In which the pond offers a huge Sunday meditation, featuring prattling Polonius, Hindu nationalism with the tinkling Trinca, AI with snappy Tom, and ethnic cleansing with the dog botherer ...

 

The pond's quote of the week: "Angus Taylor is all the proof you need that Liberal Party preselection is not based on merit." (here, *archive link)

Well done Angus or charred to a carbon crispiness Angus? 

Whichever, whatever, the beefy windmill-hating boofhead from down Goulburn way keeps on giving.

And so to the pond's Sunday meditation, and it being a day for contemplation, the pond has arranged for a variety of reptile readings, but would like to begin with a noting of Arwa Mahdawi's offering in The Graudian: ‘Gaza must be eliminated’: Israel’s airwaves are filled with pro-genocide propaganda

The bloodthirsty rhetoric emanating from Israel's Channel 14 is stark, and yet it's only evoking what the current Israeli government is doing.

Right at the bottom of Mahdawi's piece there was a link to a Twitter item, a translation and an archiving of a Holocaust-inclined outburst which had been taken down in the mistaken belief that the intertubes would forget. 

Not speaking or reading Hebrew, the pond can't vouch for the translation - the original is at the link - but the tone is unmistakeable.

 Roll the tongue around those chilling closing lines one more time ...

...Who is the brave person who will make the decision to bring total Holocaust upon Gaza — rivers of blood flowing from it. That the rotting corpses of Gazans will pile up in heaps and then be burned. And that the Israeli flag will be hoisted in every window in Gaza.
That Yarden Bibas,
Elia Cohen,
Eli Sharabi,
Liri Elbag
Will walk the streets of Gaza with pride and puffed-up chests,
And truly believe in the phrase: ‘Never again.’
Gaza deserves death.
Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza.

Oi vey, as the current Israeli government diligently works to bring it to pass ...

And so to prattling Polonius, and much like the bromancer yesterday, he has a deep desire to go full MAGA, though because the pond overdid the 'toons - so much desperation in a blogger, so little relief - this day will proceed relatively cartoon free ...

The reptiles didn't make much of a visual meal for Polonius, with just the header... containing a cunning "sure", which passes in Polonial speak for a big billy goat butt ...

Donald Trump has faults but weakness isn’t one of them, Sure, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are widely disliked in the West – although they have their supporters. But they have shown real leadership against Iran, which could not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.

The caption: President Donald Trump with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in April. The US bombing of Iran’s Fordow nuclear site last weekend would not have been possible without Israel which, across many months, had effectively destroyed Iran’s air defence system. AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

But no invocation to go elsewhere and so the pond was stuck with the Polonial prattle ... as he almost went full Champers Pete, who had notoriously gone full "the most complex and secretive military operation in history"...

Beginning with O'Rourke doesn't get Polonius out of that craven, lickspittle refusal to acknowledge the taking of Troy (where's our Henry when he's needed?):

It’s just over three decades since American satirist PJ O’Rourke wrote a book titled Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind’s Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice and Alcohol-Free Beer. I was reminded of this last Sunday morning when news reached Australia about the US strike against the Iranian nuclear facility at Fordow.
On any analysis, this was an extraordinary feat of arms. Not only did the US Air Force fly seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers from the US to Iran and back, all of which returned safely after dropping 14 Massive Ordnance Penetrator bunker-busting bombs. But a US submarine also delivered Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles on Iranian targets from 1000km away out at sea.
As President Donald J. Trump acknowledged, such an operation would not have been possible without Israel which, across many months, had effectively destroyed Iran’s air defence system. The USAF planes that accompanied the B-2 bombers also returned to base without incident.
In addition, from June 13 Israel launched attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan. Now there is a ceasefire, for the moment at least, and several leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps along with some Iranian leading nuclear scientists have been killed.

The reptiles interrupted with a visual, which contained an actual credit to an apparent human bean: A B-2 bomber plane strikes Fordow. Sources include: iStock and artwork by Frank Ling.

Inevitably Polonius blamed the ABC for reporting what Tulsi had said a few months ago (before she realised that would get her into deep trouble and a confession and recanting was in order):

On ABC TV’s Insiders last Sunday, ABC journalist Raf Epstein effectively denied that Iran was close to developing nuclear weapons. He blamed Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for attempting to convince Trump that this was the case.
Whereupon presenter David Speers commented: “Ann Coulter’s quote about Donald Trump – that he’s like a sofa, he bears the impression of the person who last sat on him. You just hope that it’s not Netanyahu that he was listening to.”
This is a serious misreading of the US President. Like all of us, he has his faults. But weakness is not one of them.

And that's where Polonius went full MAGA, because almost everybody and his dog, and not just Coulter, has noted that King Donald is inclined to talk to everybody and to listen to the last person he talked to, and sadly it's too often mass murderer Benji ...

Then came an AV distraction, this time of a servile warrior, a weak-kneed enabler,  Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine has examined the success of Operation Midnight Hammer with US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Polonius followed up with that "sure" ... followed quickly by a form of worship King Donald himself would love ...

Sure, Trump and Netanyahu are widely disliked in the West – although they have their supporters, especially in the US and Israel. But they have shown real leadership in this instance.
Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong are not in the Trump-Netanyahu cart (to borrow Paul Keating’s expression). But both acknowledged this week that Iran under the rule of supreme leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei and the mullahs could not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon.

But Israel should, would, could and has?

The reptiles decided to remind the pond of someone the pond had managed to completely forget, Ann Coulter. Picture: Getty Images

More King Donald worship followed ...

Coulter is an American isolationist in the tradition of Pat Buchanan. So is Tucker Carlson, formerly of Fox News until his role was terminated in April 2023.
Carlson’s isolation is such that he palled up with Russia’s Vladimir Putin last year, giving him an oh-so-soft interview in which Carlson exhibited an appalling ignorance of the former Soviet Union (which Putin admires) and contemporary Russia (which Putin rules in an authoritarian manner).

And what of King Donald and his great buddy relationship with Vlad the sociopath and any other dictator or authoritarian leader he bumps into?

The oh so soft policies and the pathetic betrayal of Ukraine?

The refusal to call out Putin as a dictator?

Don't go asking Polonius for comment, he's still intent on absolving his King ...

On June 23, The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote: “For all the predictions that a strike on Iran would ‘almost certainly result in thousands of American deaths’ (Tucker Carlson) and set off World War III, Iran strongly signalled it doesn’t want to fight.”
There is no evidence that Trump wants a war. Even less that he would be led into one by Netanyahu.

At this point the reptiles dropped a humungous caption for an AV distraction, and the pond notes it for the jaw-dropping record ... The Pentagon released jaw-dropping footage on June 27, of a test showing the same kind of bomb used to target Iranian nuclear facilities. Footage shown during a press conference led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of The Joint Staff Air Force, General Dan Caine, show the test of a 30,000-pound GBU-57 “massive ordnance penetrator” bomb. The Department of Defense said the bunker buster bomb was used by US forces on June 22, as they targeted Iran’s Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant. During the press conference, Hegseth unleashed on the press corps, singling out journalists in the room after reports emerged earlier this week that the US strikes only set back Iran’s nuclear program by a few months. “Specifically, you, the press corps, because you cheer against Trump so hard, it’s in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump, because you want him not to be successful so bad, you have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes,” Hegseth said. In a media release, CIA director John Ratcliffe said: “[The] CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes.” “This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.” Credit: U.S. Department of Defense via Storyful

Then Polonius completely overlooks Scott Jennings, which is easy enough to do, and so fails to note CNN's attempt to drive liberals as far away from viewing it as possible ...

It came as no surprise that CNN – the left-of-centre US subscription television outlet – sought to discredit not only Trump but also the US military by this report of a leak from the US Defence Intelligence Agency: “Two of the people familiar with the assessment said Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was not destroyed. One of the people said that centrifuges are largely intact. Another source said that the intelligence assessed enriched uranium was moved out of the sites prior to the US strikes. So the (DIA) assessment is that the US set them back maybe a few months, tops, this person added.”
The story received widescale coverage in Australia and elsewhere. However, it was later reported that the assessment was labelled to be of the “low confidence” kind.
This is understandable since it is too early to gauge the success of the US attack and that of Israeli forces before that.
However, an assessment of analysis provided by US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Dan Caine and CIA director John Ratcliffe indicates that substantial damage to Iran’s nuclear facilities has been achieved that will take years to be overcome.

But who knows, who really knows? 

The notion that King Donald and his minions are any more trustworthy and believable than the mad Mullahs is laughable.

We're back in the turf of lab v. wet market animal from the Covid years, as the reptiles offered another snap, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Dan Caine speaks during a news conference at the Pentagon on Thursday. AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

Truth to tell, Polonius knows no more than the pond, but is determined to shine the best light he can on his new monarch ...

Recently Axios reported that, according to Israeli sources, the strikes at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan have been very significant. Moreover, the International Atomic Energy Agency has put out six statements on Iran since June 19. All suggest widespread damage to Iran’s nuclear assets.
Much of the internal opposition to Trump’s position on Iran comes from Democrats who are disillusioned and isolated because of his success at the November 2024 election. They overlook the fact, in March 2011, president Barack Obama ordered military strikes on Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya.
Hillary Clinton was US secretary of state at the time. No Democrats suggested then that the Obama administration had acted illegally in a war inconsistent with the US War Powers Act.

So suddenly it's news that the United States routinely breaks international law and interferes in other states, much like Vlad the Sociopath? Perhaps there's a new career for Polonius imitating the sociopathic war monger Vladimir Solovyov, who's latest idea has been to nuke Europe to teach 'em all a lesson...

At this point the pond deeply regrets that its image for the next AV distraction turned black, but please take it as a metaphor, with the caption At the first presidential debate, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton argued over Mideast policy including fighting ISIS, the role of NATO and U.S. actions in Iraq and Libya. Photo: Getty

How tired is that? The reptiles wandering back in time to Hillary ...

Then came a final burst from Polonius ...

Then there is the Western left. From London to Melbourne and Sydney, leftist activists can be seen in the streets in opposition to the democratically elected administrations in Washington and Jerusalem and in favour of the unelected theocracy in Tehran.
This street mob includes some radical feminists who are blind to the suffering and persecution of Iranian women.

Uh huh, if the pond might interrupt with a couple of quotations from those in an elected theocracy, courtesy Mahdwai ...

• “All of Gaza’s infrastructures must be destroyed to its foundation and their electricity cut off immediately. The war is not against Hamas but against the state of Gaza,” said May Golan, minister for social equality and the advancement of the status of women of Israel on 7 October 2023.

• “Flatten everything [in Gaza] just like it is today in Auschwitz,” David Azoulay, council leader for the northern Israeli town of Metula, said in an interview with an Israeli radio station, December 2023.

A  few final words from Polonius:

As the likes of historians Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts have argued in these pages, we live at a time when the future of Western democracy is at stake. It is a melancholy fact that all wars are dreadful and involve the deaths of children, women and men. This was true of Germany along with Japan in 1945 and earlier. But the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan was necessary to the survival of Western civilisation.
In recent times Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper highly critical of the Netanyahu government, has reported that captured documents reveal that Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, was designed to wipe Israel off the map. The destruction of Israel would be a disaster to Western democracies. At times, defensive war is necessary – to paraphrase O’Rourke’s view.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

Perhaps a little balance, via another quote courtesy Mahdwai featuring the head of a theocracy ...

• “[I]t’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. it’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware not involved, it’s absolutely not true …” Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, said at a press conference on 13 October (in English).

And so there we have the compleat Polonius, an apologist for mass starvation, ethnic cleansing and genocide, on the basis of a white nationalist desire to save Western Civilisation ...

The pond showed great restraint as Polonius indulged in his worship of King Donald, but couldn't resist using an infallible Pope as a marker for the reptile Animal Farm, the fetid, stinking swamp in which the pond wanders...

And now just to get the taste of the killing fields out of the mouth, the pond decided to indulge in a burst of tinkling Trinca ...

The header: English language now a ‘shameful’ colonial relic in India, The idea that English should be seen as a colonial hangover rather than a tool of progress in India seems shortsighted – even in an era of Hindu nationalism.
The caption: Since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, sidelining English as a “colonial relic” and privileging Hindi has been part of the nationalist project. Picture: Getty
The barely resistible urge to be elsewhere: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

This is a particularly weird and curious sight ... a reptile discovering Modi nationalism ...

Indians were reminded this week that their hero of independence, Mahatma Gandhi, received his intellectual grounding through English; indeed that their break from the Raj was helped, ironically, by the colonial imposition of that language.
The call-out for English was prompted by a statement from a senior government minister suggesting Indians very soon would feel “ashamed” if they spoke English in public.
Amit Shah, a former president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, argued that India would “cease to be truly Indian” if the “languages of our country” were not supported.

The reptiles interrupted this outing with just one snap, Amit Shah, centre, pictured in 2019. Picture: AFP

The pond finds all this incredibly droll ...

Devoted readers of the bromancer will recall that he's a big Modi devotee, and was wildly excited last year ...

The tinkling Trinca seemed bewildered by it all ...

His words were widely seen as reflecting an ongoing Modi-government push to promote Hindi – not only over English but also over the other 21 “scheduled languages”, such as Bengali and Tamil, that are recognised in the constitution. After all, since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, sidelining English as a “colonial relic” and privileging Hindi has been part of the nationalist project.
Others heard a populist dog-whistle against the “elites” – the 10 per cent of Indians identified as fluent English speakers – who stand in contrast to some BJP politicians with limited English even though it’s an official national language and has been historically favoured in business, administration and international affairs.
The comments were controversial but the Indian Home Affairs Minister doubled down a few days later, suggesting pride in native languages would help erase the “mentality of slavery”.
Shah explained he did not oppose any foreign language but said there should be an “insistence” to “glorify our language” and to “speak our language”.
Those of us who are native English speakers may understand the importance of countries retaining – or recovering – their own languages but we know we’ve won the global lottery.
We are among 1.5 billion people who speak English worldwide – and while 1.1 billion speak Mandarin, they are mainly in China and Taiwan. A whopping 600 million people speak Hindi but, once again, it has no presence internationally, with most speakers in India and Nepal.
The idea that English should be seen as a colonial hangover rather than a tool of progress in India as it rushes towards great power status seems shortsighted even in an era of Hindu nationalism.
English has been a driver of India’s economic development and a priceless asset for its talented diaspora: knowing English eases the migrant journey, including here where Indians are now the fastest growing migrant group.
Indeed, Surinder Jain, one the leaders of the Hindu Council of Australia, made that clear this week, noting: “What they choose to do in India is up to Indians and their government (but) Indians and Hindus around the world, who want to call Australia home, they must have, or develop, proficiency in the English language.”

Oh come on, heed the bromancer ...

...Commentators who defame Modi as a dictator are talking nonsense. Dictators don’t go backwards in elections.
The BJP would like to be the automatic choice for the 80 per cent of Indians who are Hindu. It had hoped to gain 370 seats itself and more than 400 for the NDA, by expanding its influence in the south of the country.
That hasn’t worked. The BJP dominates the Hindi belt of northern states, but has not made deep inroads into southern states that are typically more developed and don’t have Hindi as their main ­language.
The BJP has also lost votes in its heartland northern states.
Nonetheless, no one should understate Modi’s enormous achievement. If he governs for a full term, he will be 15 years as leader of the world’s most populous nation.
Modi has given India new self-confidence and profile on the international stage. He has built strong infrastructure, encouraged business and this year has achie­ved an economic growth rate of 8-plus per cent.
India is the fastest growing big economy in the world. And while income inequality has grown, ­absolute poverty has declined.
The international investor class and Indian business like Modi. Exit polls, displaying the monumental inaccuracy that should ­always encourage scepticism, showed a huge landslide for Modi. When that didn’t come about, the stockmarket registered immediate decline.
Modi will still dominate Indian politics. But if the BJP doesn’t have a majority in its own right, then the inherent instability of coalition politics can arise, whereas Modi has projected a high degree of policy certainty in recent years.
Modi is 73, and if he runs for re-election next time he will be 78. As Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and others demonstrate, this is a fine time for old men. But if Modi’s health or energy start to falter, the deadly politics of succession will surely come into play.
The BJP is a venerable party which has supplied a number of prime ministers, in contrast to Congress, which always looks like a Gandhi family business. But it’s hard to imagine the BJP without Modi.
Modi is religious, a bachelor, childless – he won’t found a dynasty – and steeped in Hindu custom and Hindutva ideology, omnipresent in India. Yet he ­rarely gives interviews and is ­surrounded by a mystique of ­otherness and ­elevation.
Will this election result, and ­his advancing age, bring him back to earth? Indian foreign policy will likely remain unchanged, and that’s good for Australia and for Western ­nations seeking, among other things, a balance to China.
The prestige of democracy in the global south probably depends more now on India than the US.
India is not a formal ally of the West, of the US or Australia. But it’s the natural Asian balance to China. We have a huge stake in its success.
This election result, confirming continuity but also confirming democracy, may be the best result.

All good, fundamentalist nationalist Hindus R Us, or at least R Bromancer, but the tinkling Trinca was full of saucy doubts and feats ... 

What was happening to Western Civilisation and the English Empire, and where's Churchill when he's needed?

While officially only about 10 per cent of India’s 1.4 billion people speak English, that statistic ignores the millions in cities and urban areas who have some familiarity with the language.
Michael Wesley, professor of international relations and a deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Melbourne, notes that while “you will strike Indians who have no grasp whatsoever of English”, even working-class people “have a smattering of English in a way you don’t find in other Asian countries”.
Wesley, who came here from India as a child, says: “When I read the Shah comments, I thought, No.1, good luck with that; No.2, if you were to wave a wand and eradicate English you would take away one of India’s huge advan­tages in its development.”
Language has long been a minefield on the subcontinent, where people are divided not just by the 22 “scheduled languages” but also at least another 1500 lang­uages or dialects.
About 44 per cent of Indians are native Hindi speakers but the other 56 per cent are not about to switch.
Wesley says: “You will find people who are not native Hindi speakers defiantly refusing to speak Hindi.
“One of my colleagues, who’s from Tamil Nadu, who I travel to India with a lot, speaks three South Indian lang­uages … and when people try and speak to him in Hindi in the north, he just says, ‘I don’t speak Hindi.’ ”
Which is why, despite its colonial baggage, English has been seen as a neutral “link language”.
Others argue it helps break down caste and class, and increases social mobility.
This week, historian Hasnain Naqvi wrote on the online site Scroll.in: “From Gandhi to Shah, the debate over English has never really ended – yet India’s linguistic future may depend on embracing rather than erasing the global language.”
Naqvi argued English had been a platform for political awakening under the Brits: “India’s foundational political and philosophical ideas – from nationalism and democracy to equality and justice – were often accessed and articulated through English.”
But almost 80 years on from independence, commentators such as Ruchi Gupta note the perceived “elitism” of English speakers.
Writing on The Wire site, Gupta said: “The mockery (by English speakers) directed at BJP leaders and supporters for their English reveals how English is still used as a gatekeeping tool … what (Shah) is signalling is an inversion of that elite hierarchy – that soon it will be those who speak in English who will feel shame, and not those who don’t know the language.
"In a society where not knowing English often invites ridicule, the home minister’s statement turns the gaze back on the English-speaking elite. It is classic populism – displacing the sense of missing opportunity and resentment among the masses onto those who wield symbolic power.”

Splendid stuff, here, celebrate bromancer style ...

And so to another distraction from the war ...

The header for snappy Tom's piece: Perils and promise of AI’s brave new world, Labor is banking on a productivity surge from these disruptive tools, but citizens don’t trust Big Tech and worry about job losses and privacy.
The caption: The US uptake of ChatGPT easily surpasses that of the internet, smartphones and social media. Picture: 3D render
The unnerving proposal: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Right out of the gate, the pond would like to note that the reptiles served up a truly awful, completely hideous graphic to start the show.

The use of AI in the lizard Oz has seen the graphics department disappear, to be replaced by an endless parade of deeply shitty images. 

That notion of AI in a tungsten screw bulb is about as wretched, banal and pathetic as it gets.

The pond expected snappy Tom's offering to be about as deep as that opening image ...

On his way to the G7 summit in Canada a fortnight ago, Anthony Albanese had a layover in Seattle to attend an investment event at The Spheres on the Amazon campus.
It might have been “a nice sunny day”, as the Prime Minister’s host put it, but “the cloud” was omnipresent. Amazon Web Ser­vices announced it was investing $20bn across five years in Australia to support artificial intelligence and cloud computing for customers, including the Commonwealth Bank, while claiming it would pave the way for start-ups to become the next Atlassian or Canva.
AWS chief executive Matt Garman declared it “the largest investment ever announced by a global technology provider in Australia”, while Albanese said the two data centres (and three new solar farms) would allow local players “to take advantage of the revolutionary opportunities” provided by AI.
Generative AI is the zeitgeist, bringing together civilisation’s vast store of data with unprecedented computing power. In response to prompts entered by a human into a computer program known as a chatbot, this predictive tool can analyse huge datasets (basically, the entire internet), finding patterns and filling gaps, to create text, images, audio, video or data,
Even central bankers can’t contain their excitement. “The economic potential of AI has set off a gold rush across the economy,” the Bank for International Settlements said a year ago, noting the “breathtaking speed” of adoption

There was a snap to break up the text, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman at the Amazon HQ in Seattle. Picture: NewsWire/PMO

The pond must skip past the Weekly Beast's latest outing, Antoinette Lattouf judgement underlines role of News Corp's deadline in ABC management's panic - which is nausea-inducing - to return to the venerable Meade's offering the week before, News Corp bets big on AI tools but journalists voice concerns:

Journalists at three of Rupert Murdoch’s Australian mastheads have reported deep concern after training sessions for an in-house AI tool called “NewsGPT” .
Staffers on the Australian, the Courier Mail and the Daily Telegraph say the tool enables them to take on the persona of another writer, or to adopt a certain style, and NewsGPT will then generate a custom article.
Another tool, in which they adopt the persona of an editor to generate story leads or fresh angles, has also been used. But they say the training sessions have not explained what the technology will be used for.
Reporters have been told to expect another round of training using an AI tool called “Story Cutter” which will edit and produce copy, effectively removing or reducing the need for subeditors.
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance said the AI programs were not only a threat to jobs but also threatened to undermine accountable journalism.
News Corp mastheads have certainly embraced the use of AI for illustrations recently; and in 2023 the company admitted producing 3,000 localised articles a week using generative artificial intelligence.
In March the company’s chief technology officer, Julian Delany, unveiled NewsGPT and described it as a powerful tool.
A News Corp Australia spokesperson told Weekly Beast: “As with many companies News Corp Australia is investigating how AI technologies can enhance our workplaces rather than replace jobs. Any suggestion to the contrary is false.”

Water off a duck's back to snappy Tom, who began to sound more and more like an excitable bot, as he went all bot in ...

The November 2022 release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its widespread adoption was a game changer. It’s now the world’s most popular chatbot with an estimated 300 million active weekly users. OpenAI’s chief executive Sam Altman says his company and its rivals “are building a brain for the world”.
A year after its arrival, more than one-third of US households had used ChatGPT. To reach that concentration it took smartphones four years, social media five years, the internet seven years and electric power and computers 13 years.
What these “stochastic parrots”, based on large language models, do well is write computer code and memos; the essays are OK by the standards of dim undergrads but they’ll never come close to creating the ecstasies of Shakespeare, Donne, Dylan or Cave.
As companies train workers in AI through “boot camps” (as we have at this newspaper) there’s also passive adoption and integration (via updates of third-party software). This column dutifully consults Dr Google; rather than simply searching the internet as asked, the engine acts like a tenured professor, slipping in a mini-lecture before revealing the results requested.
Naturally, given Silicon Valley’s modes, its unbridled boosterism and bottomless pockets of the plutocrats in an ever-expanding multiverse, the hype around the next AI iteration (machines with full human-like cognitive capabilities) is immense, like a Donald Trump brag to the power of a billion.

No doubt it made the bot feel good imitating snappy Tom, as the reptiles interrupted with a snap of one of the great grifters, doing the rounds, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes humanity is close to building digital superintelligence. Picture: Joel Saget/AFP

The super-intelligent bot imitating snappy Tom must have decided it might have gone too far because it pulled back a little ...

The flip side is normal people are unsettled by these all-conquering algorithms that learn as they go, invading privacy and gobbling up data, energy and water, as well as entry-level jobs, as they infiltrate every area of life from finance to medicine, art to relationships.
AI tools have been created by cancer researchers, co-led by the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, to detect biological patterns in cells within tumours. As eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant warned this week, as well as promise, the evolving and relatively cheap technology creates peril by enabling child sexual exploitation material online and captivating our children with AI companions.
But Australians have been reluctant to embrace AI because of mistrust of Big Tech, the speed of its uptake, their cavalier attitude to copyright and creatives, and fears about job losses. In January, EY’s AI sentiment report found Australians among the most apprehensive in the world about the technology.

Heck, forget all the saucy doubts and fears, it's way beyond time to go all in, Our companies are behind the play. According to Committee for Economic Development of Australia chief economist Cassandra Winzar, we rank a poor 54th (out of 69 nations) on companies’ use of digital tools and technologies in the latest global competitiveness report by the Swiss-based Institute for Management Development.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap, Committee for Economic Development Australia chief economist Cassandra Winzar. Picture: Supplied

Each day the pond contemplates the crappy AI at the top of Google searches and reminds itself it should be using another browser ...

Winzar says Australian firms could be left behind in the AI rush. “Our companies are risk-averse, slow on the uptake of new technologies and slow to adopt dynamic market capabilities,” she says. “We often quickly identify the need to adopt but we’re not willing to put ourselves on the line, make the changes and reap the advantages.”
She says there’s a lack of tech expertise on boards, which are over-indexed with lawyers and accountants. As well, there’s little slack in local firms, which inhibits strategy and implementation, while a fall-off in dedicated training risks leaving workers exposed.
As Labor tells it, generative AI is one of the most promising enablers for growth, jobs and productivity. Minister after minister is urging employers and workers to “lean into the opportunity”. Techno optimists in the academy say AI is not merely a tool, it’s an entire system.
New OECD research is cautiously optimistic about whether AI is a “general purpose technology”, like electricity or the internet, that will lead to widespread benefits. The Paris-based think tank’s review notes that AI appears to exhibit the defining characteristics of GPTs, namely pervasiveness, continuous improvement over time and innovation spawning.
“While productivity gains may not materialise immediately, the evolution of earlier GPTs seems to provide encouraging signs that generative AI could lead to substantial improvements in productivity in the future,” it says.
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman is sceptical. “We’re not yet seeing the productivity surge,” the US economist told Martin Wolf of the Financial Times in a lively exchange about AI hype and realities. It took 40 years, Krugman says, for businesses to figure out what to do with electricity. And then it was transformative: production changed, as well as jobs, land use and cities.
The Productivity Commission argues AI adoption involves both augmenting and automating work tasks, which increases labour productivity and frees up workers’ time. A 2024 study by the McKinsey Global Institute estimated up to 62 per cent of Australians’ work time could be automated, although this varies by occupation.
“AI can substitute for workers’ specific tasks, potentially improving the quality of work for employees,” the PC told a Senate committee. “But more typically, AI is expected to enable more efficient use of the existing workforce, particularly in areas where there are skill and labour gaps.”
An optimistic note was struck by the International Monetary Fund in its April exploration of healthy ageing among baby boomers. Creators, analysts and decision-makers are likeliest to thrive and survive in the new era, as long as there are lifelong skilling programs, because of “the complementarity of their skills with AI”. “Unskilled workers may struggle to keep their jobs or manage successful job transitions,” the IMF said.
This week Productivity Assistant Minister Andrew Leigh presented evidence that job growth was most rapid among firms that were early adopters of AI. “This means that the biggest employment risk from AI may not be job displacement – it may be working for a business that doesn’t adopt it,” he wrote in an email.

The reptiles offered another visual distraction: Assistant Minister for Productivity, Competition, Charities and Treasury Andrew Leigh and Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: Martin Ollman/NCA NewsWire

Gee. thanks Sam, can the pond have another?

For those not in on the gag, Sam Altman decreed that saying "Please" and "Thank You" to Chat GPT was wasting millions of dollars in computing power, as the pond turned to the final Snappy Tom gobbet ...

Jim Chalmers has asked the PC to conduct five inquiries into the pillars of prosperity, one of which is data and digital technology, including enabling AI’s potential. The interim report is due ahead of the Treasurer’s roundtable in August.
Submissions to the PC cover the gamut of tech lobby evangelism about 200,000 new roles by fully embedding AI into end-to-end processes; dire warnings from creatives about the erosion of copyright protections; and worries about AI’s overuse from our oldest university (leading to “cognitive atrophy”) and engineers fearing about the competency of recent graduates.
Chalmers told the National Press Club last week the government wants to capitalise on the huge gains from AI, “not just set guardrails”. “We want to get the best out of new technology and investment in data infrastructure in ways that leverage our strengths, work for our people and best manage impacts on our energy system and natural environment,” he said.
The AI rollout has caught regulators’ attention. This year the mega platforms will spend about $400bn on generative AI. It may be years before they reap big returns from these products, “raising questions about what sources of revenue will be used to eventually recoup these costs”, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission said in the final report of its five-year digital platforms inquiry.
Leigh argues regulation should follow a principles-based approach. “Start by applying existing laws,” he told the McKell Institute this week. “Where those fall short, make technologically neutral amendments. Only if these approaches are insufficient should AI-specific rules be considered. The goal is to protect the public while allowing productivity-boosting AI innovation to flourish.”
Labor has displayed an abundance of caution in formalising new laws. Some argue the technology is not new and current laws may be enough. It won’t be easy to find a sweet spot between a sceptical public and tech’s libertarian tendencies. Or to dispel the hype.
The next frontiers are artificial general intelligence or machines with full human-like cognitive capabilities; Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and others are pursuing superintelligence, which is a few levels above Elon Musk, before we reach what Altman calls a “gentle singularity” of an intelligence explosion. “Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence,” Altman wrote on his blog this month, while claiming “in some big sense, ChatGPT is already more powerful than any human who has ever lived”. So is a pocket calculator when it comes to maths.
Can this pumped-up autocorrect fix a leaky pipe, tag Nick Daicos at the MCG or take out the garbage on Sunday night? The bot told Inquirer it “currently lacks the physical capabilities required” to perform these tasks and besides “these activities necessitate human intervention or specialised machinery”. It’s working on it.

Thanks Snappy Tom, working on it ...

And so at last to the dog botherer, in full feral ratbag mode ...

The header: PM and Wong: ferals who pretend to be moderates, At every turn in foreign policy their radical anti-establishment ideology is exposed.
The caption: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have shown no care or respect for Israel’s plight. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman
The mystifying proposal: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The pond thought long and hard about going with the dog botherer, but this opening was so mindlessly moronic and so applicable to the dog botherer that it couldn't pass without some kind of note ...

Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong would have done well to follow Mark Twain’s timeless advice; “If you have nothing to say, say nothing.” Instead, this pair’s attempt to say as little as possible on Middle East foreign policy has led to a series of mindless banalities that have sidelined and damaged our nation.

And so the dog botherer blithely ignored Twain's timeless advice, and went on to produce a series of mindless banalities of the far right Zionist fundamentalist kind ...

The Prime Minister and his Foreign Minister have shown no care or respect for Israel’s plight; no understanding of the Islamist extremist motivation to destroy Israel; no scepticism about the propaganda coming out of Gaza from Hamas-controlled institutions; no comprehension of the malevolent role of the Islamic Republic of Iran; and, crucially, no instinct for the centrality and mutual obligations inherent in our US alliance relationship. In short, they have no idea.
They have placed themselves and our country on the wrong side of history and one of the most challenging fissures of our time: the clash between liberal, pluralistic democracies and intolerant, Islamist extremist groups and nations. To understand the true depth of their misjudgment we need only to envision how different the Middle East would be now if anybody had listened to their injunctions.

Even worse, the reptiles pandered the dog botherer by showing him on Faux Noise down under, the Sky aberration after dark,  Sky News host Chris Kenny slams the Albanese government for failing to take a “strong stand” against antisemitism. Mr Kenny said Labor “failed to support” Israel in its war. “Failed to condemn Iran, and failed even to offer diplomatic support for our alliance partner, the United States.”

The pond decided that the best way to proceed was to do a Burroughs style cut and paste, using Arwa Mahdwai's piece as invaluable source material.

So ... dog botherer:

As it stands, Hamas is on its last legs with somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 terrorists killed in Gaza, along with their political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, and combat leaders Yahya and Mohammed Sinwar, taken out by Israeli operations in Iran and Gaza respectively. Hezbollah, too, is severely degraded with most of its weapons destroyed, much of its leadership eliminated in the brilliantly targeted pager and walkie-talkie attacks, and its Lebanon leader, Hassan Nasrallah, killed by an Israeli airstrike.
The Houthis in Yemen also have been hit hard. And now Iran, the sponsor and funder of these proxy outfits, has had its nuclear weapons program destroyed or significantly retarded and much of its missile and air defence capabilities wiped out as its Islamist regime desperately clings to power and the entire region dares to think of a more stable future without Tehran’s malevolent influence.
None of this would have happened if Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump had taken their riding instructions from Wong and Albanese. Instead, the Middle East and the world would be much more dangerous.

And thus from Mahdwai ...

• “Now we all have one common goal – erasing the Gaza Strip from the face of the Earth” Nissim Vaturi, deputy speaker of the Israeli parliament, wrote on X 7 October 2023. Vaturi also wrote: “The war will never end if we don’t expel everyone.” (2 November 2023) and “To wipe out Gaza. Nothing else will satisfy us … Don’t leave a single child there, expel all the remaining ones in the end, so they have no chance of recovery.” (9 October 2023)
“The children and women must be separated and the adults in Gaza must be eliminated. We are being too considerate,” Vaturi said during an interview with Kol BaRama radio in February 2025, when he also called Palestinians “subhumans” and said the West Bank would be turned into Gaza next.
• Remember, way back on the evening of October 7, 2023, while many Hamas terrorists still were in Israel, 250 hostages were being torn away at gunpoint into Gaza and first responders still were finding mutilated victims and picking their way through unimaginable carnage, Wong made her first comments via social media. Apart from condemning the attack and recognising Israel’s right to defend itself, the Foreign Minister posted: “Australia urges the exercise of restraint and protection of civilian lives.”

Dog botherer:

Yet the following day, long before any Israeli military response, anti-Israeli protesters in Sydney’s Sunni Muslim heartland of Lakemba celebrated the slaughter of 1200 Israelis. “It’s a day of pride, a day of victory, this is the day we’ve been waiting for,” Sheik Ibrahim Dadoun shouted as the crowd chanted “Allahu Akbar”. A day later hundreds chanted intimidating anti-Jewish slogans at the Sydney Opera House forecourt.

Distracting snap: The protest on the forecourt of The Sydney Opera House in Sydney following Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Jeremy Piper

What's really going down, per Mahdwai:

• “The Gaza Strip should be flattened, and for all of them there is but one sentence, and that is death,” Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s far-right Otzma Yehudit party, said in a radio interview. This did not get much international coverage but was cited in the letter sent to the attorney general at the end of 2023 accusing the country’s judicial authorities of ignoring incitement to genocide.

• “Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything,” Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant, said October 2023. (Gallant was in this position at the time of the statement but is no longer in government)

• “I’m not sure you’re speaking for us when you say we want to treat every child and every woman. I hope you don’t stand behind that statement either. When fighting a group like this, the distinctions that exist in a normal world don’t exist,” said Likud parliament member Amit Halevi in the Knessest, in response to a statement from an Israeli doctor saying suffering children should get painkillers, May 2025

Dog botherer:

Wong and Albanese certainly exercised restraint. Their reaction to these abominable expressions of hatred on our shores was passive and tepid, no arrests were made, and we saw anti-Semitic behaviour only escalate in following months.
But if Israel had taken Wong’s lead and restrained itself from launching its war to eliminate Hamas, the Sinwar brothers still would be running Hamas in Gaza, terrorising their population and Israel, and Haniyeh still would be jetting between Qatar and Tehran collecting funds for more missiles to be fired at Israeli civilians. The people of southern Israel still would be bombarded by missiles and living in fear of the next bloodthirsty Hamas invasion.
Iran funded and primed Hamas for its October 7 “al-Aqsa flood” and had its Hezbollah proxies immediately bombarding northern Israel from Lebanon and Syria while its Yemeni proxies, the Houthis, launched missiles into Israel too. All this unfolded while Israel was burying dead innocents and 250 hostages still were held by Hamas in Gaza.
At this time, and ever since, Wong and Albanese put the weight of their diplomatic pressure on the terror target, Israel, while portraying the people of Gaza as the real victims. By October 24 Albanese was emphasising “the importance of humanitarian support for people in Gaza” and portraying a kind of equivalence, saying “whether it be Israeli or Palestinian, every innocent life is valued”.
Well yes, of course. But we need solutions in war and only one side had deliberately taken innocent lives, used other innocent lives as human shields and was holding still more innocent lives hostage.
Yet from Wong and Albanese, nothing but false moral equivalence. Wong told the Senate on November 9: “When Israel’s friends, including Australia, urge Israel to exercise restraint and protect civilian lives, it is critical that Israel listens. This is because innocent civilians in Gaza do deserve protection. Women and children – innocent civilians – should not pay for the crimes and provocations of Hamas.”

To pander to the narcissist supreme, the reptiles inserted another piece of Faux Noise down under featuring the dog botherer, yet again Sky News host Chris Kenny slams the Albanese government for their handling of the Middle East conflict. Mr Kenny said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have always “pussy-footed” around the issue of Iran accessing nuclear weapons. “So spineless, so unwilling to support Israel or the US.”

Is there no shelter from too much dog botherer exposure?

More reminders of what the dog botherer would like to support:

• “The children in Gaza have brought this upon themselves,” said Meirav Ben-Ari from Yair Lapid’s opposition party Yesh Atid in response to a Palestinian lawmaker bemoaning the loss of civilian life on 16 October 2023.

• “There should be 2 goals for this victory: 1. There is no more Muslim land in the Land of Israel ... After we make it the land of IL, Gaza should be left as a monument, like Sodom …” said Likud member of the Knesset Amit Halevi on 16 October 2023.
“They [the children] are our enemies,” said Simcha Rothman, a member of the Knesset for the National Religious party, part of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. Rothman was responding to a question from a Channe
• “If the goal of this operation is not destruction, occupation, expulsion, and settlement, then we have accomplished nothing,” said former member of the Israeli Knesset, Moshe Feiglin, on 12 October 2023.
“Erase Gaza completely, don’t leave a single person there” said singer Eyal Golan, on 15 October 2023. Since making a number of statements like this, Golan has gone on to perform concerts in Europe.

Another burst of dog bothering, devoted apologist that he is ...

By this tortured logic Israel is responsible for the casualties caused by its enemies. Nobody has placed the people of Gaza in peril except their chosen leaders of Hamas; yet, like so many around the world, rather than placing maximum pressure on Hamas, Albanese and Wong repeatedly called on Israel to ease up its attacks on Hamas.
From the start of this horror story the unspoken but logical extension of the demands on Israel from the likes of Albanese and Wong has been that it forget about its people who were held hostage, stop pursuing terrorists intent on its destruction, supply those enemies and their supporters with food, water and medical care, and accept that it must wait for the next horrific attack. It is as morally absurd as it is practically unreasonable and it could only prolong war, not end it.
In 2024 Albanese and Wong lined up with others to say an Israeli Defence Forces ground attack in Rafah would be “unjustifiable”. Yet in the Rafah offensive the Israelis killed hundreds of Hamas terrorists, senior leaders involved in the October 7 atrocities and their military commander, Yahya Sinwar. Likewise, Albanese and Wong were calling for a ceasefire against Hezbollah in Lebanon before Nasrallah was killed and before Israel cleared out massive caches of weapons and rockets in fortifications close to its border where, under Security Council resolution 1701, the UN was supposed to be excluding Hezbollah and its arsenal.
And even this month, Albanese and Wong again were making calls for “de-escalation” between Israel and Iran, before the US intervened to bomb Iran’s illegal nuclear weapons installations. It is becoming something of a pattern; soon after Albanese and Wong call for the forces of freedom to put down their weapons, those forces score historic victories that make the world safer. It makes you wonder whether the Prime Minister and his Foreign Minister would ever support the use of military might. After Pearl Harbor? After the invasion of Poland? The bombing of Darwin?

Another reminder of what the dog botherer is okay with, and what he routinely glosses over:

• “We are coming. We are coming. We are coming to Gaza. We are coming to Lebanon. We will come to Iran. We will come to every place [...] We will annihilate the enemy. We will return the Middle East to a situation where Arabs are terrified of Jews [...] we will come to annihilate you [emphasizes]. To a-n-n-i-h-i-l-a- t-e. Annihilate. Pass this on, share this video so all your friends can see what we are about to do to you,” said the anchor of Channel 14’s morning show, Shai Golden, 17 October 2023.

• “The enemy is not Hamas, but Gaza. The enemy is not Fatah, but the Arabs of the West Bank. And they are not willing to accept this because the approach to dealing with this enemy, called ‘Gaza,’ needs to be completely different [...] Similar to Chechnya, where the Russians flattened it to the extent that the Chechens realized: it’s not worth thinking with them [...] There are no innocents. 
• When you say ‘population’, there is no population. There are two and a half million terrorists [...] When there are no innocents in Gaza, there’s no point in ‘roof knocking’. Because everyone is a terrorist,” said Eliahu Yusian, who presents himself as an expert and commentator on Arab affairs. He is a frequent guest on Channel 14, was a guest on the show The Patriots and said all the above without interruption on 29 October 2023.

• “I keep looking beyond the military objectives, which is nice, but in the end, there’s something beyond the military objectives, and that’s the strategy. It’s about breaking the spirit of the Gazan public, and things are happening there,” Shimon Riklin said on 21 February 2024.

• “… every day we’re killing 100 terrorists? There are two and a half million terrorists there!” panelist Eliahu Yusian said on 24 February 2024.

• “Regarding what Boaz mentioned, in the first day or two, we should have killed 100,000 Gazans [...] Only a few are possibly human there. Only a few are possibly human there. Over 90% are terrorists and are involved! Not uninvolved, there’s no such thing as uninvolved,” political commentator Danny Neuman said on journalist Boaz Golan’s show on 6 May 2024.

Back to the dog botherer, attempting to drift off topic in the usual DB way ...

If Albanese and Wong hold any kind of world view it would resemble most closely the misinformed, valueless, great power resentment of the feral street protesters who support Hamas one moment and the Iranian regime the next, backing whoever spits in the face of the US, Israel and the capitalist West.
This jejune movement is where Albanese and Wong learned their politics, developed their Socialist Left factional affiliations and made their long-term political bargains.
Albanese was a student activist for all the usual causes, including pro-Palestinian, before working for the ALP and Tom Uren, one of the most left-wing ministers in the Whitlam government; Albanese has referred to Uren as his “father figure”. Wong was also a student activist and worked as a lawyer for the hard-left, hard-core CFMEU.
Central to their success in rising to the lofty positions of Prime Minister and Foreign Minister has been styling themselves as political moderates. But that is exposed as mere pretence because at every turn in foreign policy their radical anti-establishment ideology is exposed. (Remember in late 2023 Albanese rejected a US request to contribute a navy vessel to help protect shipping in the Middle East.) Their loyalty is to UN-led multilateralism, not the values and alliance-driven foreign policy of American and Western leadership. This makes them useful dupes for despotic regimes such as those in China, Russia and Iran who resent US hegemony.

Not so fast Jack, speaking of despotic regimes ...

• “The destruction in Gaza gives me a good feeling. Gaza is in a state of annihilation. Many buildings no longer exist in the landscape. The destruction machine must keep working so it’s clear they have nowhere to return to. Despair as a work plan,” Yinon Magal said on the show The Patriots reading a tweet by a reservist soldier named Dvir Luger on 3 August 2024.

• “Gaza deserves death. The 2.6 million terrorists in Gaza deserve death! … Men, women, and children – in every way possible, we must simply carry out a Holocaust on them – yes, read that again – H-O-L-O-C-A-U-S-T! For me, gas chambers. Train cars. And other cruel forms of death for these Nazis. Without fear, without hesitation – simply crush, eradicate, slaughter, flatten, dismantle, smash, shatter …. Gaza deserves death. Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza,” said Elad Barashi, a TV producer affiliated with Channel 14, on 27 February 2025. in a post on X which was later deleted.

And that brings the pond back to where this outing started.

See above for that startling Holocaust tweet, the notion brazen, open and currently being enacted.

Now to a final dog bothering word:

Albanese and Wong are entirely unsuitable for the weighty positions they hold. In ominous times, Australian foreign policy is drifting into worrisome waters.
By rejecting American overtures on defence spending and failing to give the US practical and diplomatic support in the strategic hotspot of the Middle East, they have weakened the alliance relationship at a perilous time. Love Trump or hate him, there is no denying that this week he has made the Middle East safer and NATO stronger, delivering on aims long held by Democrat and Republican presidents.
This can only help curb Chinese belligerence in our region. But Albanese and Wong have been nay-sayers all along, made Australia less than useful and contributed nothing to historic strategic gains except snide criticism from the cheap seats.

Arwa Mahdwai concluded her piece this way:

It’s clear now that nothing will shame the West into stopping Israel from carrying out its “total victory” in Gaza. But I’ve written this to serve as yet another reminder that we all knew what was coming. Nobody can feign ignorance. Nobody can pretend they didn’t know.

It's true nothing will shame the reptiles in the lizard Oz hive mind, nor fundamentalist Zionist apologists of the dog bothering kind.

But sorry Ms Mahdwai, the pond is just waiting for them to go on feigning ignorance, concocting alternate realities - perhaps helped by AI - and pretending that they simply didn't know ...

And so to a final cartoon celebrating European cattle, ripe for the herding. Let the Polonial bull loose, infallible Pope ...