In which the pond's Monday hive mind coverage swells to quartet size with the bromancer, Lord Downer, the cratering Caterist and the Major at the 19th hole...

 

As usual, the reptiles have chosen to entirely ignore the fuss surrounding King Donald, by appointment to his Majesty, noble protector of paedophiles, no thanks to them for completely failing to pay attention to this matter.

Perhaps it's just the logarithms, but what a right royal carry on, what with that giant pillock Leon joining in ...Elon Breaks Silence on Trump’s Epstein File Demand to MAGA

And what about the rest of the fun? 

Such as the conspiracy theory of the 12th/never kind, featuring the mighty Marge ... He seeded clouds over Texas. Then came the conspiracy theories. 

At least there'll be no more flooding in Texas once the cloud seeding is stopped (btw, the pond has a barely used opera house for sale, marked down to cost for chem trail lovers).

That's what happens when you have a President that cultivates the poorly educated, though sometimes your own conspiracies - the ones with Clinton on that island - can come back to bite you on your portly, kingly bum ...

But it's not the pond's pleasure to celebrate international loonery this day. 

The pond's onerous burden is to study the hive mind at the lizard Oz ... and so this day the pond scored the usual serve of fear mongering about a failure to bend the knee, tug the forelock, and kiss the ring...

Ben led the way in packing it ...

DIPLOMATIC TIGHTROPE
Albanese in dire straits on subs call for Taiwan
The PM is on a collision course with Donald Trump’s AUKUS review chief, refusing to bow to demands Australia pre-commit US-supplied submarines to a potential American war with China.
By Ben Packham

Just below him came the bromancer, serving up his usual servile stew of rampant hysteria ...

The header: Elbridge Colby asks the questions – perhaps it’s time for Anthony Albanese to reply, US Under Secretary of Defence Elbridge Colby seems determined to spoil Anthony Albanese’s excellent adventure in China.
The caption: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese meeting Shanghai Party President Chen Jining in Shanghai. Picture: Ben Packham
The mysterious proposal: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The bromancer is still using that El bridge too far to give comrade Albo and his mob a hard time? Yup ...

US Under Secretary of Defence Elbridge Colby seems determined to spoil Anthony Albanese’s excellent adventure in China. Through inspired leaks, short interviews and posts on X, Colby keeps asking questions Albanese simply cannot answer.
Because Colby is asking these questions semi-publicly, they are figuring in Albanese press conferences, to the Prime Minister’s acute discomfort.
The Albanese government seems to bend with whichever wind is blowing strongest. At the moment, it’s caught in a veritable vortex of winds spinning in many contradictory directions.
For months neither Albanese nor Penny Wong would utter a word of criticism of any action by the People’s Republic of China, including aggressive naval displays around Australia. When the contrast of this mute subservience to whatever Beijing deemed reasonable with the extreme discomfort of the Albanese government with Donald Trump became too glaring we suddenly got a crash course in government muddle.
Wong made a speech in which she briefly drew attention to Beijing’s massive nuclear and conventional military build-up. Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles have complained that this build-up lacks transparency.
This is, to use a technical term, nonsense. There’s nothing opaque about Beijing’s military build-up and aggressive regional actions. The intimidation and war rehearsal are almost crystalline in clarity. But it takes a lot of gumption to complain of Beijing’s illegal island building and the extreme aggressiveness of its military behaviour. So instead, we imply apparently everything would be fine if Beijing were just more “transparent” about it. Go figure.
Famously, when a PRC naval task force circumnavigated Australia, Albanese wouldn’t say boo to Beijing; if anything defending it publicly by saying it hadn’t broken international law and the Australian navy also sails at sea.
Yet now we find out that Wong raised concerns about this circumnavigation when she met her Chinese counterpart. Why didn’t Albanese have something critical to say about it at the time?
The belated Wong intervention looks like a sign of a government momentarily scared into a spasm of good policy. And all this might not be unrelated to Colby, who is undertaking a Pentagon review of AUKUS. One request that Colby makes of the Albanese government is unreasonable, and that is to commit formally, in advance, to deploy any AUKUS subs we have into active combat in support of any US conflict with the PRC over Taiwan or more broadly.
It’s completely unreasonable to ask any nation to commit in advance to waging war in some hypothetical future contingency. Albanese is right to dismiss it. The US doesn’t make such pronouncements. Indeed, as a questioner pointed out at Albanese’s press conference, the US official policy on reacting to PRC aggression on Taiwan is strategic ambiguity.
The US can’t practice strategic ambiguity itself and simultaneously demand that Australia make pre-emptive declarations of a willingness to go to war.

Lordy, lordy, the pond's maiden aunt just fainted at the notion that the El bridge too far had made a completely unreasonable demand. 

Cue a snap of the man, US Under Secretary of Defence Elbridge Colby. Picture: Bloomberg

Whenever the bromancer puts up a billy goat butt, he immediately folds, which is why the pond yearns to play him at poker ...

However, the very fact Colby is now asking this question shows how far alliance intimacy has deteriorated. The Trump/Albanese combination is inherently dangerous for the US/Australia alliance.
When the Americans under Joe Biden first agreed to sell Australia three to five Virginia-class submarines, they knew there would be no formal Australian commitment to fighting a war in advance. But the two nations were such close allies that it was inconceivable that US service men and women would be fighting and dying to save a Pacific democracy and Australia would be washing its hair that night instead.

It took just a tweet...

It's not just AI that could write a column in the bromancer style, the pond reckons it could manage it by just doing clipping and pasting of things repeated a zillion times ...

But Trump is so transactional, while Albanese, through his extremely anaemic military budget, has shown how allergic he is to any serious effort on defence. So the old intimacy has broken down on both sides. Trump is capricious about allies, Albanese has no gravity or commitment on defence and security. All Colby’s other concerns are sound, even compelling, and Albanese has no answer.
Australia’s defence effort is presently so pathetic that it has no ground-based missile defences for its northern bases, although this was recommended in the Defence Strategic Review. Therefore, in the event of any hostilities, Australia cannot even defend its vital military assets. America would have to do that for us.

The reptiles' visual interruptions are just as tiresome and predictable, Foreign Minister Penny Wong met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of an ASEAN meeting in Malaysia on Saturday. Picture: Supplied/DFAT

Does anybody under 60 care what the reptiles scribble?

We have a hundred other critical defence inadequacies. We can’t provide these basic capabilities with our defence budget at 2 per cent of GDP. How can the US even take us seriously as a military ally if we are so derelict in basic defence responsibilities?
Colby also wants the Australian government to own up to what it means to have an alliance with the US and joint capabilities based in Australia.
Colby also asks tough questions of his own nation. The US has not increased the rate of building nuclear submarines to a level to make selling some to Australia realistic. The AUKUS deal we signed up to involves the US president, in 2031, deciding whether it’s militarily prudent to sell such subs to Australia. Technically, he could say no, and not be in breach of the agreement.
Colby is doing an immense public service by getting all these issues into the public discourse. It is, for connoisseurs, a small delight that this is all happening while ­Albanese undertakes his prime ministerial long march through the PRC.
As a nation, however, we should be more than a little abashed that it takes a feisty American official to force the PM to begin to answer, so far wholly unsatisfactorily, the most basic questions of strategic purpose and capability.

Might the pond suggest an answer? 

Fuck the bromancer, fuck Colby, fuck the entire court of King Donald, serving at the whim of a narcissistic grifter and snake oil salesman, fuck them and their many, all to obvious attempts at a shakedown ...

The same answer might apply to Lord Downer, making his Monday appearance at the bottom of the extreme far right pack ...

The reptiles have been busy importing the hounds of war, barking at the moon...

The Wall Street Journal
In the hills of Australia, Pacific allies are training to fight Beijing

Multinational manoeuvres are the new normal as the Australia, the US and Japan prepare for a possible confrontation with China over Taiwan.
Mike Cherney

But when getting on a war footing, turn to the man who knows how to turn a shapely leg ...

Watch how the heels and stockings send Beijing packing ...

The header: PM’s neglect of US alliance puts region in danger, Anthony Albanese joins a long line of Labor leaders committed to selfish isolationism, a position Xi Jinping will note with pleasure.
The caption: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during a press conference in Shanghai on Sunday. Picture: ABC
The relentlessly repeated advice: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Apparently the news of King Donald's tariff war with the entire world, and in particular the United States' allies, has failed to reach Lord Downer, and so he sails in, in sublime ignorance ...

Australia can either contribute to the huge task of upholding the liberal democratic world order or it can retreat into anaemic neutrality and leave that task to America, Japan, the UK and a few Europeans.
Reading Anthony Albanese’s Curtin Lecture confirmed my worst fears.
We’re retreating. We’re becoming critical commentators not contributors to the security of free peoples. And this week the Prime Minister is rushing to catch up with China’s unelected dictator, Xi Jinping, before he’s even met the President of the United States. The symbolism is stark.
The Prime Minister of all of us recently used the platform of a memorial lecture to make tiresome partisan points about the history of Australian security policy. Of course John Curtin favoured America’s involvement in the Pacific war but remember America didn’t enter war against Japan to defend Australia: US president Franklin Roosevelt entered World War II after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. And the US entered the war against Germany as well as Japan. The Americans knew that to win the war they would have to join their great allies – Great Britain, Australia, Canada, South Africa, India and the Soviet Union – in a worldwide effort to defeat totalitarian aggression. But to suggest Curtin invented the US alliance, as Albanese does, is pathetic.
You may as well argue Alfred Deakin did when he invited the Great White Fleet to visit Australia in 1908. Or what about World War I? The first time Australians fought with Americans was at the Battle of Le Hamel – not under the American General Pershing but under our great national hero, Sir John Monash.

Desperate, pathetic, pitiful stuff, but then it is Lord Downer, and the reptiles reminded the pond of Adelaide hills croweaters by running a repeat of the Playmander man, Former SA premier Thomas Playford with former prime minister John Curtin at Adelaide Railway Station in 1948.

The snaps are tiresomely repetitious and so is the patter ...

No, we’d bonded with the American passion for freedom long before John Curtin. But it was the redoubtable Robert Menzies who eventually concluded the alliance with the US in 1951. That was the real birth of the alliance. And Mr Albanese might be interested to know his beloved Labor Party at that time opposed the ANZUS alliance.
The Labor Party has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to give any support whatsoever to the American alliance. Albanese joins a long line of Labor leaders who are committed to selfish isolationism. Their vision of national security is that our own defence force will be able to fight off any invasion of Australia, and that’s the end of their strategic thinking. As for the US alliance, well, maybe the Americans would help if we were attacked, so it’s worth keeping. That’s it. That’s what Albanese argued in the Curtin lecture.
Alliances are not a one-way street. An alliance has a much deeper philosophical and strategic meaning. It is a mutual commitment to the defence of our shared values of liberal democracy and individual freedom. What the current Australian government seems to forget is there is a clear link between the Western response to the Ukraine war, to the challenge by Iran to Israel’s very existence and to China’s aggression in the South China Sea and towards Taiwan. Russia, China and Iran have all been collaborating against the West.

The pond occasionally sheds a tear for Afghanistan women, and those Afghanis who helped out, and sought shelter in America, and are now being ICEd out. 

Jolly Joe might have executed the plan, but it was King Donald and his minions who have been at the centre of the betrayals, and all they get is a court case.

So much for one way street alliances, and so to a distraction, Foreign Minister Penny Wong has expressed her concern over China's surging military capabilities, ahead of the Prime Minister's trip to Beijing this weekend. The Senator, who is in Malaysia attending the ASEAN foreign ministers meeting, claims China's lack of transparency about its nuclear and conventional military build-up is becoming more concerning. She says Donald Trump's Indo-Pacific policies to counterweight China are necessary. Anthony Albanese will spend six days in China, where he will meet with President Xi Jinping.

As often happens, Lord Downer remains stuck in the 1950s, or even earlier, and if the reptiles run yet another snap of Ming the Merciless, the pond might be tempted to run screaming from the room:

The West needs a strong network of mutually reinforcing alliances to counter this threat. Just naively focusing on national self-defence and not the broader defence of the interest of the world’s liberal democracies is selfish isolationism, leaving that challenge to the world order from autocracies to others. Yet if that order breaks down, so will our own security. To make that alliance work we are mutually committed to supporting each other when our interests are endangered.
In World War II, our interests and values were challenged by the Axis powers, not Japan alone. Menzies and Curtin understood that, and it explains why we were quick to make a contribution to the fight for freedom in September 1939 and continued to do so until VP Day in August 1945.

They did, they did, Robert Menzies concluded the alliance with the US in 1951.

It took all of the pond's waning strength to carry on, as Lord Downer went into war monger mode ...

Likewise we contributed in Korea, to the successful fight against communism in Malaya (opposed by Labor), to trying to stop the spread of communism through Southeast Asia, in particular in Vietnam; and that commitment to mutual support explains why we made a contribution in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Our country has always been one of the few that is a warrior for liberal democracy and the defence of Western civilisation.
Or at least we were. There is a real sense that has come to an end. We are retreating into selfish isolationism. We are withdrawing from our traditional support for liberal democracy and mutual reinforcement of alliances into a concept of self-defence at our borders. To be secure, Australia needs a stable world and in particular a stable Indo-Pacific region.
Australia itself will never have the power to underwrite the stability of the whole region. That requires the engagement of the US in regional security architecture. To engage the US, the Americans need a network of supportive alliances.
Although the US has alliances with The Philippines and Thailand, the most important alliances it has in the region are with Japan to the north and Australia to the south. Our alliance and historically close personal relationships with the leadership of the US have also given us significant prestige and soft power in the Indo-Pacific region.

Cue some dropkick loser in an AV distraction, Deputy Nationals Leader Kevin Hogan highlights Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s trip to China, reiterating there has been a distinct lack of contact with the United States. “China as you know, our biggest trading partner, so it’s an important relationship with all the things we sell to them as well … he’s having a six-day visit to China which I think is a good thing, but cant even get a phone call to the President of the United States,” Mr Hogan told Sky News Australia. “I draw the distinction, unfortunate that with a very important ally like the United States, a national security partner and also a very important economic partner, I don’t even think there’s been a phone call.”

Has Lord Downer paid the slightest attention? 

The Japan Times reports confusion and chaos, U.S. urges clarity on Japan's role in potential war over Taiwan, report says, The move reportedly caught Japanese officials off-guard, since the U.S. itself maintains a policy of "strategic ambiguity" on whether or not it would defend Taiwan.

And what about tariffs? The rag was busy regurgitating the NY Times in As Trump sows tariff confusion, rules of global commerce give way to chaos.

Thank the long absent lord the pond doesn't have to pay attention to Lord Downer ...

All of the countries of the region know how close Australia is – or has been – to the leadership of the US and given the strategic, military and economic power of the US, including in the region, and given Australia’s close relationships with ASEAN countries and Northeast Asia, this gives Australia a particularly influential role.
These days, Australia no longer has those close personal relationships with the Americans. During the Prime Minister’s visit to China, Beijing officials will be well aware of that. That substantially weakens his status and negotiating clout with China. If Albanese were close to Trump then China would listen carefully to what our Prime Minister had to say about broader geopolitical issues. As it is, Beijing will be satisfied with micro negotiations over trade issues and avoid embarrassing questions about China’s support for Russia in Ukraine and its support over many years for Iran and North Korea.
Traditionally, Australia would have welcomed the successes of Trump. But Xi Jinping will note with pleasure Australia has been reluctant to do more than retreat into mindless rhetoric about “de-escalation” making no contribution whatsoever to securing the interest of liberal democracy and the free world. That was the message of Albanese’s Curtin lecture.
Alexander Downer is a former foreign minister and high commissioner., now chair of UKthink tank Policy Exchange.

The successes of King Donald? Oh you foolish, servile fop.

And so to the quarry whispering Caterist, back in his usual Monday slot ...

The header: Suitability, loyalty must be restored to immigration debate, We have forgotten that the first requirement for an orderly and fair migration system is that screening should be conducted prior to departure.
The caption: Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke. Picture: Thomas Lisson
The tedious beyond measure proposal: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Before going on, the pond would like to note this story in The Graudian ...

And so on, and that will come in handy contemplating both the quarry whisperer and the Major, and want some more gross over-reach? 

The flood water whisperer and the Major are standing by ...

It has taken 16 months for officials to decide that Maha Almassri does not meet the character test for an Australian visa. At 5am last Thursday, Gaza Gran, as some media dubbed her, was detained at a Bankstown home and taken to the Villawood detention centre. Outraged Palestinian activists, friends and family grabbed their keffiyehs and Palestinian flags and staged a protest outside the electorate office of the Home Affairs Minister. The Australian reported a crowd of about 50 people chanted “Tony Burke, you can’t hide, you’re supporting genocide”.
If the object of the demonstration was to harden public sentiment towards a tougher immigration policy, they should congratulate themselves on a job well done. Their disagreeable performance amplified Jillian Segal’s call for visa applicants to be screened for extremist views.

Cue a snap of the reptiles' heroine, Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal. Picture: NewsWire/Nikki Short

The Caterist almost goes the full Leon/King Donald/apartheid South Africans are the best migrants/white replacement theory routine ...

“Migration policies must guard against the importation of hate,” the Special Envoy to Combat Anti-Semitism wrote in a timely report last week. “Non-citizens involved in anti-Semitism should face visa cancellation and removal from Australia.”
Australians have been more than generous in welcoming refugees since the late 1940s when Ben Chifley’s Labor government signed a resettlement agreement with the International Refugee Organisation. Yet in recent decades, we’ve become too nervous to spell out the most important condition of entry, namely the intention to assimilate. We have also forgotten that the first requirement for an orderly and fair migration system is that screening should be conducted prior to departure. Offshore processing maintains sovereign control and lessens the influence of special pleading. It allows proper health, security and character checks, and avoids queue jumping.

Naturally there was a snap to instil fear in the hive mind, A protest in response to the minister revoking the visa of a 61-year-old Palestinian refugee Maha Almassri. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Of course as an unrepentant former Pom the Caterist feels safein his bunker ...

From the 1980s, however, growing numbers of asylum-seekers began arriving by air on tourist visas, then applying for refugee status onshore. The Keating government introduced mandatory detention in 1992 to deter unauthorised arrivals, but still allowed onshore refugee applications. John Howard’s reaction to the Tampa incident in 2001 was to introduce offshore processing in Nauru and PNG. The expansion of temporary protection visas under the Rudd and Gillard governments provided an incentive for asylum tourism from Malaysia, China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam and other countries. Unfounded post-arrival claims from applicants who entered on tourist and student visas abounded, clogging the bureaucracy and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
Bridging visas allow applicants to stay for years, with unprincipled immigration lawyers and agents smoothing the way.
The Albanese government’s decision to bypass offshore processing for sanctuary seekers from Gaza showed the extent to which onshore processing had become normalised. The government evoked the urgency of granting protection as the reason for the ad hoc granting of tourist visas. The validity of their applications would be assessed in Australia before the Gazans graduated to a bridging visa, a tax file number and a Medicare card.

Heaven forfend anyone should notice the mass starvation, the ethnic cleansing and such like, as the reptiles showed off a dire threat to Australian security,  Gaza refugee Maha Almassri, whose home was raided after ASIO deemed the grandmother a security risk. Picture: Supplied

The pond almost fainted in fear.

Meanwhile ...

And now to get to the nub, the importing of the right sort of people...

Almassri reportedly received a bridging visa last June, four months after crossing the Gaza border and making her way to Australia, where she has family. Yet her ASIO assessment dragged on for over a year before the assistant minister, Julian Hill, finally acted on the advice to cancel her visa on character grounds, citing the national interest. This back-to-front process now leaves Almassri facing indefinite detention – since the government concedes that Gazans cannot be repatriated any time soon. A string of legal appeals on compassionate grounds is likely, and not without emotional pull. Just because ASIO assesses you to be a security threat doesn’t mean you’re not a loving grandmother.
Whatever threat Almassri may or may not pose, this drawn-out debacle serves no one – least of all the taxpayer, who is left funding a shemozzle born of confused compassion and contempt for due process.
Labor governments have not always been as soft-headed when assessing the character of would-be migrants. Nor has it always been taken for granted that migrants will know what is expected from them should their applications be successful.
The Chifley government went to enormous lengths to ensure displaced persons admitted in the aftermath of World War II had the best possible start as they embarked on a new life. The first contingent of 843 Australian-bound refugees who arrived in Perth in November 1947 on-board the US Army transport ship General Heintzelman had been rigorously pre-screened to ensure they were skilled, free of Nazi ideals, and willing to live under army camp conditions.
Upon arrival, they were taken to a former army camp at Bonegilla, Victoria, where they were given lessons in English, civics, hygiene, sanitation and Australian weights and measures.

Cue a snap of hard working types, Migrants from northern Europe wander along the road to the Hume Weir from their base at Bonegilla in 1947. The centre was set up that year, and trained 320,000 newcomers in the language and customs of their adopted home. It closed in 1971.

What's sad and funny about this? The pond can remember a time, in fact lived in a home, where southern Europeans - not just northern Europeans - were routinely dismissed as wogs.

Now here's a classic Caterist trick. 

Ravage the two wongs don't make a white man to establish your liberal credentials, and then suggest that maybe that Artie was right, that there's an important principle at stake.

Let Poms into the country, or at a pinch South Africans of the apartheid-loving kind, but that's about it ...

They were under contract to work on government-appointed projects for their first two years in Australia and subjected to what became known as the cane fields test: Did they have physical fitness and resolve to survive as a canecutter?
“The selection will be made not on humanitarian grounds, but on suitability,” the Hobart Mercury reported.
Chifley and his immigration minister, Arthur Calwell, are not easy subjects for the kind of revisionist treatment Albanese’s scriptwriters gave John Curtin recently. They probably wouldn’t want to dwell on the fate of the Alabama Kid, an African-American boxer, who was deported under the White Australia policy on the General Heintzelman’s return voyage. Calwell told reporters: “There’s an important principle at stake.”
Nonetheless, the principle that migrants should be processed offshore and selected on their ability to adapt and thrive as law-abiding Australian citizens must be restored, sooner rather than later. Albanese’s late-flowering commitment to stamp out anti-Semitism is a good start even if he has some catching up to do. Death-cult rhetoric, whatever its target, should be treated as an incitement to hatred. Strict sanctions must be enforced against those who pollute our public places by airing historical grievances.
All that should go without saying, regardless of the particular evil of anti-Semitism. Let’s stop mincing words. The right to permanent residency is an obligation to respect the Western values that underpin Australia’s extraordinary success. It requires acknowledgment that you are first and foremost an Australian or desire to become one.
An Australian passport is not like the Liberian ensign, an open registry that serves as a flag of convenience. It demand’s loyalty, not just paperwork.

Yadda, yadda, and yet if you happen to be Gout Gout, don't the reptiles just love his record-breaking ways ...

And so to the Major, and the pond realises that many will have dropped off the twig by now, but the pond always insists on going the extra yard, and hearing what the Major has to say when he drops into the nineteenth hole after an arduous round of hacking to hack out his standard serve of bigotry and bile ...

The header: Selective ‘context’ key to how journalists view Israel, In Melbourne and Sydney we regularly see demonstrations of anti-Semitism that look much like the rallies of 1930s Germany, yet reporters fail to challenge and highlight the misinformation feeding this ever-more dangerous situation.
The caption: Jillian Segal talks at a press conference in Sydney to discuss Anthony Albanese’s plans to combat anti-Semitism in Australia. Picture: Thomas Lisson
The meaningless advice: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Yes, it's all about "context", and here's how to gloss over mass starvation, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and murder. 

By invoking Nazis ...that's your context for today ...

“Israel doesn’t exist to placate the feelings of its detractors and defamers. It exists to protect Jewish life and uphold Jewish dignity in a world too intent on destroying both.”
That’s how Bret Stephens concluded his July 8 column in The New York Times.
It’s worth quoting to social media’s useful fools who daily repeat the historical inversions of deeply anti-Semitic propagandists, often driven by Iran, Qatar, China and Russia.
Sad to say even older journalists of the left quote the same prattle. They should understand how a civilised country such as Germany, home of some of history’s greatest classical music composers and philosophers, managed to allow a group of anti-Semitic young thugs, the Brownshirts, to morph into the Nazi SS determined to exterminate Jews.
It’s as if even educated adults have forgotten that six million Jews died in the Holocaust or that this was just the worst of hundreds of pogroms against Jews in Europe and the Middle East in the past 500 years.
It’s as if many in Australia don’t know Israel is the world’s only Jewish nation but 56 countries are Muslim UN members. Nor do they seem to know Muslims are the world’s fastest-growing demographic with almost two billion followers. Jews number only 14 million worldwide.

Cue a distracting snap, In early July, a man was charged with recklessly endangering life for allegedly setting fire to the East Melbourne Synagogue when some 20 people were inside. Picture: David Crosling/ NewsWire

Sure, that's bad, but how about this?

Then it's on with the propaganda, as innocent as P. G. Wodehouse, as deceptive as Lord Haw-Haw ...

Israel, with seven million Jews in a nation of nine million, is a vibrant democracy that lets its Arab, Druze and Bedouin citizens vote and elect members of any ethnicity or religion. Hamas won a single election in Gaza, then killed its Palestinian Authority rivals and banned further elections.
Like Islamist groups across the Middle East – Sunni and Shia – Hamas is formally committed to the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel.
In Melbourne and Sydney we see regular demonstrations of hate for Israel that look much like the rallies of 1930s Germany or of Islamists in Cairo, Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus in modern times.
Synagogues have been attacked in Sydney and Melbourne, Jewish neighbourhoods and childcare centres vandalised and cars fire-bombed in the same areas.
East Melbourne Synagogue, opened in 1857, was firebombed on Friday July 4. The same night protesters raided a Jewish city restaurant, Miznon, assaulting patrons and staff and chanting “death, death to the IDF”. Later three cars were bombed and a wall attacked with graffiti at Lovitt Technologies.

Cue a snap, Miznon restaurant in Melbourne was the target of an attack by protesters chanting ‘death to the IDF’. Picture: Nadir Kinani/NewsWire

Once the Major gets in this mood, there's no stopping him ...

Protesters defend the attacks at the restaurant and Lovitt by citing each establishment’s links to Israel.
They are blaming Jewish people who live 15,000km from Gaza for deaths there.
Such deaths, an immense tragedy, will continue because Hamas refuses to release the Israeli hostages it still holds.
That no protester here speaks for those hostages or for the dead, maimed and raped on October 7, 2023, speaks volumes about Jew hatred in Australia. In Israel, protesters advocate for innocent Gazans and for innocent Hamas hostages.
But here more than 300 members of the journalists’ trade union in late 2023 signed a petition saying the atrocities of October 7 could only be understood “in context’’. It was a coward’s way of turning a blind eye to the actual genocidal intent of Hamas.
Such thinking gives journalists reporting anti-Semitic incidents in Australia an excuse not to ask the obvious: how is what you are doing here helping Gazans?
At least Norman Hermant, interviewing one of the organisers of the raid on Miznon on ABC 7.30 on Monday, asked Gaye Demanuele how attacking diners in Melbourne would help people in Gaza.
Demanuele justified the attack by arguing one of the part owners of the restaurant, Shahar Segal, was also involved in the Gaza Humanitarian Fund distributing aid in Gaza.
Hermant asked: “Does it help your cause to be scaring diners on a Friday night in Melbourne?”
Demanuele answered: “Imagine lying in a hospital bed in a tent as a displaced person or trying to keep your starving children safe in a tent.”

Cue a snap, Palestinians gather at an aid distribution point set up by the privately run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation near the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. Picture: AFP

Might the Majorat this point go into details? The shootings and the killings of those lined up to get aid, the killing of children lined up at medical clinics, the relentless killings on a daily basis?

• Residents of Gaza City tell Al Jazeera that bodies are “lying in the streets” of the Zeitoun neighbourhood, as at least 54 people have been killed in the city today by Israel. At least 95 people have been killed across the Gaza Strip today.
• The number of starving Palestinian aid seekers killed by Israeli forces has surpassed 800, according to Gaza authorities, as malnutrition and starvation continue 

Oh the Major understands, he's got a tremendous imagination ...

Actually most Jews can imagine exactly that. But blaming Australians having dinner on the other side of the world is juvenile.
Nor should Demanuele’s condemnation of the Gaza Humanitarian Fund have been taken at face value.
The Israeli Defence Forces have produced video evidence – published last month by the Jerusalem Post – showing people killed after collecting GHF aid were set upon by Hamas operatives as they left the aid distribution centres.
It was the theft of UN aid by Hamas and its onselling for profit to ordinary Gazans that forced Israel and the US to stop supporting UN aid distribution. Israel does not trust the UN given the involvement of some UN staff in the October 7 attacks and the revelation of a Hamas command centre under the UN HQ in Gaza.
Readers interested in understanding how journalists think about Israel should listen to last week’s discussion by Antoinette Lattouf and Jan Fran on their new weekly We Used To Be Journos podcast. Both have Lebanese heritage.
Presumably neither would be happy if an Australian Lebanese restaurant was attacked by people blaming Australians of Lebanese heritage for 20 years of Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel launched from inside Lebanon.
Lattouf and Fran specifically look at coverage by The Age on Monday July 7 of the previous Friday’s attacks and the following Sunday’s regular pro-Palestinian march in Melbourne. They focus initially on Age stories published on Instagram, assuring listeners most young news consumers don’t get their news from mainstream media websites.
They don’t say this is the central problem with Australian anti-Semitism but it is. Nor do they discuss the social media algorithms that magnify anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic misinformation on platforms such as X, and TikTok.

Time for a favourite reptile villain, High-profile journalist Antoinette Lattouf.

On the Major ranted, demanding "context"...

Neither did they mention a piece from Quillette founding editor Claire Lehmann published in this masthead on July 5 showing how the Soviet Union began a campaign to build anti-Israel sentiment globally as far back as 1967.
They do demand more “context” from The Age, especially discussing the newspaper’s editorial that day. The paper condemned Sunday’s street march for lack of consideration of the victims of Friday night’s attacks. While never excusing the synagogue fire, the podcasters argue the Miznon and Lovitt attacks were justified by the respective Israel connections of each.
Their plea for “context” does not extend to context about whether Israel is indeed deliberately targeting aid recipients at GHF distribution points. Nor context about Hamas fighters deliberately hiding in tunnels under hospitals and schools.

The Major's context, a snap of his hero, Benjamin Netanyahu responded to attacks on Jews in Melbourne. Picture: GPO / AFP

The pond has noted it before, but as the Major wants context, will note it again ...

There's your context, there's a context doing Adolf and Stalin proud ...

Nor during discussion of The Age’s story on Israeli Prime Minister “and war criminal” Benjamin Netanyahu’s criticism of the Melbourne attacks do they give legal “context”: charges of genocide against him are contested by many countries that remain in contact with Netanyahu.
As if to highlight anti-Semitism envoy Jillian’s Segal’s comments about the role of media in spreading anti-Semitism, fill-in ABC Radio National breakfast show host Steve Cannane on Friday wasted half his 12-minute interview with her taking issue with the definition of anti-Semitism used in her report to the government the previous day.
Like many journalists on social media, Cannane focused on the Jewish Council of Australia’s criticism of Segal’s report. In political terms, it’s like the ABC always inviting Malcolm Turnbull or John Hewson to discuss the Liberal Party: fringe views from embittered critics.

And asking the Major for an opinion is a bit like asking genocide-loving defence minister Israel Katz?Because concentration camps are no longer a fringe view...

Some context. Mass starvation, ethnic cleansing and war crimes ...

Here, have a few closing cartoons to celebrate what the reptiles missed ...