In which Polonius performs his usual Sunday prattle, with a cameo from Killer Creighton and chums ...

The Streisand Effect part II, as channelled by Zuck the wavy-haired litigating cuck.

This from Steven Levy's Wired email (no link):

It was Meta itself that first told me about the new book attacking Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the allegedly bankrupt morals of their company. On March 7, a Meta PR person contacted me to ask if I’d heard about Careless People, a presumed takedown of the company that was due for release in a few days. I hadn’t. No one at Meta had read the book yet, but the comms department was already proactively debunking it, issuing a statement that the author was a former employee who had been “terminated” in 2017. 
My first thought was Wow, I’ve got to read this book! And in fact I did, devouring it in a night as soon as it was published. With the benefit of attention from Meta’s complaints, I suspect Careless People might become a must-read. Meta—the company that promotes itself as an avatar of free speech—has successfully convinced an arbitrator to silence author Sarah Wynn-Williams, who was a director in charge of connecting Meta’s executives with global leaders. The ruling, relying on an NDA signed after Wynn-Williams was fired, demands she stop promoting the book, do everything in her power to stop its publication, and retract all comments “disparaging, critical or otherwise detrimental” about Meta. That’s pretty much the whole book. Wynn-Williams, who has registered as a whistleblower with the SEC, did not attend the hearing and doesn’t seem inclined to respect it. As I write this, Careless People is now the third-best-selling book on Amazon. 
The arbitrator’s Meta-friendly “emergency” ruling was the climax of an intense campaign against the book that erupted once the company got a look at it. Even as I turned the pages of Careless People, my inbox was fattening with dispatches from Meta ... 

(The full column is here)

(Addendum: after writing this, the pond was delighted to see the Streisand effect referenced by John Naughton in his excruciatingly delightful dissection in the Graudian, Whistleblower’s exposé of the cult of Zuckerberg reveals peril of power-crazy tech bros, which began this way:

There’s nothing more satisfying than watching a corporate giant make a stupid mistake. The behemoth in question is Meta, and when Careless People, a whistleblowing book by a former senior employee, Sarah Wynn-Williams, came out last week, its panic-stricken lawyers immediately tried to have it suppressed by the Emergency International Arbitral Tribunal. This strange institution obligingly (and sternly) enjoined Wynn-Williams “from making orally, in writing, or otherwise any ‘disparaging, critical or otherwise detrimental comments to any person or entity concerning [Meta], its officers, directors, or employees’ ”. To which her publisher, Macmillan, issued a statement that could succinctly be summarised thus: “Get stuffed.”
Clearly, nobody in Meta has heard of the Streisand effect, “an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove or censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information”. The company has now ensured that Wynn-Williams’s devastating critique of it [see our review inthe New Review] will become a world bestseller).

Moving along, as with some pond correspondents, the pond has renewed its acquaintance with Wired ever since the second coming of King Donald revitalised their coverage ... see for example Inside Elon Musk’s ‘Digital Coup’, Musk’s loyalists at DOGE have infiltrated dozens of federal agencies, pushed out tens of thousands of workers, and siphoned millions of people’s most sensitive data. The next step: Unleash the AI.

And there are light-hearted moments, Donald Trump Bought a $90,000 Tesla With 37 Recall Notices Against It, Here’s hoping Elon Musk won’t have to personally fix President Trump’s new EV anytime soon.

The pond trusts everyone read the Fortune story, Elon Musk’s Tesla reportedly halts Cybertruck deliveries as owners complain of metal sides falling off, which had a number of great links, including to this gif for all to see on Twitter (an X is only good for a lashing and a whipping):

And now, before getting down to its usual Sunday meditation, the pond was also intrigued by Will Sommer's outing for The Bulwark, Entering Our Tallow Era.

The pond isn't certain what's so healthy about a serve dosed in saturated fats, unless you've gone full paleo...

There's little research on the health effects of tallow, but, like any animal fat, it's best to consume beef tallow in small amounts as it is high in calories and saturated fat.

...but this was yet another sign of the weirdness enveloping the land where RFK Jr is supposedly a good source of advice regarding health ...

The stock market is flailing, the trade war with Canada shows no sign of ending, and a new one with Europe is just kicking off. But Americans do have some good business news to cheer about: Midwestern fast food chain Steak ‘n Shake has ditched “seed oils” and now deep-fries its french fries in beef tallow.
The fries will taste like they used to decades ago, before McDonald’s and other chains ditched beef tallow for seed oils, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared in a rapturous interview with Sean Hannity this week at a newly tallowfied Shake ‘n Steak location.
“People are raving about these french fries!” Kennedy said.
“They’re amazing!” Hannity said.

Amazing ...

As much as a celebration of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement, the Steak ‘n Shake interview also marked another chapter into the Trump administration’s use of stunt capitalism. The White House has been increasingly reliant on photo-ops to move its agenda, such as the president’s decision to turn the White House lawn into a Tesla dealership on Tuesday.
It’s an approach that allows an administration to lean on politically coded initiatives as much, if not more, than actual science, evidence, or even policy. Steak ‘n Shake’s decisions to change its deep-frying process appears rooted not in actual health studies but in an internet-fueled fear, growing on the right, that seed oils—soybean oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, and more, known to the most ardent seedphobes as “the Hateful Eight”—are bad for your health.
But the evidence that seed oils are uniquely bad for you is, charitably, ill-defined. The American Heart Association says essentially that you don’t need to worry about it. But because seed oils are often used in processed foods, seed-oil fears can serve as a heuristic to push people toward healthier foods anyway.
In other words: There’s no kind of oil that is going to make a big sleeve of fries, from Steak ‘n Shake or any other chain, into a healthy choice.
Beyond that, it’s not even clear if Steak ‘n Shake has actually abandoned seed oils...

Truly amazing ...

It's always the way... confusing the tallow fat leaves for the junk food tree.

And so on, and as the pond turned to prattling Polonius to launch the official start to the Sunday meditation, the pond immediately noticed a weirdness in the splash...

What's up with the new tag, Media Watch Dog Columnist?

The pond knows that Polonius routinely offers a media critique where he imagines he's a dog and yowls like a cat on heat, but what did this portend? 

It only became clear deep into the read, so the pond started on the journey...

There’s a certain irony in Malcolm Turnbull criticising Donald Trump, Former Liberal Party prime minister Malcolm Turnbull may not acknowledge it but he shares certain personality characteristics with US Republican Party President Donald J. Trump.

Really? 

Is that the best Polonius can do by way of defamation, suggestingMalware, destroyer of the NBN, is much of a muchness with King Donald, destroyer of the planet? Part of the strategy was to cojoin the pair in a snap, Malcolm Turnbull and Donald J. Trump both entered public life relatively late in life after a successful but controversial background in business. And both are possessed of an over-the-top self-belief. Picture: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

The pond can't begin to quote all the riffs about being alike, from the opening of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to any number of movies, including Scarlett in Gone with the Wind telling Brett they're alike.

Polonius never flinches in the face of a cliché, and so he turned Old Testament sage ...

Former Liberal Party prime minister Malcolm Turnbull may not acknowledge it but he shares certain personality characteristics with US Republican Party President Donald J. Trump. Both entered public life relatively late in life after a successful but controversial background in business. And both are possessed of an over-the-top self-belief.
What’s more, neither seems to have heeded the lessons in the Old Testament’s Ecclesiastes 3. As many will recall, this commences “To every thing there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven”. Scroll down to verse seven and the message is: “A time to rend and a time to sow; a time to keep silent and a time to speak.”
It would seem that Turnbull was not focused on timing when, from his Sydney office, he gave an interview with the American media company Bloomberg on March 10. Turnbull compared Trump unfavourably with China’s President Xi Jinping, the head of the Chinese Communist Party, declaring: “President Xi will aim to be the exact opposite of Trump, where Trump is chaotic, he will be consistent. Where Trump is rude and abusive, he’ll be respectful. Where Trump is erratic, he will be consistent.”

It was at this point that the Media Watch Dog Columnist tag became a little clearer, helped by the tag, Sky News Media Watch Dog Columnist Gerard Henderson joins Caroline Di Russo to discuss an ABC journalist who claimed Malcolm Turnbull is on the Liberals' side. Mr Henderson said he found it “funny” to hear what the journalist had to say. “If anyone understands Malcolm Turnbull and the current Liberal Party, it’s pretty clear he’s not on the side of Peter Dutton.”

Inevitably the lissajous bête noire that sets Polonius atremble was there in full baleful view ...

...but more to the point, it seems that Polonius has taken his ABC bashing to Sky Noise, where he's been given the glorifying designation, Sky News Media Watch Dog Columnist.

Never having watched a nanosecond of Sky, nor ever likely to, the pond can't confirm or deny that Polonius has set up shop at Sky. But a quick search seems to confirm that the tired old hack as abandoned any pretence at objectivity in his quest - neigh his lust - for screen stardom ...

Sadly the pond doesn't link to Sky Noise, but it helps explain why there's an added poignancy to his bleating about the ABC.

The cardigan wearers had a their chance to score his enormous talent, but much like assorted literary festivals, they missed their chance ...

Like Turnbull, Trump is a very proud man who does not take well to criticism. It was not long before Trump returned serve – as the saying goes. In a post on Truth ­Social just before midnight on Sunday in Washington DC, Trump described Turnbull as “a weak and ineffective leader” and added that Australians agreed.
Never one to avoid having the last word, Turnbull went on ABC TV’s 7.30 on March 10 where he was interviewed by Sarah Ferguson. He made another ABC appearance the following morning, this time talking to Radio National Breakfast presenter Sally Sara.
Turnbull became angry when Ferguson put it to him that, in view of the state of negotiations between Australia and the US over tariffs, it might have been best if diplomats were “given the maximum opportunity to operate behind closed doors”. He was even angrier the following morning when, politely, Sara asked whether it “was a wise week to be making these comments”.
Turnbull told Ferguson that he never thought he “would have to defend free speech here on the 7.30 report”. The next day, he accused Sara of implying that “we should engage in self-censorship in Australia for fear of offending the huge ego of Donald Trump”. And he wondered out loud as to whether the ABC “has become so pusillanimous” as to seriously suggest that “we shouldn’t feel free to speak the truth in Australia for fear of Donald Trump” and asked “Is that the depths you’ve sunk to?”.
There is something ironic in all this. There was Turnbull complaining that Trump has a “huge ego” and declaring on national television and radio that the taxpayer-funded public broadcaster was trying to censor him. All Ferguson and Sara were suggesting – and many Australians were thinking – is that, on this occasion, there was a time to keep silent.
But it was not to be. Apparently, Turnbull has rejected the view he expressed in October 2018 shortly after he lost the support of a majority of his colleagues in the Liberal Party room, and with it, its prime ministership. At that time, he told a young leaders forum in New York: “There is no way I’d be hanging around like an embittered Kevin Rudd or Tony Abbott; seriously these people are like, sort of, miserable, miserable ghosts.”
Turnbull is always welcome at the ABC. The public broadcaster is a conservative-free zone without a conservative presenter, producer or editor for any of its television, radio or online outlets. However, the ABC will tolerate Liberal prime ministers, provided they have Turnbull-like views.
Turnbull temporarily lost control when he told Sara: “I believe in the ABC, I believe in freedom of speech, I believe in Australia and I believe in standing up for Australia. And I think, I’m sorry, apparently, you don’t.” Needless to say, Turnbull was not sorry. But he was confused.

Amazing how that keyboard short cut keeps getting a pounding. The pond reckons this is the squillionth time + 1 that Polonius has blathered about the ABC being a conservative-free zone without a conservative presenter, producer or editor for any of its television, radio or online outlets

And yet how many sane people can be found on Sky Noise? Not having watched the channel - why shove shekels into the Emeritus Chairman's purse for junk? - the pond can't say for sure, but Polonius's presence suggests that it's got even more dire and desperate.

Strangely the reptiles suggested that there might be life outside the hive mind, with an AV distraction,  Malcolm Turnbull is interviewed on Bloomberg's The China Show about the Trump administration's tariffs on trading partners and its impact on relations with China.

That didn't deter Polonius ranting on about the ABC in his usual way. Such a tiresome, tiring man ...

The problem with freedom of speech at the ABC is that the public broadcaster does not practise what it preaches. There is scant freedom of speech at the ABC because it lacks viewpoint diversity among its journalists and within many of its programs.
I have read nearly all of the major speeches delivered by ABC chair Kim Williams since he took up the position about a year ago. And I have watched/listened to or read about his many interviews. Williams has made some important points criticising bias, activist journalism and unprofessionalism. But he has not addressed the ­organisation’s lack of viewpoint diversity.

Compare and contrast Samir Shah, who became BBC chairman around the time Williams took up his ABC role. Shah, who has a background in the media, gave his first interview in his BBC role to The Sunday Times on March 9.

Unlike Williams, Shah does not avoid the BBC’s lack of political diversity. He acknowledged to reporter Michael Leckie that “the media recruits graduates from the arts, humanities, and they tend to be metropolitan and to have a point of view you could describe as liberal centre, centre-left”. He added that “we”, namely the BBC, “kind of reflect that”.

Shah said that the BBC metropolitan centre-left leanings means that the news coverage of important stories lack balance. He mentioned its reportage of immigration and hostility to Israel. And he wants errors acknowledged and corrected.

Shah believes that the BBC has done well on ethnic diversity but needs “more diversity of thought including covering views of the British northern working class”.

The new BBC chairman is also concerned that its “stars” – as with ABC presenters – moonlight to private sector companies for ­appearance fees.

His view is “it’s a privilege to work for the BBC, you should just stick to it”.For Turnbull this week it would have made sense to be silent. For Williams this year, it’s time to speak up about the ABC’s essential weakness.

Gerard Henderson is founder and executive director of The Sydney Institute.

That snarky note "essential weakness" might need decoding. Essentially it means that the ABC was really weak in not understanding how essential it was that they keep giving Polonius a place in the firmament.

As for that final credit, really?

Shouldn't it now read "Polonius's prattle can be seen on Sky Noise, where he performs regularly as tired hack Sky News Media Watch Dog Columnist. Viewers will admire his resemblance to a performing seal."

Have a 'toon to celebrate freedumb of speech ...

Heck, have a cartoon to celebrate the chaos Polonius dare not mention, given the way that Malware is such juicy bait for Sky Noise viewers ...

What else? 

The reptiles did offer a kind of mea culpa by running Aftab Malik's cry of pain, Islamophobia is an invisible daily struggle for too many Australian Muslims, While Islamophobia existed long before the October 7 attacks, incidents in Australia have reached historic highs. Muslims are being spat at, hit, punched, choked, pushed and verbally abused. This alarming trend demands urgent attention.

Malik was immediately assigned to deep in page oblivion, while the reptiles' resident expounders of the Zionist cause roamed the front page.

What else? The pond still thinks that the rag is falling on hard times, and each day provides more evidence. 

The quota of engaging loons is on a downward spiral.

Once again the bromancer failed to fill his weekend duties - clearly keeping company with Europeans white-anted his spirit - and Dame Slap was off doing her usual, ‘I became a cautionary tale … I was ‘that guy’’, Matt was falsely accused of sexual assault at work, charged with gang rape, then pursued by prosecutors who had video evidence showing he was innocent. A decade on, the nightmare continues.

Pass, extreme pass...

The failure to inspire saw the pond turn back the clock to Killer Creighton's outing on Friday, If the Trump administration wants to jack up the prices Americans pay for food, so be it. Australia would be highly exposed to an all-out global trade war; the US has become the second-biggest export market for our farmers, among the most efficient producers in the world.

It was, by reptile accounting, just a two minute read, and it had just one illustration, a kind of Killer lite:

So far, Australia has escaped Donald Trump’s tariff rampage relatively unscathed, but that could be about to change.

The first round of Trump tariffs on Australian exports, while a psychological shock coming from our most important ally, only affected steel and aluminium exports to the US, around a billion dollars’ worth or about 0.2 per cent of our total exports.
But come April our farmers could well be in Trump’s firing line. The US president has flagged another round of so-called reciprocal tariffs, which could affect our far more substantial agricultural exports to the US, which totalled almost $7 billion last financial year. The US has become the second-biggest export market for our farmers, among the most efficient producers in the world.
Once again, Australia would be unwise to retaliate given our dependence on Washington for defence, and the sheer economic futility of eye-for-an-eye trade policy.
Australia doesn’t have the luxury of a massive domestic market like the US, so we can’t impose tariffs in the knowledge that at least some of the cost will fall on foreign suppliers eager to maintain a foothold. If the Trump administration wants to jack up the prices Americans pay for food, so be it.

That was point at which the one snap appeared, a meeting of like mind pooh bahs ...

Adam Creighton, chief economist and senior fellow, The Institute of Public Affairs and columnist, The Australian chats with Dr John Kunkel, Senior Economics Adviser, United States Studies Centre and Prudence Gordon, founder, Australian Centre for International Trade and Investment at The Global Food Forum 2025 in Melbourne on Friday. The Australian/ Luis Enrique Ascui

Killer was determined not to panic ...

Australia would be highly exposed to an all-out global trade war, but we shouldn’t panic yet.
After all, Beijing informally banned our coal exports to China entirely from 2020, which until then had been worth more than $10 billion a year. Our miners managed to redirect what were hefty volumes to Japan and other markets. The ban later lifted and volumes bounced back quickly.
Our food exports are highly prized internationally, so a 10 per cent tariff shouldn’t cause too much angst domestically.
Indeed, our current bout of tariff anxiety might even have a few silver linings. It’s quite possible any next round of tariffs to be imposed on Australia by the US will be based on the willy argument that our 10 per cent GST is a de facto tariff.
Yes, the GST does increase the ultimate cost of imports from the US, but no, it doesn’t discriminate among nations. If the US links a general tariff on Australia to the rate of the GST that will be a powerful argument not to increase it, a call that periodically erupts in Australia given the disappointing reluctance in the Australian political class to cut costs.
Second, the tariffs might create a political opportunity for a future government to cut costs for Australian farmers, miners and manufacturers. The most obvious way would be to pare back green and red tape that significantly adds to production costs and therefore hobbles their ability to compete on the global stage.
The Albanese government sadly doesn’t appear to have learned that lesson, announcing another $750 million handout to steel manufacturers barely weeks after a multi-billion dollar bailout of the Whyalla steelworks.
Trump’s next round of tariffs will likely fall only weeks before the federal election due in May. There’s a political opportunity for the Coalition to walk back its commitment to ever more costly energy via the net zero target.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs

Yes, still time to fuck the planet, and in the meantime, plenty of ways to fuck Ukraine ...

And that was all Killer had to offer, a surprisingly subdued outing for Gina's boy, but the pond was intrigued by that mention of a Kunkel in the works, and so wandered off to Trump tariff shock the wake-up call Australia needed, it should now be the circuit breaker for reform. Australia’s economic policy architecture remains ill-prepared for a more fractured, contested and shock-prone world. Whether we like it or not, we need to construct our own variant of whatothers (sic) have called the economic security state.

The reptiles assured the pond it was just a three minute read, and better still there were no distracting snaps or AV offerings of any kind, a measure of how little the reptiles cared for it ...

The Trump tariff shock on steel and aluminium is the psychological wake-up call Australia needed. It should now be the political circuit breaker that drives reform of our policy settings.
The world has entered a new age of economic nationalism. As argued by Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy, it’s a world where “economic and financial tools are being deployed much more aggressively to promote and defend national interests”.
Rules and norms are being discarded as countries look to gain geopolitical advantage. The era of deep globalisation under the so-called “Washington consensus” and the watchful eye of the World Trade Organisation is over.
The sources of this breakdown in the liberal economic order long predate Donald Trump’s latest tariffs. They range from China’s manufacturing export boom after WTO entry, slow economic growth after the global financial crisis, resurgent great power competition, rapid technological change, the pandemic, war in ­Europe, and frustration with the unequal benefits of globalisation.
Even before Trump 2.0, there had been a surge in new trade restrictions and in the use of industrial policy subsidies.
The deployment of other tools of “economic statecraft” – such as sanctions, export controls and investment restrictions – has never been higher.
Australia’s economic policy architecture remains ill-prepared for a more fractured, contested and shock-prone world.
Sitting around bemoaning the Trump administration’s tariff policies is worse than useless. Whether we like it or not, we need to construct our own variant of what others have called the “economic security state”.

What a splendid idea. Build an economic security state, and then we can fart in everyone's general direction ...

The pond is all in on prepping and having a bug out bag ...and Kunkel was full of ideas to make it happen ...

So, what is to be done?
First, Canberra needs to build real analytical muscle to chart a course through the rolling economic turmoil that now confronts us. There is a low-key process in the bureaucracy co-ordinating ­efforts on “economic security”, but the metronome is moving too slowly, and the stakes have become higher.
The next federal government should create a new National Economic Security Agency drawing together national security and economic expertise under one roof. NESA’s core function would be to assess our primary economic security risks and make policy recommendations on ways to mitigate them and to build critical national capability.
The new agency should have a “double hatted” governance structure, with a work program developed jointly by the secretaries of Treasury and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Over time, it would build up a cadre of officials working at the intersection of national security and economic policy. It would also need to work closely with state governments and the business community.
Second, the Albanese government’s Future Made in Australia strategy needs to be recast. As outlined in last year’s budget, FMIA poses many of the right questions, but its design is overweight net zero transformation and underweight national security.
As argued by Treasurer Jim Chalmers at the time, a core goal of FMIA is to better align our security and economic interests for greater national resilience. That’s sensible. Domestic industry policy, wisely deployed, can and should play a role in advancing this objective.
But that’s not what we have. Currently, FMIA overreaches in its objectives – from turning Australia into a renewable energy superpower to just making more stuff here – and in touting a “new growth model” for the economy.
Yet it underreaches massively in the realm of mitigating security risks, building national resilience, and renovating our economic statecraft.
As part of this redesign, there is an urgent need to shift scarce government resources towards building effective defence capability; not because that’s what the Trump administration wants us to do, but because it is what we must do to defend our sovereignty and our interests. Rationalising defence industry programs would be a useful first step.
A third focus should be renovating our international economic policy. There will be opportunities for Australia from the re-globalisation that will occur in coming years, including from the Trump tariffs. Our government needs to be ready to seize them through new economic partnerships.
Reinforcing Australia’s credentials as a trusted and reliable source of energy and food security is a good place to start. For many partners in the Indo-Pacific and across the Global South, these are the sources of economic security that matter most. There will also be opportunities across defence industry, tech and critical minerals, so we need to be on our toes.
The task for Australian policymakers in 2025 is to preserve as far as possible the benefits of economic openness while taking active steps to protect and defend our ­national security, economic prosperity, state sovereignty and liberal democratic values.
Policies that promote market dynamism, cost competitiveness and productivity improvement remain vital. And rigorous cost-­benefit analysis of policy interventions is more important than ever. This is not a time to discard economic ways of thinking.
But nor is it time to indulge in dismantling core functions of ­government. To preserve and ­promote our economic security, Australia must forge a new marriage between economic rationalism and state capacity fit for uncertain times.

At the very end came the killer reveal ...

John Kunkel is senior economics adviser at the United States Studies Centre and was chief of staff to ex-prime minister Scott Morrison

We're doomed ... the liar from the Shire's COS at a loose end, the man who helped give us the subs, scribbling mindless blather about security,

That's what happens when the pond wanders down below the fold and inspects the wild life hiding in the foliage ...

And so to close with another celebration of Uncle Leon, the loon who keeps on being a gift to cartoonists ...