In which there's a serve of climate science denying Ughmann and Polonius prattling while studiously ignoring mass starvation in Gaza ...

 

There's only so much any dedicated loon can handle or keep up with when it comes to Uncle Leon v. King Donald, which will simmer away on a daily basis, and likely for some time. 

Might as well get those celebrations of a country on the move out of the way early ...

The freedumb to grift and the freedumb to think in a cult way.

Enough already.

So the pond thought a serving of standard climate science denialism straight from the hive mind would serve as fodder for a Sunday meditation, with the Ughmann preparing the dish (be careful with the mushrooms, growing under the oak tree of ignorance) ...

The header: How young climate change activists are living a lie, Have activists ever wondered if their cosy life is linked to the fossil fuels they despise?

The meaningless injunction: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

And a special mention for the collage accompanying the caption: Young climate change activists are living a lie. Pictures: Newswire/AFP/ Sam Ruttyn

Note how they all seem angry, note that there's a credit for shouty contents, but not one for the collage. 

Did a bot put it together? If so, it shows how bots can be trained to think and execute a task in a way that entirely suits the lizard Oz hive mind.

To be fair, the pond only decided to go with the Ughmann because it was a chance to feature Geoff Dembicki's story on DeSmog featuring the Bjorn-again one, Carbon Capture ‘Not Going to Happen,’ Top Fossil Fuel Advocate Predicts, In audio obtained by DeSmog, Bjorn Lomborg told a Fraser Institute event in Vancouver that the technology is way too expensive to be viable.

Now the Bjorn-again one will be very familiar to pond and lizard Oz readers, what with the reptiles swooning over him on a regular basis, but this time he let an unfortunate cat out of the bag:

Bjorn Lomborg has for years promoted the idea that fossil fuels are crucial for humankind through syndicated newspaper columns, best-selling books and appearances on TV shows including HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.
He’s been called a “friend” by Trump administration energy secretary and former fracking executive Chris Wright and helps advise an anti-net zero organization known as the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) created by the Canadian conservative podcaster Jordan Peterson.
Yet the Danish political scientist — who acknowledges that climate change is real but denies that it’s a serious crisis — has a dim view of the oil and gas industry’s preferred solution to climate change: carbon capture and storage.
That technology is favored by Alberta premier Danielle Smith and Liberal energy minister Tim Hodgson, both of whom recently floated the idea of a “grand bargain” where Canada’s oil and gas industry gets approval for new pipelines in exchange for moving forward with a $16.5 billion carbon capture project.
It might seem that a prominent fossil fuel advocate like Lomborg would support technology loudly touted by major oil and gas producers and their political allies. But speaking at a private event last week in Vancouver, exclusive audio of which was obtained by DeSmog, Lomborg argued that “carbon capture will always be a net cost” to oil and gas producers and the taxpayers that subsidize it.
“In realistic terms, I don’t think it’s ever going to happen,” he added, referring to the prospect of  prices for the technology coming down low enough that it can be rapidly and cost-efficiently deployed worldwide.
On that point Lomborg might actually be in agreement with climate policy experts who are also critical of carbon capture. “There’s a lot of federal money and provincial money that could be thrown at this thing,” Dave Sawyer, principal economist at the Canadian Climate Institute, recently told DeSmog. “We’ve been looking at this option for almost 20 years and it hasn’t happened.”

Why feature this at length? 

Well the admissions in this next segment are relevant to the Ughmann's scribbling:

Speaking at the Fraser Institute
Lomborg was in the west coast Canadian city to speak at a private luncheon hosted by the Fraser Institute, a free-market organization with a long history of disputing the scientific reality of climate change that has received funding from the likes of Exxon and the charitable foundation of oil and gas billionaire Charles Koch.
It’s a leading member of Atlas Network, an influential coalition of more than 500 groups worldwide that promote free-market policies and whose partners in Canada have developed political strategies for fossil fuel expansion. 
“Yes, global warming is real. It’s man-made, but it’s often also vastly exaggerated,” Lomborg claimed at the Fraser Institute luncheon, the same day that the United Nations warned that global temperatures were likely to breach the crucial warming threshold of 1.5 degrees within the next five years. 
During the event he was asked for this thoughts about carbon capture, a technology that Canada’s largest oil and gas companies have for years argued is crucial for achieving “net zero” emissions in their operations.
Those companies, via an industry group called Pathways Alliance, are currently in talks with the federal and Alberta governments to build a multi-billion dollar carbon capture project in the heart of the Canadian oil sands which could be subsidized heavily by taxpayers.
“The problem is you need to store it underground,” Lomborg said, referring to the carbon dioxide captured by the technology. And to do that on a meaningful scale worldwide, he argued, “you have to build at least an infrastructure equivalent to the infrastructure that we built in the last hundred years for oil and gas. And remember back then, we did it because it was incredibly profitable. This time we would just have to pay for it.”

Current costs in Canada could be as high as $150 per tonne of CO2. Lomborg noted that for direct air capture projects — which Pathways Alliance is also proposing and involve sucking carbon emissions from the atmosphere — the costs could be as high as $600 per tonne. At those price points, widespread deployment is “not going to happen,” he said.

In particular, note the cunning way that the fossil fuel industry, which long ago knew the impact of global warming and chose to hide it, continue exploiting climate concerns to pocket government cash ...

Growing rightwing backlash to CCS
Climate experts such as University of Pennsylvania scientist Michael Mann have for years argued that carbon capture and storage is a false solution to the climate crisis that allows oil and gas companies to suck up huge amounts of public money while continuing to pump fossil fuels. “It’s not a meaningful climate solution and it displaces meaningful climate solutions like clean energy, renewable energy,” he told a U.S. House panel in 2022.
But recently there has been growing backlash to the technology from conservatives and fossil fuel advocates, some of whom see it as an egregious government waste.
“We might as well take tax money at gunpoint and burn it,” Peterson, the conservative podcaster, wrote last year on X in response to a CCS project in Wyoming.
At Peterson’s ARC conference in London this February, the climate crisis denier Robert Bryce told DeSmog that carbon capture “will never work at scale.” He added, “Once you get that CO2 super-compressed and you’re pushing it down underground, there are very few places where you can actually sequester it. So it’s a lot of money wasted.”
That skepticism is now translating into federal U.S. policy, with Wright’s Department of Energy recently canceling $3.7 billion in decarbonization awards for carbon capture projects from Exxon and other fossil fuel producers. 
Canada is still pushing ahead, however. Recently appointed Liberal energy minister Hodgson, a previous board member of oil and producer MEG Energy, said during a speech in Calgary in May that “All of us, governments and industry, need to get the Pathways [carbon capture] project done.”
During his Vancouver talk, Lomborg argued that the main reason oil and gas companies are pursuing such prohibitively expensive climate projects is so they can be generously supported by governments.
“What you can do is you can get a lot of subsidies,” he said.

Now cue the Ughmann with a shameless distortion of Graudian scribblers ...

One wonders if journalists at The Guardian ever pause to consider how the material world they live in was made, and where their privileged lifestyle was forged. Has even one of them spent a few minutes marvelling at the fact that, in the long march of human history, it is only in the last few steps that a lucky handful, in just part of the world, enjoy a level of wealth and comfort that would have dazzled the kings and queens of earlier eras? Do they ever wonder: How did that happen? Could coal, oil and gas have anything to do with it?
Just kidding. Of course not.
If they did, a grain of knowledge might just chafe at their consciences: Is their cosy life linked to the fossil fuels they despise? That would be awkward because to curse the engine while reclining in the carriage is the purest form of hypocrisy.
If Guardian journalists ever did think about this, we would not see headlines such as: “Woodside boss says young people ‘ideological’ on fossil fuels while ‘happily ordering from Temu’.”

What a contemptible human bean he is. 

Put him up against the Graudian's Megan Holbeck, offering wild-eyed innocence and hope ...

Look for ways to make it fun. Jump in the surf after you’ve cleaned the beach; revel in your results. You’re joining a community of billions of people taking action across the world. Spread the hope and joy of these stories; seek out the positives. Make sure there’s a clear link between doing good and feeling good and make it something others want to join. Make it cool to care.
Raising kids who care is a matter of balancing the truth of where we are with the resilience of both the natural world and human endeavour. As Gameau says, “There’s something beautiful about the human spirit, particularly when its back is against the wall and innovation and creativity get unleashed. We’re capable of doing extraordinary and wonderful things.”

Back in the day the pond can remember the first campaigns against litter, buggering up the environment and spoiling views. 

These days trashing and fucking the planet seems like a reptile duty, so cue a snap of Woodside chief executive Meg O'Neill

Yes, it's hard-headed realist time; don't worry about the planet, just keep on doing what you've been doing ... and everything will be alright. 

Trust the Ughmann and Woodside ...

In this pantomime journalism, penned by The Guardian’s Graham Readfearn, Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill is cast as an evil witch for making a shocking statement at the recent Australian Energy Producers conference in Brisbane.
“Most people hit a switch and expect the lights to come on,” she said. “It’s been a fascinating journey to watch the discussion, particularly amongst young people who have this very ideological, almost zealous view of, you know, fossil fuels bad, renewables good, that are happily plugging in their devices, ordering things from (online fast-fashion stores) Shein and Temu – having, you know, one little thing shipped to their house without any sort of recognition of the energy and carbon impact of their actions.
“So that human impact and the consumer’s role in driving energy demand and emissions absolutely is a missing space in the conversation.”
Readfearn then railed: “According to company documents, the sale and burning of Woodside’s gas – mostly shipped overseas – emitted 74 million tonnes of CO₂ last year. Last month the company announced it was spending $18bn on a Louisiana LNG project that would produce the fuel until the 2070s.” Note, Woodside does not just set fire to its gas for the purpose of creating carbon emissions while O’Neill flies about the pyre on her broom. The gas is burned to do work. That work creates jobs and wealth, and sustains the lives of millions, here and overseas.

It's not as if we've never been given a clue ... Eight things the world must do to avoid the worst of climate change, Latest IPCC report highlights key measures countries must take to avoid climate catastrophe

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates (review)

Using the logic - the pond uses the word loosely - of the Ughmann, Gates shouldn't be writing such stuff, because computers, cloud storage, energy, yadda yadda ...

At this point the reptiles decided to run an AV plug, Woodside Chief Executive Meg O’Neill discusses the approval of a $27 billion liquified natural gas project on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana. This comes after Woodside’s purchase of the gas project for $1.2 billion with co-investor Stonepeak. “As we’ve looked around the world, we’ve asked ourselves what are the sorts of opportunities that we ought to be pursuing to ensure that we can deliver value for shareholders, not just this quarter, but decades into the future,” Ms O’Neill said. “That led us to the Tellurian acquisition, which we concluded last year, which gave us access to a fully permitted site, permitted for 27.6 million tonnes of liquified natural gas, and just to calibrate that’s the size of our northwest shelf project, plus our Pluto project, plus Pluto train 2. “So, it is a massive opportunity to build an LNG footprint in the United States mirroring what we’ve done here in Australia – the returns are compelling, 13 per cent internal rate of return, seven-year payback period.”

Yeah, the returns are compelling, a comprehensively fucked planet, and at an astonishingly good rate ...

There's a remarkably smug complacency about all this ...

Readfearn makes no attempt to deal with the critical issue O’Neill raises: hating fossil fuels, while enjoying all their benefits, is a luxury only possible in ignorance. And you cannot transform the invisible architecture of our lives without tearing at the walls of the world we live in. O’Neill is one of the few prepared to have this conversation. But what would she know? She’s only a chemical engineer, and Readfearn is a journalist.
The “news” story sparked a Guardian opinion piece from Hannah Ferguson, chief executive of Cheek Media Co, under the headline: “The Woodside boss’s attacks on my generation are blatant scapegoating – and we see straight through them.” (link added, because the reptiles never link)
Ferguson tells us she is “a 26-year-old and a member of Generation Z” who is “proud to say I have never made a purchase from the fast-fashion stores O’Neill mentions”.
Bravo. Saving the planet one ethically sourced keep cup at a time.

You can see how this sort of snide gotcha coming and going works.

People who think climate science are real are clueless; people who decide they want to avoid fast-fashion. are clueless.

Scribble something like this and you get right up the Ughmann's nose:

This relentless attempt to shift responsibility and divide us is no longer viable. We see through the spin, we can cut through the noise. There are many powerful young people advocating for a better world, one which values our planet more than the millions being funnelled into the bank accounts of big oil and gas bosses who would rather we kept quiet. If that is my ideological view, I’m fine with that.

Speaking of shifting responsibility and cultivating division, apparently everybody's clueless except the sanctimonious Ughmann:

Ferguson continues: “I will also be the first to admit that I am consuming more than I should be and have made purchases from questionable stores in the past. Acknowledging this flaw is important; we should all be striving to make more environmentally friendly choices. However, pointing out this prime example of a straw man argument is the more pressing point. This is the blatant scapegoating of young people while directly destroying our climate.”

The pond wondered when the reptiles might begin to include Ferguson in their relentless jihads and it seems she well become a victim of their relentless crusade, because there's a snap to make sure the hive mind can spot the villain, Hannah Ferguson tells us she is ‘a 26-year-old and a member of Generation Z’ who is ‘proud to say I have never made a purchase from the fast-fashion stores (Meg) O’Neill mentions’. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

How far up himself is the Ughmann? Impossible to say, difficult to measure, but pretty far ...

Hard to know where to begin, really. Woodside, and many companies like it, extract fossil fuels that are burned in your service, Hannah. They power the systems that make and move everything you use. If burning carbon is your issue, then all the stores you frequent are “questionable”. If you do not want to be complicit in “directly destroying our climate”, try living without fossil fuels and all of their derivatives. Even for one day.
The material world you inhabit is saturated with hydrocarbons from coal, oil and gas. Your lifestyle is a product of the amount of heat you get to waste, whether you see it or not. This work is buried deep in every particle of your home and workplace. It’s in the concrete you walk on, the bitumen you drive on, the steel and plastic in the cars and trains you travel in, the food you eat, the clothes you wear, all the medicines you take, and the heating and cooling that shelter you from the elements.

Ah, the lifestyle ...

On with the mendacity ...

For the better part of 300,000 years, Homo sapiens lived by the heat and light of wood fires, and the wealth of the world barely moved. There was a step change when coal was burned to boil water and steam turned the big wheels of the Industrial Revolution. Coal moved trains across countries and ships across seas. With gas came the ability to pluck nitrogen from the air to make fertilisers that now feed half the people on the planet.
But it was oil that supercharged humanity’s progress. In the greatest leap forward in history, we took flight, moving from the Wright brothers to the moonshot in a little over 60 years. Draw a graph of the evolution of human wealth matched against the growth in fossil fuel use and they rise in lock-step.
In 250 years, work moved from muscle to machine. Life expectancy doubled. Infant mortality plummeted. The vast majority of wealth, medicine and mobility emerged in just a few lifetimes. Only the past eight to 10 generations have lived with the compounding benefits of fossil fuels. That’s less than 0.1 per cent of all human generations.
Most of the world’s wealth was created in the past 80 years, but many were left out. More than 1.1 billion still live in energy poverty. And what does that look like? Like poverty.

So now there's no way to box clever and exercise some ingenuity? We must just keep on living the life, and pass the results on down to future generations? 

Cue another climate science denialist, the Bolter, always willing to step up, Sky News host Andrew Bolt slams “green extremists” who are blasting the Labor government for being “dead against” any fossil fuel usage in pushing for renewables. “The prime minister has had enough of the new-age dreamers and especially green extremists,” Mr Bolt said. “Who are dead against any fossil fuel, even if gas is now critical to backing up fickle wind and solar power.”

Sigh. It wouldn't be a bout of reptile climate science denialism without a threatening snap of renewables engulfing the world and killing the whales (oh yes, solar panels kill whales).

And so to the last gasp ... which the pond imagines the old thunderer thinking was a killer conceit ...

The trade-off for all of this was that burning fossil fuel creates carbon emissions, and they are partly responsible for a warming planet. That is a problem, but it is not one the world is actually serious about solving, because it turns out people would rather not live in poverty. Their governments know that, which is why there is such a vast gap between the pledges governments make and the things they do.
Changing fossil fuel use on political dictates, targets and timelines has proven to be an abject failure. Last year, the world burned more coal, oil and gas than ever before in its history. Fossil fuels still deliver 84 per cent of the world’s primary energy. There is no energy transition; the world has added some wind and solar power on top of its ever-growing demand for the fuels that enhance life.
That the vast majority of the population haven’t got a clue where their energy, food, and wealth come from is a problem. That so many journalists, commentators, activists and politicians are wilfully ignorant is an indictment.
It’s well past time for the fossil fuel temperance preachers to live out the true meaning of their creed. Stop using fossil fuels. Banish them, and everything they make possible, from your life. Do that, and I’ll believe you mean it. Until then, you are living a lie.

The pond will concede one thing about the unreformed former seminarian. 

He knows how to trigger the pond. Living the sweet life of climate science denialism, in bed with coal and oil, and living the lie, and to hell with the next generation, and dead before vulgar youff can send him greetings, thanks and cards ...

He's at one with the mango Mussolini...

And so to the bonus, and at this point the pond had to pause.

The Australian Zionist Daily's weekend edition was yet again hot to trot on the suffering of Jews, while studiously ignoring the suffering of Palestinians.

The pond simply couldn't come at this sort of stuff ...

Stop asking Jews to be ashamed of ourselves
Suddenly, the political is personal in a way no other national group is forced to endure.
By Nick Dyrenfurth

Talk about narcissistic self-pity. It's not all about you, it's about the mass starvation and the needless suffering and the ethnic cleansing. 

You should be ashamed of yourself for confusing, conflating, muddying and distorting the issue.

That felt better. You don't want the shame? Stop bleating ...

And the pond couldn't come at the dog botherer ...

All the drip-feed ‘news’ that fits Hamas agenda
Hamas has not only successfully infiltrated Gaza but also the Western media, with journalists across the world failing in their duty of fairly reporting Israel’s ongoing war.
By Chris Kenny
Associate Editor (National Affairs)

Thinking that Hamas is a bunch of turkeys doesn't mean Netanyahu and his far right loons have a get out of jail card.

"Ned" was also out and about nattering away, Netanyahu is strong in war, but when does the peace come?, The Israeli Prime Minister has been revealed as a bold war leader – but he seems incapable of mobilising his gains.

But that was an astonishing 19 minute read, compounded by it being compromised by the funding of his junket, so the pond sent it off to a late arvo slot. 

For masochists, it will appear at 4.30 pm this day, and don't blame the pond for your suffering.

Even prattling Polonius had decided to prattle in praise of the war ... though truth to tell, the pond would rather be scribbling about other wars and other warriors ...

Polonius is still presenting himself as the Media Watch Dog Columnist, but the sorry old hound didn't manage to get himself on the lizard Oz junket to Israel.

It was no great loss because they might not have known how to handle a furry, and anyway nobody knows what's happening inside Gaza thanks to relentless censorship and exclusion, as noted by Martin Bell in In 1973, I reported freely on Israel at war. Now its censorship has made that impossible

...I would urge the following: that the foreign press, especially the TV networks, continue to stand their ground, and that the Israeli press machine does itself a favour and relaxes the rules to allow some independent access to Gaza. This will not only limit the tides of propaganda (on both sides, it must be said) but perhaps hold the frontline troops to higher standards of behaviour, just as it did beside the Suez canal in 1973.
It is important to both sides to reestablish at least the limited level of trust that used to exist between them. Here is an example. In the 1973 war, we were able transmit the news by satellite on the day that it happened. Our office was a chair beneath a palm tree near the feed point. In the 1967 war, the exposed news film was bundled into onion bags – blue for the BBC, red for NBC – and taken to the censor who stamped his approval on the masking tape around the neck, before it was air-freighted to London. But he had to take our word for what the film actually showed.
The public had a more accurate account back then of events on the battlefield than it does today through the fog of war in Gaza. When access is denied, everyone loses. And, Israel, that includes you.

And with those preliminaries out of the way, let's get it on with the aged furry dishing it out to anyone giving a toss about mass starvation and ethnic cleansing ...

The header: Why don’t the pro-Palestinians ever call for Hamas to surrender?, All wars are horrific. Hamas started this war with Israel, and can end it at any time by returning the hos­tages. Eventually, that’s what Germany did in 1945.

You might as well ask why the furry old fart never bothers to ask Netanyahu and the mad far right intent on ethnic cleansing change their course and show some sign they realise how much the world has come to fear and loath them.

Better instead to show vulgar youff worthy of demonisation: Pro-Palestinian protesters at Sydney University. Picture: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images

Why do the reptiles persist with this? This article contains features which are only available in the web version,Take me there

Polonius wasn't going to talk about Gaza, in the beginning it was all about the suffering of students ...

University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott appeared before Senate estimates on September 20 last year to discuss the Commission of Inquiry into Anti-Semitism at Australian Universities Bill 2024.
He was asked by Liberal Party senator Sarah Henderson if he had failed Jewish students on his campus. Scott replied: “Yes, I have failed them and the university has failed them, and that is why we’ve made significant changes to our policy settings.”
Move forward eight months. On May 31, Natasha Bita reported in The Australian that “a $150,000 pay rise for the University of Sydney’s vice-chancellor Mark Scott pushed his salary above $1.32m last year”. Which suggests that at Sydney University there are those who fail but still receive first-class honours with respect to what, in business circles, is called remuneration.

Quick, wheel in an AV distraction of a loon guaranteed to help avoid any mention of the ethnic cleansing going down in Gaza, Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali discusses a Colorado man who has been charged with multiple counts of attempted murder and hate crimes targeting Jewish supporters holding a peaceful protest regarding the hostages in Gaza. “I think it’s important for us to know that the Free Palestine movement is made up of a mish-mash of Marxists, Maoists and Islamist elements,” Ms Hirsi Ali told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “Their wish is to eliminate the state of Israel. “It is definitely not just in America … this Free Palestine movement is in Europe. “What should Australians do? It is to infiltrate this organisation to stop this movement and to treat it as a terrorist organisation because ultimately that’s what it is.”

What's remarkable about this? Well there's the confusion and conflation of anti-Semitism with being appalled by the ethnic cleansing going down ...

In the university’s Annual Report 2024, published this week, chancellor David Thodey and Scott acknowledged “we did not get everything right as we responded to widespread protests triggered by the events of 7 October 2023 and their aftermath, and there are clearly differing views on our responses to certain events, particularly the encampment on our Quadrangle Lawns”. The duo went on to say they were committed to learning from those hugely challenging and complex events.
Thodey became chancellor in July 2024 when anti-Semitism was already rife on the Sydney campus. Scott became vice-chancellor in July 2021. Thodey’s background is in business. On the other hand, Scott has worked as a teacher, a journalist, a managing editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, a managing director of the ABC and head of the NSW Department of Education. This background should have equipped Scott with an experience in how to handle students and left-wing activists. But he did virtually nothing when militants, many from outside the campus, set up encampments from early April to late June 2024.
Joanna Panagopoulos revealed in The Australian on June 5 that a report by a SafeWork NSW inspector into anti-Semitism at the university found a “high-risk psychosocial hazardous workplace” was endured for almost a year because of “the inactions of the university to eliminate” hate. It is understood the SafeWork NSW report author is not Jewish and has no connection with the university.

And then there was the seeming approval of cancel culture at work, Sportswear giant Nike has terminated its partnership with former Australian of the Year Grace Tame over inflammatory online posts that attacked Jewish supporters of Israel. Picture: Gaurav Kapadia

On Polonius rambled in a way worthy of the Australian Zionist Daily ...

Sydney University is not the only campus to turn a blind eye to anti-Semitism following Hamas’s barbaric attack in Israel on October 7, 2023. And it was not the birthplace of the outburst. That occurred on October 9 when a mob of left-wing activists took an unlawful march through Sydney to the Opera House when many chanted what sounded like “Gas the Jews” but some heard as “Where’s the Jews”. An anti-Semitic war cry, whatever was heard. This was before Israel retaliated by invading Gaza.
Perhaps the most notable apparent act of anti-Semitism (I write “apparent” because some individuals have been charged but a court has yet to make a finding) occurred with the arson attack of the Adass Israel Synagogue of Melbourne in Ripponlea.
In a sense, non-violent anti-Semitism has been fashionable among sections of Australia that are in no sense Islamist. For example, Margin Call in this paper has reported on influencer Grace Tame’s ignorant comments about Jews and Israel. As Yoni Bashan has pointed out, Tame appears to be of the view that all Israelis are Jews. This is hopelessly wrong.
Writing in The Saturday Paper on May 10, Michael Gawenda (a former editor-in-chief of The Age) commented on the “under-reporting at the ABC and in the Nine newspapers of the increased hostility towards Jews in Australia”. He added that “there is a view that any increased hostility to Jews must be a reasonable response to the deaths of Palestinians in the current conflict in Gaza”.
In recent months in the US there has been some evidence that the calls of pro-Hamas supporters to move the intifada to outside Israel is beginning to take place.
In mid-April the official residence of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, was firebombed. A suspect who called 911 made reference to “Free Palestine”. On May 21, in Washington, two young Israeli embassy staff members were shot and killed outside a Jewish museum where they had been attending a function. The attacker called out “Free Palestine”. And then last weekend in Boulder, Colorado, an unlawful immigrant from Egypt shouted “Free Palestine” before throwing some kind of firebomb at a group of senior citizens rallying peacefully for the release of the Israeli hostages captured by Hamas.

Why does the pond always have to head off to Haaretz for alternative news? (archive link).

It really is a dismal, depressing and lengthy read, offering yet more revelations about the way Israel is heading off to far right extremism and prize loondom.

There's a lot of it going down, as the reptiles offered this snap as a visual aid for Polonius, Charred interior of the Pennsylvania governor's official residence after a man was arrested in an alleged arson that forced Gov. Josh Shapiro, his family and guests to flee in the middle of the night on the Jewish holiday of Passover. Picture: Commonwealth Media Services/Governor Shapiro office

Yes, but why are these sorts of images always conspicuously absent from the lizard Oz? You know, charred exteriors, ruins and desolation as far as the eye can see ... (and be careful about lining up at one of the few sources of food, because you might get shot on suspicion).

Never mind, time for a little queasy bothsiderism, appalling in a way only Polonius can contrive ...

Appearing on Sky News’ Credlin on June 3, Ayaan Hirsi Ali described the Free Palestine movement as a “mishmash of Marxists, Maoists and Islamist elements”. She said they all wished “to eliminate the state of Israel … and then, on the Islamist wing, they want to kill all Jews”.
It is understandable why citizens of Western democracies, young and old alike, are disturbed by the killings and the depravations taking place in the Israel-Hamas war. A conflict that Hamas started when it broke a ceasefire on October 7, 2023, and slaughtered and kidnapped civilians in the process.
But it should be remembered that all wars are horrific. Hamas can end the war by surrendering (with its surviving leaders going into exile) and returning the hos­tages. Eventually, that’s what Germany did in 1945. Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30 and the German forces in Berlin surrendered two days later. In Japan on August 15 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced that Japan would surrender – it did so formally on September 2 of that year.

WTF? Returning the hostages? In what way did the Nazis return the hostages? The pond let it pass in the header ...

Hamas started this war with Israel, and can end it at any time by returning the hos­tages. Eventually, that’s what Germany did in 1945.

But bugger it, someone has to call that out as blithering nonsense.

As for the routine about war being hell, the second world war was so horrendous that there was an attempt to put in place some rules about how to conduct war.

Polonius is stuck back in the days of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth ...

Before that literally thousands of civilians were killed in the bombing raids on German cities by the Royal Air Force and by the US air and naval forces in parts of Europe and Japan. And there was the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. An estimated 30,000 French civilians died in Operation Overlord in the D-Day campaign of June 1944.
Supporters of the Gazan cause would be well-advised to call on Hamas to surrender and return the hostages rather than verbally attacking Jews on university campuses and elsewhere.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

Nah, not really, if they support the Netanyahu government, they should feel the heat ... mass starvation is a war crime, and so is ethnic cleansing ... and if they turn up in the lizard Oz offering dissembling justifications, it's time to let the hounds loose ...

And so to some closing cartoons. 

The pond apologises for not being able to scatter them liberally in the text, but somehow talking of war crimes sits oddly with King Donald destroying the United States ...

And this is a reasonably concise summary of some of the week's entertainment, with an echo of Paul Krugman in the notion of a deeply unserious country ...