In which the pond presents an unadorned bromancer as a late arvo treat ...

 

As promised, here's the bromancer rant, full and compleat, as foreshadowed earlier in the day when the pond provided a quick archive fix to eager beaver herpetology students who couldn't wait until the arvo ...

The pond promised an undiluted, straight from the hip shoot 'em up, inflected by it being October 7th, and by golly that's what's going to happen.

The pond isn't in the business of providing blather about westerns or offering decoys and lures ...

How easy it would be to do a survey of the tabloids as a way of distracting from the bromancer.

MAGA Demanded ‘Holy Hell Fire’ Before Judge’s Home Exploded

As if the pond would try that sort of cheap trick, knowing it was certain to fail against the enthusiasm of dedicated bromancer imbibers ...

Trump’s Attempt to Goad Navy Into Booing Obama Met With Awkward Silence

As if bromancer gourmands could be so easily swayed from the path of the righteous ...

Johnson Cowers From Challenge for Live Shutdown Debate

The bromancer's not for cowering, he's more for quivering and wobbling like an outraged jelly ...

The header: Reality not part of PM’s foreign policy playbook, How dare Anthony Albanese claim some credit in helping with Trump’s peace plan – Australia’s move to recognise Palestinian statehood made Hamas less likely to accept any ceasefire.

The bleeding obvious caption for the bleeding obvious snaps:Anthony Albanese and US President Donald Trump.

The bromancer got right into it from the get go:

The anniversary of the shocking October 7 terror atrocities carried out by Hamas against Israeli civilians should be a time of sober reflection and deep realism. It should also be a time to recognise that the federal government has deeply failed Australia’s Jewish community, which is now our nation’s most threatened and persecuted minority. In failing the Jewish community, the government has failed our whole nation.
The more you read about the history of anti-Semitism, the more recognisable, and therefore distressing, is the stage that Australia seems to be in now. The Albanese government is not itself remotely anti-Semitic, but it has never grasped the scale or nature of the problem, its seriousness, or the way its own language and actions contribute to worsening a crisis.
The utterly absurd, almost nonsensical, claim by the Albanese government that its decision to formally recognise a Palestinian state when no such state exists contributed to Donald Trump’s peace proposal for the Gaza Strip is a case in point.
Then there is the broader question of Australian foreign policy, which continues to operate primarily in the realm of fantasy rather than actual, physical reality. More on this, later.
But amid the general bleak nothingness of Australian policy, there is one bit of good news. A rare exception to the characteristic vapourware policy is the military alliance Anthony Albanese signed with Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape. This is a real development and a good one. Although the treaty’s language is less binding than the famous NATO Article 5 – an attack on one is an attack on all – it is as strong as the language in our ANZUS Treaty.
Albanese deserves congratulations for bringing the agreement, strongly opposed by China, to fruition.

Say what? Wasn't it just recently that the bromancer was on Sky after dark with petulant Peta, offering "real news, honest views", blathering away ...

‘Monumental incompetence’: Albanese fails to secure Australia-Papua New Guinea treaty
The Australian's Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan says it’s a “tremendous humiliation” that the Albanese government failed to secure a treaty between Australia and Papua New Guinea. “This is a tremendous humiliation for the Albanese government, its Pacific policy is just like its defence policy,” Mr Sheridan told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “You can’t do a security deal with Vanuatu, you can’t do a security deal with Papua New Guinea, but you can solve Palestine. “This was monumental incompetence in management … wildly incompetent.”(sorry, the pond doesn't link to reptile videos)

It was, it was, and what of the monumental incompetence of the bromancer? 

Is he tremendously humiliated by shooting from the lip?

Shouldn't he at least have shown a little of the humble pie he should have been made to eat?

There he was on the 17th September ...

The Australian's Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan says the Albanese government is a government of “flimflam” concerning strategic matters and the failure to secure a treaty between Australia and Papua New Guinea.

Nah, it's the reptile way, never look back, never say you're sorry for getting it wrong.

It's just water under the bridge, here have a still, and pretend none of it ever happened... James Marape and Anthony Albanese on Monday. Pictures: AFP, Martin Ollman

Back to the rant ...

Tying us to PNG, and PNG to us, is a good thing. The chief strategic objective for us is that PNG deny Beijing excessive influence within the country, and particularly its security sector.
However, here are two questions no one is asking about the treaty. What extra resources will we now commit to defence to ­fulfil this new obligation? We’ve taken on the responsibility of ­defending PNG against any threats. Either the treaty is meaningless or it imposes new obligations. If the new obligation is real, it demands commensurate new resources.
Yet as this column, along with every other realistic defence analyst, has often observed, the resources we devote to defence are radically insufficient even for our current tasks. The defence budget was 2 per cent of GDP when Albanese came to office. It’s still 2 per cent of GDP. There’s been no meaningful increase in nearly four years of Labor government. Yet in that time we’ve committed to the huge expense of acquiring nuclear submarines, and now we’ve added a new defence commitment to PNG. We seem to have done all this under some psychotropic influence which allows us to make-believe that it all doesn’t need any extra money.
To slightly adapt an old saying, strategy without money is simply noise before defeat.
The second question about the alliance is this: Marape keeps saying it will mean 10,000 PNG citizens can serve in the Australian Defence Force. How can this possibly be true?
Our defence ­recruitment procedures are notoriously slow, ­byzantine, ineffective and discourage all but the most determined Australian talent. It can take the better part of a year for well-qualified Australian volunteers to join any part of the ADF. It can only be explained as part of the Defence establishment’s commitment to pacifism.

The pond wondered when the reptiles would get alarmed. What's this unseemly talk of thousands of black people being allowed in country? What a terrifying thought, shocking the hive mind to the core.

Is it true that they'll have a thugby league team in the Australian competition? 

Isn't it bad enough that the bloody Kiwis are allowed in, and are seen to be representing NSW in a battle with the toads? (Apparently it actually happened with vulgar youff - thanks to the pond's partner for that one).

Relax, have a still, we're still AUKUSing, Defence Minister Richard Marles said last month that he was 'very confident' the $368bn AUKUS subs deal would continue.

As the pond has explained many times before, the pond understands the bromancer's bitterness.

The continued refusal of this government to promote him to Reichsmarschall des GroßAustralisch Reiches is simply inexcusable...

All anyone needs to do is turn to the bromancer military advice, and the fix is immediately in ...

Most ADF positions require high levels of education and lots of formal qualifications. The total ADF, fewer than 60,000 people, a wildly disproportionate number of them senior officers, is smaller than half a crowd at a Taylor Swift concert. Have we severely misled the PNG PM on how many of his citizens can actually join the ADF? In five years time, when the number of PNG recruits is perhaps a dozen, how will it look? Will this lead to bitter disappointment? If not, how is this recruitment procedure meant to unfold?
The Albanese government never does detail in its grand ­announcements, especially regarding defence and foreign ­affairs. It’s world class in making announcements, but very feeble at following through and implementation.
Back to the Middle East and Albanese’s preposterous claim that Australia recognising a non-existent Palestinian state helped push towards the Trump peace proposal.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who before his current job was many years a US senator intensely involved in foreign affairs and security, said that the day France announced it would formally recognise a Palestinian state, Hamas walked away from what had looked like promising ceasefire negotiations.
That’s because Hamas saw that its terrorism, combined with its intransigence, had won it a huge political victory – French recognition of a Palestinian state. Who do you believe about the effects of such recognition? Rubio or Albanese?

So to a still implying it was only Oz wot did it, Anthony Albanese recognised Palestine as a sovereign state last month, a move slammed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Actually many countries have done it, and a few, some with European clout, did it recently ...you know...

Fergeddit, once the bromancer gets the blinkers on his eyes and the bit in his teeth, he's off at a gallop ...

Hamas famously welcomed the Albanese government’s move to follow the French with formal recognition. So on all the available credible evidence, formal diplomatic recognition of a non-existent Palestinian state made Hamas less likely to agree to a ceasefire.
Nonetheless, the Middle East uniquely suits Albanese government diplomacy. Australia has more or less zero influence in the Middle East, so the characteristic gap between announcement and failed implementation can’t ever really come back to bite Albanese.
France, Britain, Canada and Australia recognising a Palestinian state also had an effect on the Israelis. Like both Rubio and Hamas, the Israelis saw the move as a reward for terrorism. So, outraged and determined to thwart the dynamic of rewarding terrorism, the Israelis were ­moving towards annexing part of the West Bank.
Because the Labor government has entirely destroyed Canberra’s traditional relationship with Jerusalem, it had no ­influence with the Israelis at all.
In so far as the move of several left of centre Western governments to formally recognise a Palestinian state had any consequence, it was to make Hamas less likely to accept any ceasefire, and Israel more likely to annex part of the West Bank. A policy, therefore, which was not only dishonourable, but also dishonest, counter-productive and dumb.
It was Trump, and Trump alone, who stopped Israeli consideration of annexation and also produced a peace plan with half a fighting chance.

And Israel and Benji's growing sense of international isolation had nothing to do with it?

Oh no, none of that, just adore him, and his many majestic works ... 

Join with the bromancer in his adoration, neigh, his adulation, for blessed are the cheesemakers and the gold gilded ones ...

Sorry the bromancer had a few last words to add about the demonisation of Muslims in the lizard Oz...

Meanwhile in Australia, where we routinely hold ritual moral panics over non-issues, we have a genuine crisis of racial, ethnic and religious prejudice against a profoundly vulnerable minority. The Albanese government, in effectively ignoring many recommendations of its own hand-picked anti-Semitism envoy, shows a characteristic disregard for this reality.
You see, it doesn’t care for ­reality much at all.

We keed, we keed.

When has any reptile deep in the hive mind worried about the national Murdochian sport of Muslim bashing? You know, that profoundly vulnerable minority ...there was report about it, studiously ignored by the reptiles.

Been going on a long time, and it's not just the sort of friendly atheism emanating from the pond about all religions being pie in the sky in the sweet bye and bye ...

Inter alia, with many familiar faces being given a mention ...

That's how bad it was, and by the pond's own gut way of surveying the reptile scene, it's got a whole lot worse since then, what with the devotion of the hive mind to ethnic cleansing and genocide ...

Now back to the business of backing the lettuce, there's nothing like having money on a lettuce to distract and to generate real excitement ...

In which the pond tries to ensure there's a little relief by distracting from Our Henry and the uninsurable Stutchbury ...

 

The pond wanted to open with something different, a link to the wildly irrelevant - in herpetology terms -  recent piece by Hannah Long in The Bulwark ... Randolph Scott, Virtuous Loner of the West, Lonesomeness, nobility, and anti-machismo: the ‘Ranown’ westerns are an underappreciated treasure of American cinema.

The chance that the pond and Long agree about anything, let alone everything, is vanishingly small - she says she writes about faith and she can be found in Christianity Today writing about Mission Impossible.

But she belongs in a small circle of film cognoscenti, wherein the pond also resides...with an undying affection for director Budd Boetticher and star Randolph Scott ...

It’s long past time that the Ranown cycle receive its due. But if it doesn’t—if it ends up a noble and still-unsung work of beauty—well, that would just about fit.

Long ago it was decided that women shouldn't take an interest in westerns, and it's true that in the Ranown cycle, the women are the weakest link, plot functionaries and period stereotypes, yet done without the macho nonsense of other westerns.

He (Boetticher) hated the word “macho.” He found the effect a “repulsive egotistical pain-in-the-neck.” By contrast, his own stories were “of a very strong man who had a gigantic personal problem—the death of his wife or something similar—who went out in 72 or 82 minutes to solve that problem.”

Tradition built on this tradition ...

“Budd! I stole everything from you!” Leone bellowed upon meeting Boetticher for the first time at a festival.

Part of the Tamworth tradition was that girlie boys or boyish girls - it's a mixed up, shook up world - had no right to like westerns, it was a boofhead art for boofheads, which is a bit like saying that Henry V could only be properly appreciated by Boris Johnson.

The last the pond checked Hannah was a she/hers sort of writer, obsessed with films, and nothing wrong with that ...

If you've never seen the Ranown films, and think that westerns stopped at Ford, or Hawke, or Leone, check out the adoring article and the adorable movies, where men refuse to ride around some things and Republican Randy is as remote from King Donald as the pond is from Elon Musk's Mars.

What a relief it is to find something occasionally in The Bulwark that's not about the Cantaloupe Caligula, but dammit, that brief moment back riding the range with Randy must end all too soon. 

The pond must turn to the reptile stew known as the lizard Oz, and the reptile cavortings this Tuesday ...

Ah, of course, all stops out for October 7th ...

Time to drag in the archive, for all its flaws and drop outs, so that correspondents can wander off as they like ...

OCTOBER 7 ANNIVERSARY
Haunting faces and a wellspring of hope for Israeli hostages
Israeli families mark two years since Hamas seized their loved ones, as fresh negotiations offer a glimmer of hope for the 48 hostages still held in Gaza.
By Yoni Bashan and Liam Mendes in Tel Aviv

HOSTAGE DEAL
Gaza peace talks begin, White House wants hostage deal ‘quickly’
Indirect talks have begun in Egypt between Israel and Hamas, with the US reportedly hoping for an agreement on the release of the 48 hostages finalised this week.
By Cameron Stewart

‘I promised them I’d come home’
Eli Sharabi spent 491 days as a hostage in Gaza. This is his story of survival
From weighing 44kg to learning an unthinkable truth – read this former Hamas hostage’s extraordinary account of survival in Gaza’s tunnels.
By Eli Sharabi

Not a word about Palestinians and the devastation they've suffered and the dismal future they face.

That flurry was also a handy way for the reptiles to avoid other stories, but not to worry, if you visited another place, you could cop a savvy Savva exclusive ...The meeting where Dutton and Hastie’s relationship fell apart

Just a teaser trailer:

Hastie was extremely disappointed. He saw it as Dutton asserting his dominance, on the one hand, and, on the other, making it clear he could neither trust Hastie nor empower him to do the job that he had assigned him to do.
Hastie was convinced that if Dutton had won the election, he would not have appointed him defence minister.
Dutton was hostile to Hastie, believed he had not put in the policy work and that he was lazy, but, despite all that, insists he would still have appointed him defence minister.

If you too had plunged on the lettuce, you could also read Crikey ...

The keen Keane took a view, as he always does, Watching yet *another* leader be destroyed by the Liberal right is the most tedious ritual in politics, Andrew Hastie has fled to the backbench to sit and snipe at those in his party prepared to develop a coherent policy agenda. It’s how the right works. (Should be outside the paywall)

...far easier to sit in the cheap, bacon-stained seats at RRG and snipe at those actually trying to build a policy agenda than contribute in a collegiate way via shadow cabinet — and do so knowing full well that every shot, every jibe, every foray into some shadow minister’s portfolio undermines both their colleagues and their leader.
Of course, they’re happy to support Sussan Ley for now, because they don’t have the numbers and it’s far too early in the parliamentary term. Ley only got the gig a few months back; to roll her the same year as she got the job would not exactly be the kind of thing to convince female voters to look again at the Liberal offering. But we all know where this is going. It’s now a well-established ritual, nearly to the point of kabuki: the right of the Liberals, aided and abetted by the Nationals, are willing to throw any bomb and break any rule, are happy to promise to destroy the joint if they don’t get their way, while moderates whinge and whine and leak to journalists. It’s the political equivalent of watching paint dry.
At some point, any Liberal who wants to be taken seriously is going to have to come to terms with migration and migrants. Hastie talks about being a stranger in his own home. And, yes, there’s a segment of the electorate who probably feel that way in modern Australia. They’re likely old, likely white, likely live in regional areas (where they probably don’t meet too many new arrivals) and almost certainly already vote for the Coalition or for One Nation. In the cities in which the Liberals need to be competitive again to ever have a hope of winning government, and among younger people, hostility to migration is far lower — partly because, drawbridge migrants notwithstanding, so many more people are themselves migrants.
Australia is a successful migrant nation and migrant economy, one reliant on skilled migration to address key gaps in our workforce created by an ageing population. John Howard showed how a Liberal leader — and one with a shocking record on race, no less — could oversee a high migration policy while managing the politics effectively. Appealing to RRG viewers and the party’s base on migration merely serves to ignore the Howard lesson. But wrecking and negativity are so much easier.Our fight is with Hamas, not the people of Gaza

That talk of a successful migrant nation wouldn't pass the Our Henry test (more on the old rogue later), as the pond also enjoyed this Crikey outing (paywall):

Right everyone, please take note: Andrew Hastie is not challenging Sussan Ley for leadership of the Liberal Party. Got that?
Yes, yes, I know he quit his shadow cabinet role on Friday evening after weeks of social media posting about the future direction of the party and lashing out at his colleagues. But he told us on Saturday that he supports Ley (who *checks notes* has been leader for just 5 months) and so clearly that’s that — absolutely nothing to see here.
The Nine papers said over the weekend that Hastie “quit the frontbench to free himself up and pen a manifesto on his vision to regenerate conservative politics”…
We’ve already had the back and forth over the reasons for last week’s quitting, with Ley pushing back against Hastie’s claim over who will be in charge of the Coalition’s immigration policy. The Nine report cites an MP who supports Hastie as saying the argument was “merely a convenient off-ramp for Hastie to make a move he had decided to make weeks ago”.
Someone else who has had something to say about Mr Hastie is his former boss, a certain Peter Dutton.
The Sydney Morning Herald has an eye-catching headline this morning, which declares: “Dutton: Hastie ‘went on strike’ and cost us at election”. The article is related to Dutton’s reported submissions to the Liberal Party’s 2025 election review.
A source who is apparently familiar with Dutton’s submissions is quoted by the paper as saying: “It was inconceivable to Dutton and his senior colleagues that Hastie effectively went on strike during the last term. Someone who should have been a powerful voice in the media tearing strips off Labor was absent, scared to do media, or lazy.”
The piece claims Dutton told the election review that Hastie was tasked with completing a review of how the Defence Department spent money on procurement, but that work was never finished.
It is also claimed that the submission states Hastie declined to get into a fight with Labor over matters related to the defence brief.
Unsurprisingly, Hastie has pushed back against all of that, declaring: “Only Peter Dutton and those who were in his office can explain why the defence policy was kept back until the final fortnight of the campaign.
“Of course, the reason why anonymous sources are now pushing this into the media has nothing to do with the last election. It has to do with the fact that the old guard is lashing out because it is losing the fight on immigration and energy.”
Elsewhere in opposition news, The Australian has released its latest Newspoll this morning, which suggests One Nation’s primary vote has risen to 11%, which the paper says represents its highest level since 2017.
The Coalition’s primary vote sits at 28% and Labor’s has risen to 37%.
Meanwhile, Ley’s net approval rating has fallen to minus 20.

Glorious times, and the lettuce is staying strong ....

And before moving on, the pond hopes that Freya freaks didn't miss ... ‘If Freya is the answer, we are asking the wrong question’

That header was a quote from the usual gormless "anon" source ...

The party’s ongoing promotion of Leach and her views, is causing deep ructions among sections of the Liberals who fear the party will remain unelectable unless it dramatically changes. Those changes include reflecting modern Australia.

“If Freya is the answer, we are asking the wrong question,” one long-term Liberal operative said.

“The party and the base gravitate towards her because she is the only young person who tells them that the party doesn’t have to change. She continues to provide validation to the views held in the party which have repeatedly demonstrated through multiple election reviews are the cause of the collapse in the primary vote.”

But Freaky Freya has top notch company, no less than dashing Donners...

Leach campaigned alongside another darling of the conservatives during the Voice campaign, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, calling the Northern Territory senator “the Queen” and this month Leach will headline a Liberal fundraiser on Sydney’s northern beaches, once the party’s heartland until the teal takeover.

The theme is “wokeness in education, and the best ways to counter its influence” and Leach will be joined by academic Kevin Donnelly, who describes himself as one of “Australia’s leading conservative public intellectuals and cultural warriors”.

By golly, dashing Donners has gone up in his own esteem, and has now promoted himself to the status of cultural warrior par excellence.

Can a stint working for Pete Hegseth or perhaps a gig at the next Riyadh comedy festival be far behind?

And now after that droll detour, maestro, drum roll and trumpet blast, so that expectations can be raised, only to be shattered, and it's over to the extreme far right to see who's top of the world, ma:

At last there was a mention of Palestinian people, by the Ambassador no less ...

Our fight is with Hamas, not the people of Gaza
Israel wants a future in which Israelis and Palestinians alike can live with dignity and security. If Hamas surrenders both its weapons and its ideology, there is hope.
By Amir Maimon

Could have fooled the pond, sure looked like a dinkum bout of ethnic cleansing.

Alas and alack, instead of mealy mouthed platitudes, it was Our Henry who was actually top of the world this day, and the pond decided this rare Tuesday outing was best off in the archive cornfield ...

What happened to mateship with tolerance for all?
Australia’s Jewish community faces unprecedented security threats, as attacks on synagogues and schools shatter two centuries of religious tolerance.
By Henry Ergas
Columnist

Our Henry played the Holocaust card, made obvious in the archived header,  Holocaust survivors watch history repeat in Australia.

No, he's not scribbling about the slaughter of Aboriginal people, in his fevered imagination there's a current Holocaust of Jews going down right here, right now ...

That's the ultimate card, so all the pond could do was offer highlights when Our Henry dropped into his famous referential mode:

Arendt (ignoring all else Arendt wrote about Israel):

Nothing better captures those echoes than Hannah Arendt’s reflections on her generation’s experience in the 1930s. They had, she wrote, been brought up in the belief that “moral conduct is a matter of course”, as are everyday tolerance and ordinary civility.
But without notice, “all this collapsed almost overnight and then it was as though morality suddenly stood revealed as just a set of mores, customs and manners which could be exchanged for another set with hardly more trouble than it would take to change the table manners of an individual or a people”.
Unexpectedly, a corner of daily life had “curled up, and there was a glimpse of the lining”. Once that happened, “all the certainties were gone,” swept away with “the ground under our feet”.

(Want an alternative? Try On Arendt: Creating a Zionism That Owns Its Mistakes

“Palestine Jewry would eventually separate itself from the larger body of world Jewry and in its isolation develop into an entirely new people. Thus it becomes plain that at this moment and under present circumstances a Jewish state can only be erected at the price of a Jewish homeland.” (Arendt, 397)).

Bible (for those liable to believe what they read in the Bible):

From Abraham’s departures for Canaan and beyond, through the Israelites’ extended wanderings in the wilderness, to the promise of home conveyed near the end of Deuteronomy but then promptly overwhelmed by the threat of renewed homelessness, the experience of being cast into exile is at the heart of Jewish memory.
“Among the nations shall you have no repose,” warns Deuteronomy; “and your life shall hang in doubt before you; and you shall fear night and day”.
Today’s security, and the confidence of a life for you, your children and grandchildren, may crumble before your eyes – as it did, at least once every century, in a trail that stretched from the mass expulsions of the 13th century through to the death camps and killing fields of World War II.
But despite the tragedy of recurring homelessness, the Jewish story was never only one of rejection and flight. Rather, each and every time, hope was reborn, and new life rekindled, at the very edge of the abyss of despair.
“Build houses and dwell in them, plant gardens and eat the fruit of them; take wives and beget sons and daughters and multiply there and be not diminished,” Jeremiah had counselled the exiles in Babylon. And at each stop along history’s trail of dislocation new communities were built where even in exile Jews could sustain a national existence. Fortified by the strength of tradition, they established communal institutions, developed an impressive system of laws, found paths to prosperity, ensured the transmission of the faith and produced a vast body of scholarship.
Those efforts were not for the benefit of Jews alone. Isaac, the Bible tells us, overcame the envy and hatred of his hosts by proving his usefulness: a story pondered by later generations who saw in the narratives of their ancestors “a sign for the children”. It was in that story’s light that they interpreted Jeremiah’s instruction to always “seek the peace of the city to which I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray unto the Lord for it; for in the peace thereof shall you have peace”.

Frost:

“Home” for Jews wasn’t, in Robert Frost’s famous phrase, “the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in”; it was a sanctuary that had to be earned and then earned again through hard work, bold innovation, intellectual creativity, and against-the-odds survival.

History:

Nowhere did the opportunity to make that contribution seem greater and more assured than in Australia. Freedom could hardly have come in a less likely setting: a convict colony at the end of the world. Nor were the signs, when a handful of Jewish convicts arrived with the First Fleet in January 1788, at all propitious.
Having been brutally expelled from England in 1290, it was only in 1655 that a few Jews were granted legal residence.
Yes, the Glorious Revolution inaugurated an era more tolerant of difference and more respectful of rights. But when the Jewish Naturalisation Act of 1753 was proposed to parliament and passed with little opposition, mass protests broke out, with a leading opponent asserting that legal recognition of Jewish rights was “as great an affront as we could well put upon our established Church”.
With that legislation being hastily repealed, the cause of Jewish emancipation was durably set back, and it was only in 1858 that Jewish political equality was achieved. The first Jews to arrive in this distant land therefore had every reason to fear the treatment they would receive.
But the newly established colony marched to its own drum. So as to encourage commercial development in the British Empire, the Plantation Act of 1740 had allowed Jews in the Americas to gain the rights of British subjects. Interpreting that legislation generously, successive governors of the Australian colonies ensured that Jews enjoyed the same rights as their Christian counterparts.
As a result, Jews were free from the legal discrimination they still suffered in the mother country: they acquired British nationality, voted at elections, held commissions in the local militia, were elected to municipal offices, and were appointed justices of the peace.
There was, however, an exception. In 1836, governor Richard Bourke, an Irish Protestant and lifelong liberal, decided that if there were to be established churches, all the great divisions of Christianity, and not just the ­Anglicans, should be established, and funded equally.
But the Colonial Office prohibited him from extending that funding to the synagogues of the fledgling Jewish community.

DH Lawrence and Hume:

Tracking their experience, sociologist PW Medding described their reception as one of “qualified acceptance” – the “indifference which is not apathy” DH Lawrence had portrayed as quintessentially Australian. “Australians did not especially like ‘foreigners’”, one Holocaust survivor told Medding, “but they disliked drawing attention to themselves by being nasty to people even more”.
However, the important thing, the recent arrivals soon learnt, was that the barriers melted with time, helped by the respect Australians had for those who helped themselves and who did so much to build, strengthen and enrich this country. But never and nowhere has toleration come easily or been easy to sustain. David Hume called it an “artificial” virtue that struggles against mankind’s natural inclinations.

A final Manning Clark flourish:

Looking back in 1955 on the early European settlers’ dreams, Manning Clark concluded the introduction to his Select Documents in Australian History with these words: “So we leave them, dumbfounded at their optimism, astounded that belief in material progress and mateship could be their only comforters against earth and sky, man and beast.”

Oh and a bit of praise for his country, a retort to the keen Keane carrying on about being a successful migrant country:

...the crippling flaws of a multiculturalism that is one part what holds us together, nine parts what drives us apart; the intellectual vacuity of political, cultural and educational elites who, when the chips are down, lack the moral courage to take a stance; the fragility, in the end, of what we had always taken to be the Australian project.

Well there's always Israel to head to, if we're to accept the logic of the love it or leave it mob that dwell in the lizard Oz...

Why does he stay, and load is up with all those references, when paradise awaits?

Or does he like to see all those car wrecks?

That was a bit strained, but the pond liked it all the same.

Meanwhile the pond wanted to set the scene for a final stitching up with Stutchbury ...with this story, Extreme weather costs Australia more than any other rich country, bar one

Over at the ABC they helped with a graph, as the ABC is wont to do ...

If you wanted the report itself, you could head off to the news release ...Extreme weather costs: the silver medal we don’t want, with a direct link to a pdf of the report.

All that nicely sets the scene for a session of sucking it up with Stutchbury ....

The header: Why the renewables romance could be headed for divorce, Most Australians support net zero by 2050. But the hidden cost of this will start to bite as the renewables honeymoon ends.

The tedious caption for yet another terrifying snap of towers and wires and the whole damn thing: As renewables’ share of the energy generation grows, those storage and grid costs rise steeply. Picture: AFP

What is it with the "could be"? "Could be headed for a divorce"?

Shouldn't the Stutch be scribbling about how they've just left Reno?

Why the saucy doubts and fears, the cunning little out clause in the header, when the Stutch is Hayeking all the way to the end times?

Friedrich Hayek famously said the task of economics includes exposing the fatal conceit of those who insist on planning how the world will work.
In Australia, he would have pointed to the National Broadband Network, which promised higher productivity but had to be written down by $31bn to deliver accounting returns to keep it off budget. Or the union-pushed Gonski school funding that splurged tens of billions but failed to halt the alarming slide in student learning. And the $52bn National Disability Insurance Scheme that some said would pay for itself but now costs three times more than initial estimates.
Now there’s another conceit: the plan to cut Australia’s carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 – relying overwhelmingly on wind and solar – as our contribution to the international effort to curb global warming. It was always going to be a massive task to decarbonise Australia’s fossil fuel-intensive economy, because we built our prosperity on cheap coal and gas.
As Ross Garnaut has warned, it’s highly unlikely we will get close to either the federal government’s interim 2030 target or its new goal of cutting carbon emissions by 62-70 per cent by 2035. And equally unlikely that Australia – or China, the US, India or Russia – will cut their emissions to net zero in the next 25 years. But the bigger conceit is believing that trying to do so will drive down costs and power bills.

Yes, we've been here before may times, and just look at the terrifying image the reptiles lined up for priceless time with petulant Peta ... CIS Director of Energy Research Aidan Morrison explains a new report from the Centre of Independent Studies, which suggests Australia has passed the point where renewable energy can deliver 'easy' gains to the system. “The thing I wanted to emphasise with energy sources that you can’t control, that come from the wind and sun, they come in rushes and gushes, and that actually means that unlike other generators, it gets harder to add more and more to the system.” Mr Morrison told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “Our energy prices have started rising in the last few years because of this effect, and are going to rise a whole lot further and faster. “Around about 20 per cent is when we saw the first signs, and 30 per cent, the honeymoon is well and truly over, and it only gets harder from here. “There's no one that’s trying to do what we are trying to do and not having huge amounts of price pain at the moment.”

Is it possible to insure against brain damage caused by endlessly reading renewables doomsaying in the lizard Oz? 

Possibly not, what with the surge in prices and the relentless over-exposure...

Anthony Albanese insisted before the 2022 election that Labor’s renewables plan would cut household energy bills by $275 a year. “I don’t think, I know,” he said. “I know because we have done the modelling.” Instead, the opposite has happened. Power costs have gone up. And Australia is losing its cheap energy advantage as it relies more on renewable energy.
Amid the febrile climate wars, it is critical that the public debate understands why. The CIS energy team has provided the best explanation to date in its new paper, The Renewable Energy Honeymoon: starting is easy, the rest is hard.
Yes, an isolated kilowatt hour of energy from the sun or the wind may be cheaper to generate than power from coal, gas or uranium. The sun shines for free. The wind blows at no cost. But it’s a different equation for an electricity grid required to operate 24/7 across eastern and central Australia, including when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
As the paper’s lead author, Zoe Hilton, points out, solar and wind are intermittent; so the energy they supply comes in bursts. Sometimes this supply is too much, other times too little. Hence, solar and wind energy has to be shifted across time (by being stored) and across space (through transmission lines). Significant amounts of energy are wasted along the way. And as renewables’ share of the energy generation grows, those storage and grid costs rise steeply, because as the easier options are used up, storing and moving energy become more difficult.
More storage means holding power for longer periods, and real weather patterns eventually require multi-day or seasonal storage. This reduces how often storage is used and makes each unit of energy more expensive.
The same is true for transmission: once nearby demand is met, electricity must travel further, which increases the need for costly new infrastructure. Further, since 2019-2020, oversupply has cut renewable revenues, leaving new projects dependent on subsidies. Government schemes mask this pressure, but the fundamentals remain: the more renewables added, the less each contributes and the more it costs.
The costs involved turn out to be massive, and get passed on to end users or taxpayers. A similar pattern shows up around the world when you plot wind and solar generation on the horizontal axis and the price of power on the vertical axis. The trend line rises upward to the right at about 45 degrees.
Countries with 20 per cent or so penetration tend to have moderate power prices. Those with 20-33 per cent wind and solar penetration, such as Australia, have higher prices. And the prices are higher still for countries where solar and wind exceeds a third of electricity generation, such as Spain, Portugal, Germany and Denmark.
Germany is now pulling back from its renewables ambitions as higher energy prices undermine its industrial base. But the Climate Change Authority projects that renewable energy will account for more than 90 per cent of Australia’s electricity supply by 2030. That suggests the end of the renewables honeymoon could be headed for the divorce courts. It will get harder, not easier, from here.

The reptiles came along with a graphic of their own, a right royal mess ... Renewables graphic for the web

What a flurry of dot point floozies.

Put it another way, please allow the pond to do climate science the reptile way ... by deploying an ancient poem ...

To be fair, that scrambled eggs graph is at one with the Stutch, trying to stitch it all up in a last burst ...

Labor has covered up the problem of higher energy prices with household power bill handouts, secretive taxpayer underwriting of new solar and wind projects, and subsidies to stop energy-hungry old steelworks and smelters from closing.
We’re heading back to subsidising industries because Labor won’t want high power prices to be blamed for shutting down these factories and losing jobs. Remember, the clean-energy transition was supposed to result in less emissions, lower prices and more jobs.
Most Australians support net zero by 2050. But the hidden cost of this will start to bite as the renewables honeymoon ends.
The clash between the strong public support for net zero and the rising costs of energy shows up in Australia’s scrappy climate wars.
The Liberal and National parties are going through a civil war over whether to keep supporting net zero by 2050. Labor is content to allow the Coalition to tear itself apart over net zero while cloaking the problem with more borrowed money.
The clash will require a new political bargain that discards the conceit of the “renewables free lunch”. This could include not ruling out zero-emissions nuclear power to supply reliable zero-emissions energy.
A new political bargain would end the passive-aggressive bans and restrictions on supplying lower-emissions gas that is needed to help firm up renewables.
And it could extend to relying more on a revenue-neutral carbon price that could tax the so-called negative externality of carbon emissions while cutting other taxes to incentivise economic growth. Or, as Hayek would say, let’s rely more on the market, rather than the conceit of politicians and planners, if we want to discover the least-cost path to a lower-emissions world.

Credit where credit is due ...

Michael Stutchbury is executive director at the Centre for Independent Studies.

Finally the pond is aware that in all the above, there were so many distractions that the bromancer ranting about everything went missing.

The pond decided his rant about the abject state of the world was best left to a late arvo slot, but those impatient for a bromancer fix can head off to the archive cornfield, and inject the heady brew straight into the eyeball ...

Reality not part of PM’s foreign policy playbook
How dare Anthony Albanese claim some credit in helping with Trump’s peace plan – Australia’s move to recognise Palestinian statehood made Hamas less likely to accept any ceasefire.
By Greg Sheridan

Perhaps the archive isn't working, perhaps correspondents haven't been able to insure against the guaranteed misery of the read ... 

Whatever, fear not, there will be a late arvo chance to catch up.

And, so for the moment, it's time to wrap up with the immortal Rowe ...

In which the bromancer and Lord Downer strut their stuff, and simplistic Simon nukes the country to save the planet ...

 

The pond's partner had a question for the reptiles. 

What do they make of a man who has his fingernails painted black? Queensland Broncos Star Reece Walsh Called Out For Wearing Nail Polish.

Guess he had the last masculine laugh.

As that exhausts the pond's knowledge of thugby league, time to move on to the Monday reptile feather display ...

The lead early in the morning...

World holds its breath
Trump warns Hamas to ‘back Gaza peace deal or else’
The US President is pushing hard to get his plan to end the Gaza war over the line, warning the Palestinian terror group to ‘move fast’ or ‘all bets are off’.
By Richard Ferguson and Noah Yim

This is funny (in the peculiar/odd sense) because the tabloid headline was ...

Trump Throws Secret Hissy Fit at Middle East Ally: ‘You’re Always So F***ing Negative”

That was a recycling, in the Daily Mail style, of an Axios story ...

When Hamas came back with a "yes, but" to President Trump's Gaza peace proposal on Friday, Trump called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss what he saw as good news.
Netanyahu felt differently. "Bibi told Trump this is nothing to celebrate, and that it doesn't mean anything," a U.S. official with knowledge of the call told Axios.
Trump fired back: "I don't know why you're always so f***ing negative. This is a win. Take it."
Why it matters: The exchange, which a second U.S. official confirmed, reflects how determined Trump is to push through Netanyahu's reservations, and convince him to end the war if Hamas will make a deal.

Guess King Donald was handing out lots of warnings, but you couldn't expect the reptiles to take note of all of them.

So it goes in the hive mind.

Meanwhile, pushed right down the page, the reptiles were doing their best to help the pond's bet on the lettuce ...

EXCLUSIVE
Newspoll: One Nation surges, as Sussan Ley’s net approval rating plunges
Support for One Nation has surged to its highest level since 2017, as Sussan Ley’s approval rating plunges and Labor records its strongest primary vote in 28 months.
By Geoff Chambers

If the news had been good, what's the bet that would have been the lead?

Instead it was way down the page, and coupled with a yarn that increased reptile anxiety ...

EXCLUSIVE
Moderate Liberal Andrew Bragg dismisses Andrew Hastie’s agenda
Opposition frontbencher Andrew Bragg has declared migrants are not the cause of housing shortages and suggested Australia would be a global outlier if it walked away from net zero.
By Greg Brown

Over on the extreme far right there was the usual roster of reptile ratbags ... 

...with galumphing Geoff brooding on that race with the lettuce ...

Ley digs in for long haul amid One Nation rise and Coalition pains
The Opposition Leader is not panicked about the polls, the loss of high-profile Liberals Andrew Hastie and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price from her shadow ministry, or the rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
By Geoff Chambers

The pond thinks the lettuce is in with a goodly chance, and it will let its bet ride.

A motley melange of reptiles were all harping on the same matter.

Given the abundance, the pond decided to cut Major Mitchell, always tedious with his fundamentalist Zionism, off to the archive cornfield...(hang in, if it drops out, thus far it usually comes back)

Journalists’ double standards on Hamas exposed
Media critics of Israel should ask themselves if they have applied the same standards to Russian aggression against Ukraine.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist

Talk about a mindless straw dog, apparently because the Major can't chew gum and rub tum at same time...

Journalistic critics of Israel have not applied the same standards to Russian aggression against Ukraine, where deaths on both sides may now exceed 500,000. Nor do many even mention Islamist pogroms in Nigeria, where 62,000 Christians have been murdered since 2000, or in Sudan, where more than 250,000 have been killed and 14 million displaced in three years.

As if one ethnic cleansing excuses others...as if no one but the Major has noted assorted killing fields ...

Such a deeply clueless barking mad fundamentalist Zionist git.

Off to the archive cornfield with him.

Besides, the pond simply had to make room for the bromancer and Lord Downer...anxiously rubbing hands together ...

The header: As Donald Trump imposes his will on Middle East, everything could still go wrong, It is in the interests of every civilised person on the planet that this deal go ahead. The US President’s impatience is the world’s hope.

The caption: US President Donald Trump with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week. Picture: AP

The bromancer began by pumping up King Donald's hope for that peace prize ...

If this Gaza peace deal goes ahead it will be almost entirely because of the enormous strength of Donald Trump’s will.
Hamas was always going to answer Donald Trump’s peace plan with a ‘Yes but’. Too smart to say no outright, too ruthless and bloody minded to say yes and mean it.
In the past all the emphasis was on the but. Maybe, just maybe, this time Hamas is under so much pressure it may actually say yes in a way which allows the deal to go forward.
Hamas has never wanted peace but it has not before considered surrender.
Yet the essence of this deal is the release of the remaining Israeli hostages, cruelly and infamously held in inhuman conditions these last two years.
This is where Hamas insisting on further negotiations, rather than just accepting the peace agreement in full, is potentially still troubling.
For the brutal, savage truth is that once it gives up the last of the Israeli hostages, Hamas loses all leverage over Israel.
Trump has mobilised the Arab world, particularly Qatar and Saudi Arabia, into supporting the peace deal.
More importantly, he’s persuaded them to put real pressure on Hamas to agree to the deal.
The deal is good for the Palestinians. It gives them an end to the fighting, a new technocratic government, unlocks reconstruction aid, reduces the daily influence of Israel in their lives, involves a range of rich nations in their economic future, even holds out the distant prospect of eventual statehood. Above all it frees the Palestinian people from the murderous tyranny of Hamas.

The reptiles interrupted with a feeble attempt to show the reptiles were down with AV distractions, one of those wondrous EXPLAINERS, reduced by the pond to a screen cap and a tag: US President Donald Trump has unveiled a sweeping 20-point plan to end the two-year war in Gaza, backed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The proposal calls for an immediate ceasefire, the release of all hostages, a staged Israeli withdrawal and Hamas’ disarmament, with a transitional government led by an international body headed by Trump himself. Supporters argue that it could deliver stability and rebuild Gaza, while critics warn that it amounts to a negotiated surrender disguised as diplomacy. As the war escalates and Gaza faces a deepening humanitarian crisis, The Australian’s editorial director Claire Harvey and Washington correspondent Joe Kelly discuss the implications for the region and for Trump’s legacy.

The bromancer then quickly wrapped up proceedings, a strange strategy for a scribbler rarely lost for words ...

That’s good for the Palestinian people. Not so good for Hamas.
Equally Trump has used the authority, which no-one else on the planet possesses, to force Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire which provides something less than everything he wants.
The far Right elements of Netanyahu’s coalition government oppose the deal. They want to destroy every element of Hamas physically and then maintain Israeli control over Gaza.
The provisions of this deal are, however, actually better for Israel than the conquest Netanyahu has promoted publicly.
This deal allows Israel to keep very significant security control in Gaza, as well as staying probably indefinitely on a chunk of Gaza territory.
To agree to this, Hamas would need to cross red lines it has insisted before that it would never cross.
But if Hamas is allowed to continue to exist as an organisation at all, it can claim to have defeated Israel, to have attacked Israel in the most savage fashion and lived to fight another day.
But for all that, it is in the interests of every civilised person on the planet that this deal go ahead.
A lot of disputes are solved when one or both of the parties reaches exhaustion point.
There is exhaustion everywhere with this dispute.
Added to that exhaustion now is Trump’s will and determination.
Trump is in every way a mixed grill but his involvement here is completely constructive. Even Tom Friedman of the New York Times, who hates everything about the Trump presidency, has hailed this deal.
Trump is insisting to both sides that there can be no delay.
In this case, Trump’s impatience is the world’s hope.
But at this critical moment, everything could still go wrong.

What a downer, everything could still go wrong?

The pond fired back: "I don't know why you're always so f***ing negative

Eek, the bromancer has turned the pond into a King Donald clone.

That noted, surely devotees of the bromancer will cherish that latest variation on his King Donald both siderism ...

Trump is in every way a mixed grill

The pond doesn't have the foggiest idea why the bromancer is inclined to slur mixed grills. 

Back in the pond's Tamworth days, mixed grills were a culinary delight, with grilled kidneys and mushrooms and corn special treats...

Now they're the same as a demented sociopathic narcissist?

Speaking of downers, luckily the bro was only a two minute read, thereby allowing space for Lord Downer, brooding on the same problem for a more extended four minutes, or so the reptiles clocked the piece ...

The header: Will Trump’s ‘Mar a Gaza’ plan actually work? If Gaza ever does return to its former glory, we’ll have the US President to thank. His strategy, to work assiduously with Israelis and Arab leaders, stands in stark contrast to the antagonistic path pursued by the Europeans, and Australia.

The caption for an image which previously had been missing in the hive mind: People rally in Tel Aviv over the weekend, calling for an end to the war and the release of all remaining Israeli hostages. Picture: Chris McGrath/Getty Images

Lord Downer opened with an "Our Henry" flourish ...

During the period of the Roman and Byzantine empires, Gaza was one of the most prosperous places in the world.
It was a major trading hub for the Middle East. It was known for its mosaics and, surprisingly by today’s standards, its fine wine. It was regarded as one of the wealthiest Christian cities on Earth. After the seventh century, Gaza began to decline and through the generations since it has never recovered. It has been a marginalised place of no particular commercial or intellectual significance for centuries.

The pond suspects that Lord Downer has been cribbing his homework again, though Christopher Mallan in The Conversation was more on about philosophy than commerce, but perhaps Lord Downer was keen to focus on his own navel-gazing and fluff gathering ...

I mention this because it should give you some hope that Gaza could one day return to its past glory as a commercial centre. As Donald Trump would have it, it will become Mar a Gaza. But to do that it will fairly obviously have to go through a huge transition.
Yet over the past week there has been a glimmer of hope that just may be possible. The extraordinarily bold Trump plan for the Middle East, defying all his critics, is showing early signs of bearing fruit. No doubt there will be setbacks in the negotiations, but so far extraordinary progress is being made. Where Trump has been clever is building strong and close relations with other Arab states.

Mar-a-Lago is still the dream? Albeit transmuted cornball Downer of a joke, and never mind all the ethnic cleansing and the slaughter, it's a laugh a minute in His Lordship's stand-up comedy stylings, perhaps good enough to get him a gig in the next Riyadh Comedy Festival ...

But will there be enough gold gilt for the makeover?

Gilt away without guilt ...

...Vast chandeliers hang from the ceiling in Trump’s penthouse, as they do at Mar-A-Lago. He has these chandeliers in common with a number of discredited presidents from other countries. US satirist P.J. O’Rourke noted that ‘Saddam’s chandelier was the size of a two-car garage. If a reason to invade Iraq was wanted, felony interior decorating would have done’.
York believes brash leaders like Trump got their taste in interior decoration - the ‘Ferrero Rocher look’ - from glitzy hotels, having spent a lot of time waiting in lobbies to schmooze potential backers. ‘For ambitious lads … the local grand hotel was always the good-life template.

...as the reptiles threw in an AV distraction ...Independent Women’s Forum fellow Qanta Ahmed has claimed that Donald Trump’s tour of the Middle East will “benefit Israel”. “Much was made of the fact that Israel was not visited during this trip,” Dr Ahmed said. “But I think all of this alignment and deepening of alliances is ultimately going to benefit the state of Israel. “President Trump most likely had that very much in mind during his visits.”

Lord Downer was also keen on the Nobel prize, though Major Mitchell might be disturbed by the way he was attacking Europeans, as if the Ukraine war was a never no mind ...

A few months ago, the US President visited Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. He was ridiculed by hostile Western media during the trip, but to make progress on the Middle East as well as countering terrorism itself requires strong relations with the Saudi Arabians, the Emiratis and the Qataris.
Trump has also maintained a close friendship with Benjamin Netanyahu that has given him not just access to the Israeli Prime Minister and cabinet but also substantial leverage over them.
So on the one hand he has been able to guide Netanyahu and the Netanyahu government towards peace. On the other, through the intermediaries of Arab leaders, he has been able to push Hamas into the release of the hostages and the ending of the war against Israel.
This strategy stands in stark contrast to the one pursued by the Europeans. Their approach has been little more than pathetic.
First, they have condemned the Israelis on the back of Hamas propaganda, demanding Israel cease fire, withdraw its troops from Gaza and disengage from fighting with Hamas. This was a completely absurd position. It would have made much more sense to pile the pressure on Hamas, which started the war on October 7, 2023.
If the Europeans had been able to influence Hamas to release the hostages and cease attacking Israel and Israelis, the war would have finished long ago. But no; for domestic political reasons they piled the pressure on Israel.
The point is that meant they had absolutely no influence over Israel’s strategy. There was out-and-out hostility to Israel, a fellow liberal democratic country with the most powerful military in the region, denying them any role in contributing to peace.

Then there was the simply extraordinary European initiative led by French President Emmanuel Macron to recognise a Palestinian state. A more stupid timing for such an initiative is unimaginable.

And yet, very shortly thereafter, the head bangers tentatively decided to stop banging heads.

It wouldn't be a reptile piece without a reminder of one terrorist act, and absolutely no reminder of the genocidal, ethnic cleansing terror acts that have followed, The devastating aftermath of Hamas militants’ October 7 attack on Israel’s Kibbutz Be'eri.

Lord Downer continued his ranting and railing ...

Hamas started the war two years ago by killing, raping, torturing, and kidnapping Israelis. Two years later, as the fighting continues because Hamas will not give up the hostages and will not lay down its weapons, the Europeans decide it is a timely initiative to recognise Palestine as a state. There was no legal basis for that. Palestine does not meet the internationally recognised legal criteria to become a state. Politically, this was warmly welcomed by Hamas and seen as a huge victory by Hamas. Given its lack of concern for human life, Hamas saw its declaration of war on Israel two years ago as a well-worthwhile exercise.
Why would the Europeans have done this? For domestic political reasons. Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer have been worried by anti-Israeli sentiment in their own countries. This has been driven by intense hostility to Israel by elements of their media. The BBC performance has been particularly egregious.
It also has been stirred up by weekly marches by pro-Palestinian and anti-Semitic crowds. These crowds have been tolerated by the French and British governments in ways they have not been in the US. Waving slogans calling for the total destruction of Israel; that is, “From the river to the sea” slogans. And with banners proclaiming anti-Semitic bigotry not seen for generations. These have been tolerated.

Um, speaking of that river to the sea thingie, per Haaretz:

 ..For Israelis, 'From the River to the Sea' Is a Reality. For Palestinians, It's a Crime, It is nonsensical, and hypocritical, to arrest or accuse Palestinians of promoting the ideology of 'From the river to the sea,' while in Israel, school maps don't show the Green Line and the government is advancing full annexation

Inter alia...

...Apparently this needs to be said again: Israeli Jews are the last people on Earth who can complain about Palestinian longing for the land from the river to the sea. The State of Israel is the mother of "river to the sea" – using graphic rather than geographic language. It is nearly impossible to find a map in any public space in Israel today, from official maps to public art and iconography, showing the Green Line that would delineate a hypothetical Palestinian state. Maps in Israel show the whole land, undivided – in effect, erasing Palestinian political and national identity.
A private collection of snapshots I've taken around the country or captured from the internet tells a story as clearly as a coloring book: a Judaica shop down the block in Tel Aviv has a blue-glass standing object for your coffee table shaped like the map of Eretz Israel – no Green Line blemish. A charging stand for electric cars in Haifa displays a map of its stations spread generously throughout the Land of Israel – a single unit from the river to the sea (thanks to my partners in this project who snapped the shot).
Every day, the newspapers print weather maps of the whole land, absent any Palestine (Haaretz is a lone exception). In Hostage Square in central Tel Aviv, citizens have filled the place with art, including a triptych of visual images in which the middle pillar bears drawings of families hugging children in the shape of the whole territory of British Mandatory Palestine. The list and the photos go on.
As for inciting children about river to sea: This is the time to recall that Israeli public schools are practically barred from using maps showing the Green Line – no Palestine there either. Israel's river-to-sea is not just the lucky kid who gets the coloring book, but every kid in an Israeli school.
It is nonsensical to arrest or even accuse Palestinians of using the term without mentioning that Israelis live out their own river to sea, every day. Outsiders: If you didn't realize that Israelis view the world through Mandate Palestine-shaped glasses – check your basic understanding of the society you claim to be fighting for. It's better than exposing yourself as a hypocrite or a liar.
But bumper stickers or paperweights aren't really the problem. The problem is that Israel implements its river-to-sea vision on the only map that matters: the ground itself. River-to-sea Israel is hard at work expanding settlements and the supporting infrastructure, transferring military powers over the West Bank to civilian arms of the Israeli state, thrusting the Israeli army into Palestinian cities like Tul Karm and Jenin after helping to collapse the rule of the Palestinian Authority. Support or oppose these policies – but tell the truth.

And never mind the barking mad fundamentalist Zionists who use the notion in their speeches.

Sorry, Lord Downer has always had a rather remote connection to the truth, as the reptiles slipped in a snap designed to distract from ethnic cleansing, UK police say one of the two victims in the Manchester synagogue attack was likely killed by a bullet fired by an officer.

Lord Downer finished with a Zionist flourish ...

Last week’s attack on the synagogue in Manchester has certainly woken the British public up to the huge problem Britain now has with anti-Semitism.
When there have been attacks on synagogues and other Jewish sites, they have been condemned by European leaders in a pro-forma sort of way, but the sentiment that has led to the legitimisation in the minds of some people of these sorts of attacks has been allowed to fester unchallenged by leaders.
After all, Macron and Starmer have been condemning Israel, demanding the Israeli military cease fire. Both have endorsed the International Criminal Court indictment of the Israeli Prime Minister and former defence minister. And finally they’ve recognised a Palestinian state. A more asinine approach to solving this problem hasn’t been seen in a long time.
In stark contrast to all of this, President Trump has worked assiduously to try to solve the problem, working with the Israelis and Arab leaders. Yet the Europeans have quietly sneered at Trump.
First they claimed he was an isolationist, which as events have demonstrated over the past nine months is completely untrue. Then the sneering at his personal behaviour, his jokes and his so far unsuccessful attempts to end the Ukraine war have also brought no credit to Europe. After all, they didn’t do much to stop the war in Ukraine in the first place. And second, they have endlessly criticised the Americans for not doing enough to end it.
So there you have it. If Gaza could return to its former glory (which I admit is a bit of a stretch), then that will be thanks to somebody the media tells you that you have to hate, Trump. It will be no thanks at all to the Europeans.
And by the way, I think you’ve worked this out yourself as you’ve read this column.
The Australian government has followed slavishly in the wake of Macron and Starmer. We have trashed our relationship with Israel, which had been so warm and close for many generations. We have no influence whatsoever in Jerusalem.
Like the European performance, our performance has just been pathetic and driven by a less-than-cunning plan to appease anti-Israel voters.

And not the teensie-weensiest desire to see ethnic cleansing and a genocide in the making come to an end?

That's more than enough of that - the pond suspects that talk of the still ongoing ethnic cleansing will never make it into the lizard Oz - and so to a little light relief.

With the Caterist absent early in the morning - the pond will catch up with the quarry whisperer when he makes his appearance - it was left to simpleton Simon to stay true to the reptile cause...

The header: Nuclear refuseniks have turned us into a global pariah, As the global trend towards nuclear expansion continues, including in our own regional backyard, Australia’s position starts to look just odd.

The caption for that pair of nasty nuke deniers: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen.

This was a four minute hymn celebrating the need to nuke the country to save the planet, though as every reader of the reptiles knows, the notion of climate change is just a cult religion attracting the devotion of zealots and greenie watermelon fundamentalists.

There was nothing for the pond to do but settle back and enjoy simplistic Simon at his nuking work...

Anthony Albanese continues to lampoon that which much of the rest of the developed world is re-embracing and many developing economies are pursuing: nuclear power. Having withdrawn red-faced from Labor’s juvenile three-headed fish campaign, the Prime Minister and his Climate Change and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, continue to engage in a counterfactual hoax.
When Donald Trump speaks of an energy renaissance for the US he’s referring to nuclear power generation.

Um, if the pond might rudely interrupt, King Donald often speaks of climate science denialism, and of devotion to coal. But do go on ...

 Likewise his British counterpart, Keir Starmer, who is equally enthusiastic, calls it a “golden age”. But apparently Canberra knows something no one else does. It’s all economic fantasy, Albanese claims.
“See if you can find someone who’s investing in it,” he said last week when asked about it in Britain, which recently announced plans to build more than a dozen new reactors. “No one’s been able to do that, which is why the Coalition went to an election saying that taxpayers would have to do it, because the private sector, it just doesn’t add up for what is necessary for the immediate needs.”
While it may be empirically true to state that investors aren’t knocking down the doors in Australia to build nuclear reactors, it is so for only one reason: it is illegal to build them. This is the fig leaf of obscurity that the government hides behind when it comes to sensible debate about nuclear energy.

Devotees will be delighted at the way that the reptiles have pandered to the nuke mob with a variety of distractions designed to nuke the eye, beginning with ... The Coalition has recommitted to Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy push. Despite losing the election in May with a similar policy, the Opposition is citing “overwhelming agreement” for the policy within the party. The plan involves both large-scale nuclear plants and small reactors. Shadow Energy Minister Dan Tehan says nuclear energy is required if Australia is going to achieve its climate goals.

Dan the man is on the march ...

... and simplistic Simon is marching with him ...

The primary blockage to a civil nuclear industry isn’t necessarily an economic one. At least one nuclear power company – Rolls-Royce – believes small modular reactors will be more than viable in Australia, and provided Peter Dutton a private briefing to prove it. It is contracted to construct the reactors for the AUKUS nuclear-powered subs and says the British government would support development of a civil nuclear industry in Australia.

The SMR dream is still alive, the pond might yet be able to fit out its backyard ...

This isn’t even about community antagonism any more. Polling shows significant support for small-scale nuclear as a clean energy source, particularly among younger voters. The obstruction has always been an issue of political determination. Why Dutton suddenly ditched SMRs for large-scale plants is still a mystery to many of his colleagues and is one of the key reasons the broader policy failed. Any new Coalition nuclear policy will be confined to the emerging technology of SMRs.
Labor’s position is self-reinforcing, based on an assumption that the longer Labor remains in power, the more remote the possibility of a nuclear power industry becomes.
This is also not quite right. If it took another decade for the Coalition to be in a position to change policy – assuming it may be that long before it returns to office – nuclear still could be realised as a post 2040 proposition.
By then the financial case presumably would be more attractive as development of small-scale reactors reaches a greater level of market maturity just about the same time an entire fleet of comparatively short-life wind turbines needed replacing.
It is ironic that while the Prime Minister was in New York talking about Australia’s 2035 emissions reduction target and the renewables-only path to get there, Trump and Starmer were inking a new deal to rapidly expand nuclear power technology sharing.

Steady, beating heart, another visual treat, The nuclear power plant of Saint-Laurent-des-Eaux in central France. Picture: AFP

Simple Simon was in a state of wild-eyed excitement, ready to nuke anyone standing in his way ...

The level of global investment going into development of next-generation small-scale reactors is expected to command a large slice of the estimated $1 trillion forecast to be pumped into all nuclear energy under a net-zero scenario by mid-century. The technology focus for SMRs already has shifted to the next-generation advanced modular reactors. AMR plants are a subset of SMRs. The difference is they don’t require water to cool them. This is already being framed as a game changer for nuclear technology.
But in the pursuit of more nuclear power, fuel becomes an issue. And the one thing that causes US energy officials to lose sleep at night is where it’s going to get its hands on all the uranium it will require for its nuclear renaissance.
Surprisingly, the US doesn’t enrich enough uranium domestically to meet its demand and relies on imports for enriched product. Some of it even comes from Russia.
It’s less surprising, then, that US officials have been making overtures to Australia about supply chains of uranium considering Australia holds a third of the world’s deposits. At the moment we export about 8 per cent of it.

Now just luxuriate in the high tech imagery, as Shackel is unshackled in a way designed to delight pond correspondents, Nuclear for Australia Founder William Shackel says Australia must lift its “nuclear power prohibition” and add nuclear power to its energy mix. “If the public didn’t support nuclear power, you would expect it to have been seeing it in the sites of the proposed nuclear power plants, but in reality, none of them actually changed hands,” Mr Shackel told Sky News host Danica De Giorgio. “For the Coalition, they need to be keeping all options on the table, looking at the vast array of nuclear technologies, whether it's micro reactors, small modular reactors, large nuclear reactors … as we see around the world. “The biggest priority must be lifting the nuclear power prohibition, Australia’s the only top 20 economy with a ban on nuclear power, yet we have the most uranium in the world.”

Just look at that dotty dreaming in blue.

Yet again Danica delivers, and so does simpleton Simon ...

It even has been suggested Australia develop an enriching facility of its own to supply the US with fuel-grade uranium rather than just yellowcake that requires enriching elsewhere. But of course that too is illegal in Australia.
Could Albanese be convinced to go down this path? Unlikely.
But adding uranium to the critical minerals list, and the possibility of processing before export, certainly would add a sweetener to any deal he hopes to secure with Trump on tariffs or defence spending when the two leaders meet in a couple of weeks. The reality is that demand for Australian uranium is only going to increase if the global trend continues as forecast. The question for the government is: How does it respond?
Not only is the rest of the developed world redoubling on nuclear, some of Australia’s closest neighbours are moving in the same direction. This has obvious regional strategic and security implications.
The Lowy Institute flagged non-proliferation concerns in Southeast Asia almost 20 years ago when it was evident that Indonesia, Vietnam and other countries in the region were expressing an interest in nuclear power generation. China is in a competition with Canada for a foothold into Indonesia on the development of a civil nuclear energy program.

A final snap, better than ordinary porn, because how could that sort of mild Playboy bunny porn match reptile-strength nuking porn? The Sizewell A and B nuclear power stations on the east coast of England. Picture: Bloomberg

Was simple Simon exhausted by all that nuking porn? 

No way, he had room for a final flourish, almost a big bang...

Singapore-based company Thorcon already has applied for approval to build Indonesia’s first nuclear power plant north of Jakarta. The Philippines isn’t far behind, having signed a nuclear energy technology-sharing agreement with the US two years ago.
Ironically, it has been an Australian nuclear engineer from the University of Sydney, Helen Cook, who has been helping Manila draft its new nuclear energy security act.
Singapore also is studying whether to deploy SMR plants for its own energy use. The consequence of Australia’s obduracy may become gradually apparent over time considering the demand for electricity globally is expected to double by 2025 as power needs for data storage, artificial intelligence and electric vehicles increase exponentially.
The question Australia may well be left asking itself in 2050 is whether it dealt itself out of the knowledge game long ago. If the global trend towards nuclear expansion continues and is realised in our own regional backyard, Australia’s position becomes increasingly difficult to justify and, frankly, starts to look just odd.

Put it another way ...

The question Australia may well be left asking itself in 2050 is whether it dealt itself out of the knowledge game long ago. If the global trend towards renewables, EVs, etc, continues and is realised in our own regional backyard, especially if Chinese producers keep wiping everyone's clock, the lizard Oz’s position becomes increasingly difficult to justify and, frankly, starts to look just very King Donald odd.

Who knows, the pond won't be seeing 2050, but wishes vulgar youff all the best, and remember, if you're still looking for climate criminals, dig through the News Corp records.

And so back to the beginning, with the immortal Rowe urging on the lettuce ...

It was hard to know which detail was the most irresistible ...

There were those knobs for starters ...

But what about the birds of pray, preying for the pond to score  with its bet on the lettuce?