector.
The first kind of speech to be shushed was scientific speech.
Last week, the administration ordered a blackout on public communications from government health agencies — in the middle of flu season and a global zoonotic outbreak. For the first time since 1952, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention withheld its weekly report on morbidity and mortality data updates.

The blocked issue was slated to contain two important new studies about bird flu transmission, KFF reports. The move echoed Trump’s data-suppression approach to covid-19. (“If we stopped testing right now,” he said in June 2020, “we’d have very few cases, if any.”)
Other federal departments, such as the Energy Department, were also ordered to cease public communications unless they had explicit approval of the acting secretary, according to memos shared with me. Some agencies have been blocked from sharing data even within the government. Others have canceled previously approved data access or other exchanges with outside researchers.
In one case, a University of North Carolina legal scholar was told his scheduled talk at a U.S. attorney’s office was canceled. The topic of the event: complicity of German lawyers in the creation of the Nazi state. You can’t make these things up.
These actions, among other measures canceling research grants and public engagements, appear related to efforts to expunge so-called wokeness from government. Civil servants have been ordered to snitch on colleagues who might secretly harbor support for “DEI" — or diversity, equity and inclusion — initiatives. An executive order issued on Wednesday says the government will withhold funding from public schools that teach concepts such as “unconscious bias.”
Some public institutions are bending over backward to avoid becoming targets. Michigan State University abruptly canceled an annual Lunar New Year celebration this week, just in case it violated Trump’s DEI executive orders.
The president and his allies have also leaned on private firms to disavow politically incorrect values. For example, a group of 19 Republican state attorneys general sent a letter to Costco demanding the retailer drop its diversity commitments, citing a Trump executive order. Separately, a major federal contractor this week discouraged its employees from including pronouns in their email signatures, according to a person affected who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation.
Other Trump allies have engaged speech- and thought-policing, kinds of actions for which they once condemned progressives (sometimes rightfully!). Last week, for instance, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) obliquely threatened Apple’s CEO for not yet renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Trump-blessed “Gulf of America” in Apple Maps. (Google Maps has caved, however.)
Trump has appointed himself top language cop — and he is determined to earn his keep.
Even before he entered politics, Trump was known for filing spurious lawsuits in retribution for constitutionally protected speech. Recall his 2016 promise to “open up those libel laws.” As documented in the forthcoming book “Murder the Truth” by David Enrich, Trump is part of a broader conservative coalition working to overturn the Supreme Court’s landmark free-speech ruling, New York Times v. Sullivan.

And so on and on, you might catch the drift, but back to the dog botherer, and another enemy of the people, ABC presenter Sarah Ferguson in the US for Four Corners.

Apparently the dog botherer is sublimely unaware of Russia and a media monitor that clearly establishes that Vlad the Impaler's minions think the mango Mussolini owes them...

Please, an AV distraction ...

State TV says Trump owes his presidency to Russia

 

Sorry, the dog botherer brings out a desire in the pond to interrupt at almost every line, given every line is suppurating with lies, misinformation, distortions and misrepresentations.

Best let him ramble on ...

Ferguson called it “the story of the century” and summarised it as a win for Vladimir Putin. “The Kremlin’s puppet master now has America dancing to his discordant tune,” she concluded. “He couldn’t have planned it better.”
This was conspiratorial dross, but it was believed by many. Again, this nonsense is still available for viewing online, without corrections or apologies.
In the same genre, the ABC ran dozens of episodes of a podcast called “Russia, if you’re listening”. It was a weekly deep dive into the same leftist delusions – Trump derangement syndrome funded by Australian taxpayers.
All along, viewers and listeners were misled. If you only consumed ABC media you could not have known Trump had a path to victory in 2016, that Biden was never going to run for a second term, or that Trump was well placed to win again last year.
If the ABC has been your only source of information, you must have lived a life full of surprises. Both of Trump’s wins, Scott Morrison’s 2019 win, the Brexit victory, the demise of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott’s stopping of the boats and emptying of detention centres – all shocks, all the time, for ABC audiences.
There are so many examples of tendentious campaigns. For decades the ABC shamed Australia’s border protection policies, arguing they were inhumane and unnecessary, and that the flow of boats could not be stopped; it has promoted Bruce Pascoe’s dubious claims and attempted to shame and silence conservative Indigenous leader Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, settling a defamation action with her along the way; it led the witch-hunt against Cardinal George Pell until he was exonerated by the High Court; it was front and centre in the ugly #metoo trials-by-media involving Bruce Lehrmann, Brittany Higgins, Christian Porter, Linda Reynolds and others; and it leads the activism against our national day.

Oh FFS, Lehrmann as victim? The Pellist in chief as victim? Cardinal George Pell abused two boys in Ballarat,compensation scheme decides...

The shame never ends, but luckily the dog botherer must at some point...

At the end of another week marred by anti-Semitism, we do not need any reminding about the importance of social cohesion. The ABC has been at the forefront of demonising Israel, legitimising Hamas as some king of liberation force rather than the Islamist terrorist outfit that it is, and excusing the hateful protests that have become commonplace on our streets and campuses.
The result is widespread ignorance that breeds enmity. It is not unusual to meet ABC media consumers who are surprised to hear that Israel withdrew from Gaza almost two decades ago, shocked to hear details of Hamas’s actions on October 7 or amazed to learn there has never been a Palestinian state.

Oh yes, another ethnic cleansing lover, and the dog botherer is no doubt amazed to learn...

As of June 2024, the State of Palestine is recognized as a sovereign state by 146 of the 193 member states of the United Nations, or just over 75% of all UN members. It has been a non-member observer state of the United Nations General Assembly since November 2012. (or so the wiki says)

The reptiles all specialise in lies, mis- and dis-information, but the pond suspects the dog botherer is the worst of them ...

Propaganda does not cut it for a national broadcaster in a liberal democracy. The ABC has habitually flouted its charter, which demands objectivity, a diversity of views, and a mission to educate.
The national broadcaster has become a corpulent behemoth ­beyond reform or redemption.
Hardworking taxpayers are being forced to fund a sheltered workshop for disaffected progressives using their sinecures to distort vital public debates and reshape the country in their green-left image.
The only question worth asking in this information-rich age is whether the ABC does more harm than good. Unless a case can be made for the good, we should wind it up and spend the money on something beneficial.

In short, in summary, a response please?

If we can't fuck Murdoch, tough, but the reptiles can still fuck the planet, which brings the pond to the closing bonus of the Ughmann, a five minute read, but in reality hours of relentless tedium and seminarian level of scientific understanding, Gorilla about to devour Labor’s green dream, Donald Trump knows the world runs on fossil fuel. If the US President’s command to ‘drill, baby, drill’ is heeded – and it will be –Australia could find itself out in the cold.

The intent seems to be to represent the Canteloupe-in-Chief as a gorilla, a giant King Kong with a soft spot for Fay Wray or pussy groping, and an excellent reason for the mutton Dutton to turn rogue gorilla and tilt at windmills ...

Those who believe the future is paved with windmills, solar panels and green hydrogen, writes the author, will be on the side of the losers, and that was true before the second coming of Donald Trump. Picture: AFP

So many things to emulate ...

The Ughmann really got into the ape metaphor, mixing it with monkey banana mayhem ...

In November a banana taped to a wall sold at a New York auction for $9.57m. Or rather, the idea of the artwork, called Comedian, sold.
What crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun bought was a certificate of authenticity that gives him sole authority to gaffer-tape a banana to a wall and call it Comedian.
What was to stop him, or anyone else, from doing this for free is anybody’s guess. But the spectacle of a dealer in a currency no one understands spending a fortune on a mirage is a work of performance art perfectly sculpted for this post-reality era.
To casual observers this underscores all that is wrong with the direction of art since it was unmoored from actual skill with a brush or chisel. Without discounting the abilities of many modern artists, some are clearly taking the piss. Alas, that does not stop the learned from bestowing value on a void and mocking those too stupid to see.
Given Comedian is a blank canvas, let’s load it up with some meaning of our own. Imagine it is the central artefact in the cathedral of consensus built by the puritans of progress. Since colonisers snatched the banana from the global south and shackled it under a petrochemical seal, this enslaved fruit eloquently cries a great J’accuse against the uncountable crimes of Western capitalism.
It silently screams against borders, nations, “populism” and patriotism. It rages against colonialism, equality, individualism, merit, masculinity and heterosexuality. It celebrates technocratic orthodoxy, intersectional identity, climate catastrophism, mass migration, historic guilt and gender fluidity. As penance it demands we abandon markets, fossil fuel and meat.
Behold, Comedian as the crucifix of institutional progressivism.
Well, a gorilla just ripped that banana off the wall and ate it.

Yep, he's a gorilla alright... US President Donald Trump signs executive orders on his first day in office. Picture: AFP

Like a gorilla he travels in a pack ...

Sorry, the pond is getting extremely run down ... much like EVs in a reptile world ...

Donald Trump 2.0 is the kind of art you fashion in a boneyard with a chainsaw. His rebirth is like a mixed martial artist genre-jumping into Disney’s Bambi and slapping that baby deer into the Avengers Multiverse. This is brutalism on a palette; history’s brushstroke soaked in blood and ash.
With the return of the great disrupter, the only thing that is certain is creative or destructive chaos. He is all things to all people because – like modern art – much of the evidence of his good or evil is subjective. Those who believe Trump is the messiah and those who see the devil will all have a Bible’s worth of proof for their faith.
There will be winners and losers inside and outside the United States. Whether or not Trump’s ideas are coherent, or work, is not the point. America’s regent will act and the world will have to react.
He returns as the Chinese emperor and Russia’s tsar are well advanced in their own plots to refashion the world, and everything is up for grabs. The rules-based international order has been abandoned by its author and defender. The dominance of the global reserve currency will be tested as the monetary system evolves or fractures. Nationalism will unravel globalism as trade barriers rise. The net-zero fantasy will be exposed as energy security trumps green dreams. An economic world war three has begun. The chance of a shooting war is real.
If the Albanese government understands the size of the wave on the horizon then there was no sign of it as the Prime Minister paddled in the shallows in his election-setting speech to the National Press Club.
What was Anthony Albanese’s opening salvo as Australia navigates this most dangerous of times? Upgrading Queensland’s Bruce Highway. The real world is about to devour Labor dreams of electric cars driving on that road.
Trump knows the world runs on fossil fuel. If his command to “drill, baby, drill” is heeded it will be good for US consumers and dicey for investors as the price of oil and gas falls. Real, cheap energy will fuel new power-hungry industries.
Beijing, Moscow and New Delhi also understand how the world really works.
Look past China’s renewable energy shopfront and the factory floor data shows its carbon footprint has grown by 38 per cent over the past decade.

Over the same time India’s emissions went up by 25 per cent and Russia’s by 10 per cent. With the US pulling the plug on the Paris Agreement, nations responsible for 60 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions have net-zero intention of putting virtue-signalling before progress.
Those who believe the future is paved with windmills, solar panels and green hydrogen will be on the side of the losers, and that was true before the second coming of Trump.

Indeedy do, it turns out the weather is all the fault of DEI ... probably climate change too ...

Then the mad former seminarian turned gloomy ... forget climate science, it isn't real, as all seminarians know. What we need to do is flood the world with CO₂ ... it's the only way....

The European Union and United Kingdom are a study in what happens when politicians unplug an economy.
So what does Australia do? Do we continue to follow the EU and UK down the pathway to poverty; depowering and deindustrialising to try to hit emissions-cutting targets that will have zero effect on the climate? 
Or do we use the resources beneath our feet and try to stay rich and adapt to whatever the future holds? We will not reap some imagined benefit of “cheap” and “profitable” green industries fleeing here from the US. We will get the rent-seekers, America will get the business.
In the swings and roundabout of Trumpworld, cheap oil and gas will push costs down while tariffs force them up.
Tariffs are paid by US consumers, not the countries they target. But if the threat of tariffs encourages businesses to relocate to America and foreign money is invested in US industries then this will help drive Trump’s ambition to retool manufacturing. If he cuts federal income taxes, tariffs will act as a consumption tax.

Yes, it's going to be a splendid time ...

And it'll be certified white time too ...

Whatever happens in the US, Australia could be roadkill in a global trade war. So what is the plan for how we deal with the direct and knock-on effects of tariffs, which could see demand for our exports tank, our currency weaken and inflation return with a vengeance?
Trump also wants to cement US dominance over the western hemisphere, threatening to take Greenland and the Panama Canal by force if necessary.
This makes it a tad hard to argue China shouldn’t take Taiwan and Russia can’t impose itself on Ukraine. If the world is carved into spheres of influence then, sadly, Australia sits in the eastern hemisphere with China. Where is the thinking on this?

Oh, no need to think, the bromancer will find a way ... and besides, there are checks and balances at play here ...

What's funny about this is the way that the Ughmann presents the mango Mussolini as both a radical shit stirrer and a boogeyman designed to terrify us all ...so somehow we should follow him down the road to delusion, while at the same time fearing the train wreck that will produce.

So he has to end by reassuring us all that it couldn't happen here, but we need to be ready for the giant gorilla wrecking the planet, even if climate science is but a chimera and a dream...

It would be wrong to assume the resurrection of Trump in the US necessarily signals a change of government here. Australia is not America, our electoral system pushes politics to the centre. Here the permanent administrative state rules. Here much of business competes for government largesse. Here our mostly urban community is disconnected from its sources of energy, food and wealth. Here radical change is hard.
It is tough for an Australian politician painting by numbers to compete with a man who, quite literally, wants his face carved on Mount Rushmore. But the least we should expect in this election year is a clear idea from both Labor and the opposition of how they intend to deal with a radically changing world. Because the one we knew is coming unstuck.

Phew, all that on a Sunday. Everything is coming unstuck, it's a radically changing world.

Sometimes the pond wonders if any reptile actually remembers the 20th century and unstuckness and radical change ... it's as if two world wars never happened ...

Sorry, there's nothing there for a reptile to meditate on, instead there's just time to wrap up the herpetology studies with another folly ...