In which Killer Creighton stars, our Henry can't match David Brooks, and lesser gang member Joe cribs from Politico ...

 

This day the war on China, preferably by Xmas, topped the lizard Oz's digital edition ...

A gloomy Rowan was given pride of place with bad news ...

COMMENTARY BY ROWAN CALLICK

Xi is still in charge and not going anywhere

Rumours about China’s paramount leader Xi Jinping are swirling like clouds around the Albanese government’s Boeing 737 business jet.

Over on the extreme far right, there was a shoot of hope in the winter garden ...

Strengthening ties with Taiwan need not upset Beijing

Exploring tailored arrangements between Australia and Taiwan would not influence the relationship between Australia and China. It would offer a practical, forward-looking agenda.

By Douglas Hsu

The pond almost thought of being interested in all the fuss, but then scrolled down to the punchline ...

Douglas Hsu is Taiwan’s chief representative in Australia

Well then he would say that, wouldn't he, and the pond wishes him well, but turned to see what else was in the extreme far right ...

Good old Henry was top of the world ma, with the bouffant one struggling to stay in the fast bigot lane with him.

The pond knew that if it saved Our Henry up, correspondents would plough through any old nonsense to get their treat ...

And so to Killer Creighton of the IPA celebrating the man who inspired Uncle Leon's chainsaw routine, only for Leon to realise it might have showed signs of lacking empathy.

Killer has never been big on the empathy routine ...

Hang on, hang on, a word of explanation, a feeble excuse. 

The pond only went with Killer because of this yarn in Crikey (paywall) ...

Delicious, especially with the pond's correspondents inclined to explore the wonders of AI, and so the pond was compelled to search out the tweet ... (given a funereal look by the pond) ...

What a Killer Kontribution, up there with his Kovid musings.

The pond admits that Killer's actual work this day, a modest four minute read so the reptiles said, is actually quite mild by way of Komparison ...

The header: Jim Chalmers should ignore the ‘gurus’ and look to Argentina for economic tips, The economists warned against President Javier Milei’s plans, but he proved them wrong
The caption for the demonic snap: Argentina's President Javier Milei. Picture: AFP
The silly advice: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Killer was ecstatic at the work chainsaws could do ...

Thank goodness Argentina’s charismatic, libertarian President, Javier Milei, didn’t listen to mainstream economists. He appears single-handedly to have revived his nation’s economic fortunes, after decades of misery, by doing precisely the opposite of what some of the world’s most eminent economists advised.

If only his reforms would be a template for our own political and economic elite, collectively addicted to ever more intrusive regulation and public spending.

Ahead of his election in November 2023, 170 economists from around the world, including such luminaries as France’s Thomas Piketty and India’s Jayati Ghosh, warned Milei’s supposedly “extreme right” proposals centred on slashing regulation and public spending would cause “devastation” and “social chaos”.

“A major reduction in government spending would increase already high levels of poverty and inequality and could result in significantly increased social tensions and conflict,” they wrote. His agenda was “fraught with risks that makes (it) potentially very harmful for the Argentine economy and the Argentine people”.

Milei’s administration slashed the number of ministries from 19 to nine, including departments of climate change, diversity and “social development”, insidious fonts of ridiculous regulations the world over. The turnaround in Argentina’s misfortunes has been stunning, even surprising his supporters.

In the second quarter of this year the economy grew 7.6 per cent, practically all of it an increase in GDP per capita given the nation’s relatively slow population growth. Milei has managed all this without resorting to the tried and failed method of endless deficit spending, actually overseeing a budget surplus in 2024 of 0.3 per cent of GDP.

At this point the reptiles introduced Sky Noise down under, Sky News contributor Prue MacSween believes people around the world have woken up to “woke socialist governments” which have “no ability” to manage economies. Inflation and interest rates have fallen dramatically in Argentina since the election of President Javier Milei. Milei has ended his first year more trusted than his previous three predecessors. “I think the people have woken up that these woke socialist governments, who really have no ability to manage economies … have had enough,” Ms MacSween told Sky News host James Morrow. “People have really had enough.”

Sorry, at that usage and sighting the pond's contractual obligation kicked in ...

On with the fuckheadery ...

Yes, there has been the odd street protest organised by militant unions, but they appear to have ignored the fact the poverty rate has declined sharply too, from 53 per cent in the first half of last year to 38 per cent in the second half. Even UNICEF, hardly a hotbed of libertarian thought, conceded in May that 1.7 million children had been lifted out of poverty since Milei took office.

“The disgusting liberals, the politically correct people, the ‘cool’ leftists, the ‘sensitive’ ones, those who love the poor so much that all they do is multiply them; they all would tell us that we were going to generate an explosion of poverty … the ‘insensitive libertarians’ lifted more than 10 million people out of poverty,” the President said when that data emerged.

His angry, mocking tone is understandable in a nation, once among the richest in the world, that had fallen to well below 50th by the time he won office after decades of socialist meddling.

The pond supposes it depends on who you read. Back in April the BBC included this in a report ...

Milei has slashed subsidies for transport, fuel and energy, fired tens of thousands of public servants and closed government departments.

Horacio Bianchi, a retired teacher living in Buenos Aires, told the Associated Press news agency people were suffering as they "don't have enough money to eat".

"These people [the government] came to solve the problems and they have absolutely worsened them for everyone," he added.

On Wednesday, workers had joined a weekly protest staged by pensioners who have seen their pension funds slashed. In recent weeks, their protests have ended in violence as sympathetic groups, such as football fans, clashed with police.

Bloody useless radical pensioners, waving their walking sticks, there's never been a one that Killer hasn't felt the need to chainsaw. 

Give him your poor or dispossessed, and his killer IPA training always kicks in.

The reptiles followed up with an evocative snap, In the second quarter of this year Argentina’s economy grew 7.6 per cent, practically all of it an increase in GDP per capita given the nation’s relatively slow population growth. Picture:Anita Pouchard Serra/Bloomberg

Ah, the sweet joy of pushing an IPA barrow ...

Perhaps the most extraordinary results have occurred in the housing market. Milei abolished rent controls last year amid predictable fears those nasty landlords would jack up rents. On the contrary, supply of rentable dwellings almost tripled and rents actually fell.

Economists’ “open letters” have an ignominious history; beware economists acting in herds. In the early 1980s, when the UK was in a socialist quagmire not too different from what Milei inherited, 364 similarly eminent economists railed against the first-term Thatcher government’s plan to slash spending and temporarily lift taxes to rein in the out-of-control deficit. There was “no basis in economic theory or supporting evidence” for it, they thundered in The Times, predicting “social and political instability”. Almost immediately the British economy began to whirr back to life.

Who can forget the reassurances of the International Monetary Fund throughout 2006-07, as the world’s biggest banks were becoming absurdly leveraged, that the world was “in the midst of an extraordinary purple patch” and “world growth (would) continue to be strong” only months before the global financial crisis erupted.

In 2016 hundreds of professional economists in a flurry of public missives warned variously of an immediate recession, soaring unemployment, financial market panic and a housing crash, yet none of this things occurred. To be sure, Britain’s economy is now a shadow of itself but that’s hardly the fault of leaving the European Union.

The reptiles returned to sup at the Prue well one more time, Sky News contributor Prue MacSween lauded Argentina’s President Javier Milei for his handling of the country’s economy. “I think the people have woken up,” Ms MacSween said. “These woke socialist governments, who really have no ability to manage economies, all they can do is spend.”

Sheesh, luckily the pond had already fulfilled its woke contractual obligations, but what's with this  imagining yourself as the sociopathic lead in a horror movie?

Then it was time for Killer to wrap up in his inimitable IPA way, with the pond celebrating the absence of talk about masks ...

In 2020 some 122 Australian economists in a public letter promoted the economy- and society-crushing Covid restrictions that mountains of empirical evidence have since suggested saved barely any lives, lumbered Australia with massive debts, and would never have passed an honest cost-benefit analysis. They denied “a trade-off between the public health and economic aspects of the crisis”, claiming it was a “false distinction”.

None of this is to smear all economists or economics; indeed, Milei was an economist himself. But it’s a reminder to beware conventional wisdom, and the inevitable tendency of economists in the modern era to have a bias toward bigger government, which often through academic grants, commissions and salary underpins their livelihoods.

Finally, for all the authority official macroeconomic forecasts enjoy in the media, they have a notoriously bad track record.

Brilliant macroeconomists can’t even agree on what causes inflation, perhaps the most fundamental question.

When Jim Chalmers considers the range of proposals for reform after his productivity summit, he shouldn’t be afraid to ignore the conventional economic wisdom that tends to beget more regulation. The example of Argentina should be a striking inspiration for a Treasurer genuinely interested in promoting Australian prosperity.

Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Perhaps Killer's right. 

Perhaps it's better to be Argentina than Brazil?

Per Paul Krugman ...Trump's Dictator Protection Program, Using tariffs to fight democracy

And so on and speaking of King Donald and AI, the pond was enchanted by these musings...

If you scrolled down, you could find this droll New Yorker cartoon...

And what about this attempt to satiate the pond's taste for puns?

Okay, the pond has done its best to distract, and to titillate, and to delay the moment, but the pond is a firm believer in happy endings, and now it's on with the main course ...

Drum roll Maestro, as Our Henry takes to the stage ...

Of course it's never a good time of late for the old bigot, what with all the ethnic cleansing proposals doing the rounds, you know to set up gigantic concentration camps in Gaza in a style much loved by Nazis (some suggest perfected by Stalin with gulags), and the killing fields continuing active, Israeli strike kills at least 10 children queueing for medical treatment...

Never mind, Our Henry is only a five minute distraction from all that:

The header: Victoria fails to stem the explosion of anti-Semitism in the state

To claim that there’s a gap between the Allan government’s actions and the comprehensive proposals set out by Jillian Segal, would be a mistake. There isn’t a gap; there’s an abyss.

The caption: Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan visits the East Melbourne synagogue. Picture: NewsWire/Ian Currie

The desire to escape: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The pond began to feel a deep sympathy for Victorians ...

Last week, after a potentially fatal arson attack on a synagogue and an assault on an Israeli restaurant, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan finally seized the initiative.

Declaring “there is no place for anti-Semitism”, she proudly announced that she was establishing a taskforce. What daring! What boldness! And what originality! The perpetrators must be quaking in their boots.

But the reality is that there is a place for anti-Semitism in Australia: it’s called Victoria.

To claim that there’s a gap between the Allan government’s actions and the comprehensive proposals set out by Jillian Segal, the federal government’s special envoy to combat anti-Semitism, would consequently be a mistake. There isn’t a gap; there’s an abyss.

That abyss hasn’t emerged by accident. It comes from persistently ignoring unpleasant truths. If Allan is genuinely committed to “truth telling” she should start by acknowledging the truths she has long sought to avoid.

The first and most obvious is the role that significant elements in the Muslim community have played in the current wave of anti-Semitism. That Muslims are fully entitled to have and express strong views about the Middle East scarcely needs to be said. It is clear, too, that there are real differences within Islam and within Islamic communities themselves.

Ah, but wait for it, whenever our Henry purports tolerance, there's always a very big billy goat butt...

But recognising those differ­ences cannot be an excuse for ignoring the anti-Semitism that has marched hand-in-hand with the growth in Australia’s Muslim population.

That development should have come as no surprise.

Surveys consistently find that between 65 per cent and 90 per cent of respondents in Muslim majority countries are deeply anti-Semitic, with many believing, for example, the so-called blood libel, which alleges that Jews murder children so to make ritual use of their blood.

Equally, in western Europe Muslims are up to six times more likely than non-Muslims to consider Jews untrustworthy, arrogant, aggressive and money-grasping – and the gap is even greater in terms of the strength with which those views are held.

Hang on, hang on, the pond won't have News Corp's proud Islamophobic traditions sullied by a few faux statistics ...

This in from the Brookings Institute last year, Prejudice toward Muslims is highest among all religious and ethnic groups ...

Sure it's about the USA, but given our Henry's routine, relentless ranting about Islamics, it probably applies in the local hive mind.

As an atheist, the pond has no time for any of the theocrats, Iranian or Israeli, but does believe in fair dibs for bigots.

Back to the read ...

Australian governments allowed those prejudices to be imported into Australia. They then let Islamists entrench and inflame them. Yes, it is hard to reason people out of ideas they haven’t been reasoned into. But, as Segal points out, far too little was done to nip them in the bud, so have they festered and spread.

And even when the prejudices turned into action after October 7, 2023, our governments baulked, mainly out of political opportunism, at holding those who spread the poison to account.

How, to take but one example, did the Victorian government react when a prominent member of its Multicultural Commission – whose mission is to promote tolerance – reposted a social media claim that the IDF has a deliberate strategy of killing Palestinian babies so as to eliminate the Palestinian people? It said nothing and did less.

It would be, however, a serious error to focus only on the Muslim element in the explosion of anti-Semitism. Rather, if that element mattered, it was largely because of its confluence with the political left.

Um, perhaps because this very day there came news of more killings of children and ongoing talk of the need to herd Palestinian people into concentration camps before shipping them to parts unknown?

Never mind, no flowers for them in the hive mind, Flowers left at the door of the synagogue that was firebombed. Picture: NewsWire/ David Crosling

Our Henry is famous for his references to ancient times, but he was pretty feeble this day ...

Fragmented into a bewildering galaxy of warring identity groups that lacks any unifying ideal, today’s left is bound together solely by its shared hatreds. Moreover, whatever those groups’ weaknesses, they are first-rate haters, who never tire of venting their adolescent fury.

The ancient Greeks, who thought deeply about rage, believed it differed fundamentally from ordinary anger. Anger had a defined focus; rage was labile, readily shifting from one object to another. Characteristic of personal immaturity, it was by its nature opportunistic, rushing to the target of the moment, like a child rushing to a new toy.

That's the best he could do?

For those bored by the familiarity of it all, please allow the pond to suggest that David Brooks in The Atlantic offered a feast of humbuggery ... Why Do So Many People Think That Trump Is Good?

The work of the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre helps illuminate some central questions of our time. (that's an archive link)

With the sort of stupidity that only Brooks can muster and our Henry must envy, the piece references Athens, the middle ages, the 17th century religious wars and the Enlightenment, while peddling the notion that it all went wrong a mere 60 years ago with the rise of "hyper-indivisualism".

No mention of that astonishing American Civil War, or for that matter, the robber barons, Father Coughlin, nineteen century nativism, Know-Nothings, Charles Lindbergh and the first America First, Joe McCarthy, etc, etc, yadda yadda ...

Sorry, back to blaming Victorians for everything (how tempting it is for cockroaches and toads and Henrys)...

Nowhere was that dynamic clearer than in Victoria, where the left was stronger and more firmly socially embedded than in the other states.

It was in Victoria that the politics of hatred kicked off, with the prosecution – or better, persecution – of Cardinal George Pell setting the ball rolling. After that there was no stopping the lynch mobs as the normalisation of hatred spawned the excesses of #MeToo, the rise of extreme climate activism, the brutal suppression of dissenting opinion during the pandemic and the vilification of those who advocated a No vote in the voice referendum.

The reptiles dropped in a snap, Special Envoy to Combat anti Semitism, Jillian Segal during a press conference on Thursday. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

The pond was tremendously impressed by Segal's suggestion to strip funding from universities and such like as a way to limit free speech.

It was straight out of the King Donald playbook, and sure to be a great success. But as the Australian government is currently contemplating sundry recommendations to strip various bodies of funding for not conforming to government diktats, it did occur to the pond however that there might be better targets in plain sight ...

Physician heal thyself?

Not so long ago in the Graudian came up with a story ... Australian government gave $2.7m to Elon Musk’s X for advertisements in billionaire’s first year as owner, Exclusive: Spending came after the Albanese government paused ads for a week amid reports ads were appearing next to inappropriate content

Given the recent Grokking and other Leon related events, surely X is worth more than a pause?

Not so fast Sherlock. Still up this day ...

Australian Government

@ausgov

The latest official news, updates and advice from the Australian Government.

Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

@pmc_gov_au

Australian Government Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet or PM&C for short. Policies: http://pmc.gov.au/privacy & http://pmc.gov.au/social-media

Australian Labor

@AustralianLabor

Official account of the Australian Labor Party. Authorised by P. Erickson, Australian Labor Party, Canberra.

@AlboMP

Building Australia’s future. 🇦🇺 Prime Minister of Australia. Grayndler MP. Authorised by Anthony Albanese, ALP, Canberra.

And so on and on ...and with that horse still roaming freely, back to Henry ...

Time and again, Victoria’s Labor government deployed massive resources of public funds and coercive power on the haters’ side, adding to their momentum.

It was therefore utterly predictable that once the war in Gaza broke out – giving the extremists an irresistible target and allowing them to add an Islamic component to their disparate coalition – the politics of hatred would soar to new heights, fuelling the escalating attacks on Jews.

But when it came to protecting the Jewish community, the power and resources of the Victorian government – which had no qualms about spending $2.1m of taxpayers’ money defending a school principal against claims he had refused to curb persistent anti-Semitism – all too often vanished.

Rather than assuring public security, as Segal urges, there was neglect aggravated by ineptitude.

How is it, for example, that the perpetrators of the arson attack on Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue remain at large? And how is it that only three charges have been laid against those allegedly involved in the assault on the Miznon restaurant, when two dozen people appear to have been involved?

Allan argues that her government has merely respected the right to protest. But even putting aside the blatantly selective nature of its respect for that right, it is beyond question that the right to protest has never conferred a right to threaten, harass or attack.

At this point the reptiles knew how to turn off the pond completely, Former prime minister Tony Abbott has called for a major police crackdown on protests following an attempted arson attack at a Melbourne Synagogue. Mr Abbott says Jewish Australians have been under relentless attack since October 7, 2023. “There’s nothing to stop them [police] cracking down hard on these pro-Hamas, Jew-hatred protests,” Mr Abbott said.

Why do they always feature this smirking boofhead, friend of authoritarians of the Hungarian kind, incapable of finding an ICE round up he didn't like?

Time to wrap up our Henry with an arcane legal reference ...

Nor has the freedom of association ever encompassed preventing others from peaceably associating, be it in a restaurant or a place of worship.

On the contrary, as Higgins J determined, as far back as 1922, in Melbourne Corporation v Barry, a claim “on the part of persons so minded to assemble to the detriment of others having equal rights (has) no authority whatever in favour of it”.

The government therefore had an obligation to prevent so-called protests that were merely vigilante actions aimed at intimidating, if not destroying, their victims. Shirking that obligation, it allowed them to proceed, with the Miznon incident being just the latest outrage.

At the same time, the government stood passively by as cultural and educational institutions caved into plainly anti-Semitic demands, normalising attacks on Jews. Those institutions, Segal proposes, should forfeit public support; there isn’t a single instance in Victoria where that occurred. Little wonder, then, that the situation deteriorated so badly. But faced with that deterioration, all Allan has done is to postpone, yet again, the decisions the situation demands.

But it may already be too late. Too late to stem the hatred, to which she has given free rein. Too late to restore confidence, which has been shattered by her government’s refusal to act. And worst of all, too late for the truth, which has been drowned in the euphemisms, cliches, lies and empty promises that are the death rattle of a once great state.

Indeed, it may be too late ... too late to stem the hatred, too late to restore confidence, too late to stop the slaughter, the ongoing genocide, the ethnic cleansing, the killing fields, and that gigantic concentration camp hovering as a final solution.

Have an infallible Pope to celebrate making it to the end ... celebrating the sort of sanctions our Henry and the onion muncher would surely find an inspiration ...

The pond didn't see anything in Our Henry's outing this day that would add to the previously established and scientifically proven Laws Of Henry, but is always keen to hear from correspondents with fresh suggestions.

In the meantime, the pond would like to offer a bonus ...

For weeks now, the reptiles have terrified the pond with suggestions that AUKUS was doomed.

Terrifying, because the pond had hoped that AUKUS was indeed doomed, and knew that whatever the reptiles suggested, the opposite was likely true.

Joe, lesser member of the Kelly gang, tried to set the record straight this day, and as it was only a three minute read, what the heck Archy, toujours gai ...

The header: AUKUS review may take months as critics take aim at Eldridge Colby, The Pentagon’s AUKUS review has only just started and the leader of the process, Elbridge Colby, is being attacked for blindsiding the White House on key policy calls.

The caption: US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby. Picture: Bloomberg

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

The pond pretty much already knew all this from Politico from a few days ago ... Pentagon policy chief’s rogue decisions have irked US allies and the Trump administration, Even for an administration with a knack for moving fast and breaking things, Elbridge Colby’s moves at the Pentagon have caused frustration and friction (that's an archive link)

But the pond does encourage the hive mind to keep up ...and there were no distracting snaps, so toujours gai ... it could be downed in a gulp ...

The Pentagon review into AUKUS is just beginning and will likely take months to conclude, but the leader of the process – Elbridge Colby – is already drawing fire from nameless critics within the Washington establishment who claim he is overstepping his authority on key foreign policy issues.

Colby, the Under Secretary of Defence for Policy, is being attacked by anonymous sources in the US media who say that he has driven several decisions that have gone on to surprise the State Department, Congress, American allies and the White House itself.

The key moment this week came when Donald Trump revealed he had reversed a pause on defensive weapons deliveries to Ukraine, saying he was unsure who had halted the shipments in the first place.

US media reports are fingering Colby as the key man responsible, with his critics saying that the defence policy chief had got too far ahead of the administration on the Ukraine issue.

Politico quoted one source as saying that “he (Colby) is pissing off just about everyone I know inside the administration” and “they all view him as the guy who’s going to make the United States do less in the world in general”.

There are several relevant take-outs from this situation for Australia.

First, The Australian can reveal that the Pentagon’s AUKUS review is not imminent and will not be delivered within 30 days. In fact, it is only now just beginning and is expected to take some time.

This will most likely be months rather than weeks.

Second, this means that Colby’s experience with Ukraine could influence both how far the AUKUS review is prepared to go – in terms of recommending changes – and how seriously they are taken by the administration.

Having overruled Colby once – if the US reports are right – there is no reason why the President would not overrule him again if he disagreed with the review’s proposals on AUKUS. This is a reminder that it is Trump who will end up calling the shots and that reviews often end up gathering dust in backrooms.

“We are sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine,” the President said at his cabinet meeting on Tuesday (local time). “And I’ve approved that.”

Pressed on who made the call to pause the shipments last week, the President replied: “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

Third, Australia knows that Colby is the key intellectual force behind the direction of US defence policy. The recent wave of criticism that Colby has attracted shows he is prepared to test boundaries and push the envelope.

Charged with leading the development of the next US National Defence Strategy, Colby has been blamed for blindsiding the State Department and the White House on several issues – including the AUKUS review itself.

Fourth, that Colby’s past scepticism of AUKUS is the exception rather than the rule. The weight of support within the Trump administration runs heavily in favour of the agreement – from congress, to the State Department, and to the White House.

Australian ministers and officials remain fully engaged across the US system on the Colby Review and, so far, have been encouraged by the depth and breadth of support for the overall AUKUS enterprise.

Speaking at his confirmation hearing in March, Colby said that it was a “great idea” for Australia to have nuclear submarines. But he placed conditions on his support.

“There is a very real threat of a conflict in the coming years, God forbid,” he said.

“And our attack submarines … are absolutely essential for making the defence of Taiwan or otherwise a viable and practical option.

“So if we can produce the attack submarines in sufficient number and sufficient speed, then great. But if we can’t, that becomes a very difficult problem.”

And with that, night fears and terror temporarily abated, there's nothing left to do but close with an immortal Rowe, also on topic. It goes without saying that the pond has Tzu's The Art of War on its desk, always open, packed with good advice on how to deal with the hive mind ...