In which Polonius and the dog botherer do Gaza, the onion muncher throws a stone, and Jennie again gasses the country ...

 

Thank you in advance for your attention to the many matters that will be raised in this Sunday meditation ...

A barking mad wannabe dictator, what could go wrong?

Eek, it's Dr Strangelove v. the Ruskis. 

Oh hang on, according to Tom Nichols in The Atlantic, it's just a distraction: Trump's Irresponsible Nuclear Threat, The president is rattling a nuclear saber as a distraction. (archive link)

Phew, that's a relief, and while at The Atlantic, the pond took in Rogé Karma's The Mystery of the Strong Economy Has Finally Been Solved, Turns out it wasn’t actually that strong. (archive link)

The Trump administration has found itself caught between deflecting blame for the weak economic numbers and denying the numbers’ validity. In an interview with CNN this morning, Miran admitted that the new jobs report “isn’t ideal,” but went on to attribute it to various “anomalous factors,” including data quirks and reduced immigration. (Someone should ask Miran why immigration is down.) And this afternoon, Trump posted a rant on Truth Social accusing the BLS commissioner of cooking the books to make him look bad. “I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY,” he wrote. “She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified.” He then went on to argue, not for the first time, that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell should be fired for hamstringing the economy with high interest rates. These defenses are, of course, mutually exclusive: If the bad numbers are fake, why should Trump be mad at Powell?
In these confused denials, one detects a shade of desperation on Trump’s part. Of course, everything could end up being fine. Maybe economists will be wrong and the economy will rebound with newfound strength in the second half of the year. But that’s looking like a far worse bet than it did just 24 hours ago.

And so on, and put it another way ...

And then it was on with Ross Andersen's Every Scientific Empire Comes to an End, America’s run as the premier techno-superpower may be over. (archive link)

Foreign researchers have recently been made to feel unwelcome in the U.S. They have been surveilled and harassed. The Trump administration has made it more difficult for research institutions to enroll them. Top universities have been placed under federal investigation. Their accreditation and tax-exempt status have been threatened. The Trump administration has proposed severe budget cuts at the agencies that fund American science—the NSF, the NIH, and NASA, among others—and laid off staffers in large numbers. Existing research grants have been canceled or suspended en masse. Committees of expert scientists that once advised the government have been disbanded. In May, the president ordered that all federally funded research meet higher standards for rigor and reproducibility—or else be subject to correction by political appointees.
Not since the Red Scare, when researchers at the University of California had to sign loyalty oaths, and those at the University of Washington and MIT were disciplined or fired for being suspected Communists, has American science been so beholden to political ideology. At least during the McCarthy era, scientists could console themselves that despite this interference, federal spending on science was surging. Today, it’s drying up.
Three-fourths of American scientists who responded to a recent poll by the journal Nature said they are considering leaving the country. They don’t lack for suitors. China is aggressively recruiting them, and the European Union has set aside a €500 million slush fund to do the same. National governments in Norway, Denmark, and France—nice places to live, all—have green-lighted spending sprees on disillusioned American scientists. The Max Planck Society, Germany’s elite research organization, recently launched a poaching campaign in the U.S., and last month, France’s Aix-Marseille University held a press conference announcing the arrival of eight American “science refugees.”

And so on, and the pond felt curiously light-headed and light-hearted, even a bit giggly, but if you cruise the magazines, soon enough you'll come across a downer, such as Mohammed R. Mhawish in The New Yorker, Treating Gaza’s Collective Trauma, In Gaza, where displaced children play games called “air strike” and act out death, the lack of mental-health resources has become another emergency.(*archive link)

After three hundred days of war, the UNRWA issued an analysis describing Gaza’s trauma as “chronic and unrelenting”—a collective embodiment of continuous traumatic stress disorder (C.T.S.D.), a condition that stems from living under relentless trauma. Unlike post-traumatic stress disorder, which sets in after a difficult experience, C.T.S.D. is what occurs when there is no end in sight. Gazans have adapted to chronic danger, living in a state of hypervigilance, emotional numbness, and dissociation amid the slow erasure of any imagined future.
The effect on children has been especially catastrophic. By 2024, UNICEF estimated that almost all of Gaza’s 1.2 million children require urgent mental-health and psychosocial support. Not a single child has been untouched by the war. Many aren’t sleeping, or they wake screaming throughout the night, clinging to their companions in terror. A number of children have developed speech problems. Some reënact bombings with stones, play games called “air strike,” or act out death.
By February, 2024, UNICEF estimated that at least seventeen thousand children were unaccompanied or had been separated from their families. By April of that year, the Gaza health ministry had documented more than twelve thousand wounded children, a number that, in 2025, has increased to fifty thousand killed or injured, according to a report by UNICEF. Alone, displaced, and traumatized, the children who are still alive are extremely psychologically vulnerable. Even before this most recent war, Gaza’s children were already showing signs of strain: a 2022 Save the Children survey found that eighty-four per cent felt fear and seventy-eight per cent lived with grief. In November, 2024, a report by the Community Training Center for Crisis Management found that ninety-six per cent of children living through this war feel that their death is imminent, and nearly half said that they want to die.

And so on, and sorry Mr Mhawish, what you really need is a serve of reptile stew, and after you've dined on that, you too will appreciate the finer points of mass starvation, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

You see, Mr Mhawish, the Zionist hive mind was very busy this weekend, with parade of useless idiots...

Useful idiots of the West target Israel with lies, blood libel
The left of politics and gullible media go to extreme lengths to vilify Israel. Why are so many eager to swallow these lies?
By Gemma Tognini
Columnist

The pond has already noted Julie conflating a demonstration with anti-Semitism:

Making a national icon a symbol of anti-Semitism is a bridge way too far
The Palestine Action Group’s bid to march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge underscores the theme of the week: history, and the attempt to walk all over it.
By Julie Szego

And then there was an urging to love ethnic cleansing and genocide, right or wrong:

To all my fellow Jews, I urge you not to let the hate harden your hearts
I want Jewish children to feel like there is nothing wrong with loving Israel, with feeling connected to it in a deep and almost unfathomable way.
By Michael Gawenda

The dog botherer was also in on the act:

‘Statehood’ push merely helps Hamas
Almost two years after the October 7 atrocities, when Anthony Albanese failed to clamp down on anti-Israeli hatred and baulked at offering proper support to Israel’s defence, we are in a worse place.
By Chris Kenny
Associate Editor (National Affairs)

The pond noted only reptile willing to do a little pushback:

Netanyahu at crossroads over Gaza
A series of miscalculations have undermined Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign against Hamas as Israel becomes more isolated internationally.
By Cameron Stewart

Indeed, indeed, put it another way ...

The pond had hoped to escape all that by heading down the rabbit hole with Polonius and his prattle.

After all Polonius has been a mainstay of the pond's Sundays, a man who thinks he's a dog and who brings a furry vision to bear on all matters.

Oh dear, just more of the same...

The header: Palestinians’ only hope for future is removal of Hamas,Reflect on Bob Carr’s unequivocal position about Israel when, within days of his outburst, members of the Arab League called for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza.

The caption: As part of ’The New York Declaration’, Arab states for the first time condemned Hamas’s massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023.

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

Polonius didn't much mind mass starvation. It was Bob Carr wot got up his nose ...

How times change. On July 28, Bob Carr, the former Labor NSW premier and former foreign affairs minister, was interviewed on ABC Radio National Breakfast by Sally Sara. It was essentially a soft discussion – with one exception.
Sara put it to Carr that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong “have made it clear that certain conditions need to be met before Australia should recognise a Palestinian state, including hostages being released, better governance from the Palestinian Authority (based in Ramallah, on the West Bank), for example”. She then asked: “Are they reasonable conditions?”
To which Carr replied: “Well, yes, yes, yes. But those conditions are outweighed by a bigger fact and a bigger truth. Namely, that a vast civilian population is starving, that deaths are coming fast, unspeakable cruelty is being visited against babies and children in the enforcement of something not seen in the modern world.”

Well yes, but Polonius wasn't going to have any of that, and further proof was provided by way of a snap, Bob Carr. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dylan Coker

Polonius resumed with a link embedded in the text: Carr’s position was unequivocal. 

As the pond has noted many times, such links never allow the hive mind readership to escape the hive. Once you book into the lizard Oz, you can never leave, and so anyone who clicked on it landed on this ...

Good on you Nick, a genuine devotion to the killing fields, as befits someone parading in the lizard Oz.

That wicked Bob Carr and his faux comparsions made Polonius furious ...

To wit, that Israel should desist in its war against Hamas, leaving the terrorist group in charge of Gaza without the release of its Israeli hostages – alive and dead.

Meanwhile, to wit and to woo the reptiles, the slaughter and the wanton destruction goes on, and surely serves as a recruiting tool for a new generation of terrorists, with likely the only way to eradicate Hamas involving the destruction of the entire current population of Gaza. 

But that's already been mooted many a time - how else to arrive at the new Riviera, with the remnants of Gaza herded off out of sight to some desert somewhere.

The pond digresses, because Polonius was on a history roll ...

That was on July 28. On July 31 The Australian reported that Arab leaders have called on Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza. The news was that the Arab League including Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates had signed on to “The New York Declaration”.
The intention of “The New York Declaration” is to bring about a situation whereby a demilitarised Palestinian state would come into existence living side by side with Israel. Specifically, the declaration entails that Hamas must hand over weapons to the Palestinian Authority, which was driven out of Gaza by Hamas in June 2007, after which Gaza became a dictatorship.
As part of the declaration, Arab states for the first time condemned Hamas’s massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023. It is interesting that many of Israel’s high-profile opponents in Australia have not condemned Hamas for October 7. 

Just to show how the hive mind works, take this next link ...

Rather, on the October 9, 2023 demonstration outside the Sydney Opera House and elsewhere ...

You see? It doesn't actually demonstrate much, it just maintains a vaguely Islamophobic air, and it allows Polonius to make all sorts of assertions...

...many of the protesters supported Hamas. 

Did Polonius do a survey of the crowd? 

Or did he simply read a fellow reptile raging about Kristallnacht-like scenes? 

Did he then feel the need to rebuke his fellow reptile for using that sort of inflammatory rhetoric?

Not likely, he's all in on only certain forms of history:

This was before Israel retaliated against Hamas with a military invasion of Gaza on October 27, 2023.
And so it came to pass that within a few days of Carr’s outburst, members of the Arab League stated that the priority in Gaza was for Hamas to disarm.
Sara did not challenge Carr when he made the hyperbolic claim that “there’s a pattern of behaviour here that really demands comparison with the worst of the last 100 years of Stalin’s Ukraine, of the Warsaw Ghetto, of Mao’s Great Leap Forward”.
Carr is a well-informed man. He knows Communist dictator Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union initiated a forced famine in Ukraine in 1932-33. Some four million Ukrainians died in what is called the Holodomor. Not one of Stalin’s murderers agreed to any food aid of any kind.
Likewise the Warsaw Ghetto in early 1943. This was the siege by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany against the Jews living in the Polish capital. It was a small part of Hitler’s genocide, which led to six million Jewish deaths in total. The Nazis made no attempt whatsoever to provide food aid to Jews in Warsaw. Likewise in Mao’s forced famine between 1958 and 1962 in which some 45 million Chinese starved to death. In all three instances, Stalin, Hitler and Mao commenced the hostilities.

Indeed, indeed, and none of them can compare to God when She's in a bad mood ...

For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.

The original inspirational genocide.

Turns out She had a real bloodlust ...

When the Israelites arrive in the Promised Land, they are commanded to annihilate "the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites" who already lived there, to avoid being tempted into idolatry.

In Exodus 17, Amalek is introduced as a partially nomadic group that attacked the Israelites following their departure from Egypt. Moses defeats Amalek by a miraculous victory. In 1 Samuel 15:3, Israelite king Saul is told by God via the prophet Samuel: "Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe [kill and dedicate to YHWH] all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses!" Saul's failure to be sufficiently harsh with Amalek is portrayed as leading to his downfall. (Genocide in the Hebrew Bible)

Wouldn't want to be a sissy, and so maintain the rage is all the reptile Zionist go, Labor Friends of Israel co-convenor Mike Kelly says the sudden push for a Palestinian state is a “meaningless gesture”. Mr Kelly told Sky News Australia that it can be seen as a “reward” for Hamas’ terrorism. “So that is sending a very bad signal, and we don’t want to go down that road,” he said.

You see, everybody's doing it, and a few have gots to die, and so long as they're not Polonius, all is well in the world ...

Just sit back and observe and perhaps even enjoy the killing fields (from a distance of course);

As Carr surely understands, all wars are brutal occasions in which, sadly, civilians die. Most would accept that World War II was a just conflict in that the Allies defeated Hitler’s Nazi Germany. However, it led to many millions of civilian casualties.
In his book, The Bombers And The Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe, 1940-1945 (Penguin, 2013), British historian Richard Overy wrote that between 1939 and 1945 hundreds of European cities and hundreds more small townships and villages were subjected to an aerial bombing. It was conducted by the Allied powers – Britain, the British Commonwealth and the US.
Overy said: “During the course of the conflict, a staggering estimate of around 600,000 European civilians were killed by bomb attack and well over a million more were seriously wounded, in some cases physically or mentally disabled for life.” The conflict ended when Hitler suicided on April 30, 1945 and Admiral Karl Donitz formally began discussions that led to Germany’s total surrender on May 7, 1945.
Carr has not called for a Hamas surrender in the Israel-Gaza war. But now, among others, key members of the Arab League have. Writing in the London Telegraph on July 31, Adrian Blomfield reported that “Israel’s long and bloody war in Gaza has left Hamas so enfeebled that Arab officials believe there is now a golden opportunity to deliver a final blow”.
On Sky News’ The Kenny Report on July 29, Chris Kenny interviewed Mike Kelly, a former member of the Australian Defence Force who held ministerial roles in the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments. Moreover, Kelly is a lawyer. He told Kenny that Carr “is not an expert on the laws of armed conflict … there are very few people who are”.
In response to Carr’s claim that “Israel is using starvation as a weapon of war”, Kelly said Carr is “not an investigator, he’s not on the ground, he doesn’t know what’s going on; nobody who’s not on the ground will be able to make judgments about this”.

If the pond might be so bold, the resort to "experts" is craven ... it's pretty clear what's going down.

Even King Donald noticed that Gaza was a few big Macs short of a meal, and the recent attempts to rectify the situation are just more humbug, per Haaretz (archive link) ...

Never mind, they're dying in a noble Polonial cause ...

Kelly acknowledged the problem “when Israel’s fighting a war against the terrorist organisation (Hamas) that … is using the civil population as a weapon” and as “propaganda opportunities”. Kelly concluded by quoting Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas as having called Hamas the “sons of dogs”. The reference is a BBC report of April 24.
The worst outcome for the Israelis and the overwhelming majority of Palestinians would be for Hamas to emerge from the conflict still in charge of Gaza while suppressing Palestinians.
Overy wrote about “the devastated urban wastelands immediately after the war” in 1945, and how some wondered “would Europe ever recover?”. But it did.

So much for the millions who died. It so happens when you're dead you're dead for a very long time, and if you've been malformed by malnourishment, you might wonder about the struggle to go on living.

But confronted by suffering and death, Polonius is that all too common phenomenon, the self-satisfied white Xian, oblivious to, or uncaring about, the suffering of others.

Here, have a break, have a childhood treat ...

The pond did think about adding the dog botherer to the collection, but he was even more splenetic and spiteful ...

Take this opening gobbet as a sample:

A couple of times on air this week I suggested the hateful anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian protesters should have their planned Sydney Harbour Bridge march shifted to the tunnel. It would be more relevant, I argued, because the protesters could experience claustrophobic surroundings and perhaps think of the clandestine tunnel-building Hamas carried out under Gaza by diverting billions of dollars of foreign aid over two decades.Perhaps the pro-Palestinian mob would even be forced to think of the hostages (and hostage cadavers) still secreted in these modern catacombs. But now the idea is no longer a mere barb, a pro-Israel group has made an application for just such a march, providing a telling counterpoint to the bridge application by the anti-Israel activists (they have since withdrawn it in consideration of police resourcing).
The Gaza tunnels were built not only to hide weapons and captives but as tactical thoroughfares to facilitate precisely the kind of prolonged siege that is still dragging on. Israel completely exited Gaza two decades ago, forcing Jewish settlers to leave, withdrawing its soldiers, and handing the former Egyptian territory to the Palestinians, but rather than build something peaceful and prosperous, the Gazans under Hamas, undermined their territory - literally.

Actually they literally locked them into a prison and left them to stew in their own juices...and evem worse. Benji's mob were in on the game and even gave money to Hamas to facilitate the imprisonment.

Try this alternative history ... (that's an archive link)

Being a climate science denialist means famine denialism comes easily to the dog botherer ... and at this point the pond broke, and decided cut out all the distracting snaps, and to dish out selected samples of the hate and the bile in one leaden lump of vitriol ...

With hard choices required in Gaza and the Middle East, the posturing from Albanese and others amounts to diplomatic virtue-signalling. Howard-era foreign minister Alexander Downer told me on Sky News this week that these proclamations will achieve “absolutely nothing”.
Even worse, Downer said the use of “Hamas propaganda” against Israel is “empowering Hamas all the more, and encouraging Hamas all the more”. The country’s longest-serving foreign minister said: “Honestly, it is complete madness … driven by domestic political game-playing.”
Labor’s domestic preoccupations are clear. It has an interest in appealing to Muslim voters, who outnumber Jewish voters by almost 10 to one and live mainly in Labor electorates; it also seeks to appease radical young voters to stem the drift to the Greens; and it likes to disassociate itself from the conservative figures of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump.
It is not clear that the national interest, much less global strategic precedents, get a look in. Albanese and his Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, do not seem to comprehend the consequences of what they are doing.
The truth is that through the Albanese government’s gormless posture on the Gazan war, and spineless response to anti-Semitism at home, Australia is greatly diminished almost 22 months on from the October 7 atrocities. Albanese and Wong have abandoned Israel, rewarded the Islamist extremist terrorism of Hamas, failed the Australian Jewish community, and diverged from the Middle East strategy of our major security ally, the US.
The Twitter-like depth of public debate and the willingness of politicians to react to emotive and misleading journalism or social media memes rather than facts has been borne out this week. That harrowing photo of cerebral palsy victim Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq was deceptively used as proof of children starving in Gaza by The New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, the ABC and countless other media outlets around the world.
Politicians including Albanese, Starmer and even Trump were happy to cite “images” as their conclusive evidence of children starving, even though Israel denied the crisis, the vast amounts of aid going to Gaza are a known quantity, and the overwhelming evidence of vision from Gaza shows adults and children who are not starving. Besides, if there is starvation in Gaza then blame must surely rest with Hamas because it has not only prolonged the war but deliberately tried to sabotage the US-Israeli aid delivery program, including by shooting at Palestinians and aid workers.
Executive Council of Australian Jewry Alex Ryvchin says The New York Times “should correct” the image used on their front page, which falsely depicted starvation in Gaza. Mr Ryvchin says the newspaper’s images “feeds into a particular narrative” they are trying to perpetuate. “This has enormous legs and it’s part of a broader disinformation campaign,” Mr Ryvchin told Sky News host Chris Kenny. “Once we have these sorts of hyperbolic claims and disinformation, it makes it harder to actually deal with the problem in a rational, coherent sense. “It needs a solution, but sensationalism and false reporting like that get us further away from finding that solution.”

As usual in these reptile diatribes there comes a moment when the reptiles realise they've gone too far and that they should attempt a semblance of balance, so here comes a billy goat butt ...

Butt, and the pond uses the word advisedly, it's a very small but...

Pointing out these facts is not to deny the clear human trauma in Gaza, nor ignore the dire need to end the war and save civilians. 

And that butt was immediately followed by a butt rebuttal ...

But the calculated emergence of allegations about starvation as a weapon of war needs to be judged against the facts, not propaganda from Hamas-controlled authorities in Gaza.
An ABC journalist harangued Sussan Ley at a media conference early this week, demanding the Opposition Leader declare a starvation crisis in Gaza, a call that could only be based on Ley’s perusal of media reports. This is the post-modern/post-truth world, where motives and sanctimony matter more than facts.

Most politicians and journalists were declaring widespread starvation in Gaza based on a handful of photographs without medical context. When The New York Times admitted their photo had highlighted a chronically ill child rather than one suffering from a lack of humanitarian food aid, some other media organisations posted similar updates, but they did not apologise or admit their starvation claims were unproven.
“Israel is fighting a war against a terrorist organisation that is using the civilian population as a weapon, and the propaganda opportunities that they get out of that have been exploited mercilessly,” said Kelly, responding to wild claims of deliberate starvation and worse against Israel from former Labor foreign minister Bob Carr and Education Minister Jason Clare. “And we have seen so much clueless and credulous response by media outlets and politicians who have just been completely sucked in by this stuff,” their former Labor colleague said.
The retired politician and ADF colonel described Hamas’s “new business model” of “looting and stealing” aid supplies to fund its terrorist operations and control the population. Kelly had no qualms about explaining that Hamas is vicious enough to shoot its own people in carrying out this agenda.
Downer and Kelly are on a ­bipartisan ticket about what is ­required to bring the Gaza war to an end. It is precisely the opposite of the statehood push we are seeing from Albanese and his European and Canadian mates.
“We need a full-court press by the international community to ignore this propaganda circus that we’ve seen from Hamas and say, look you have to lay down your arms, release the hostages, then of course the war ends,” Kelly said.
“The pressure shouldn’t be on the Israelis, the pressure should be on Hamas,” said Downer.
“Release the hostages, stop the fighting, allow food to be properly distributed.”

These two experienced hands from either side of the political aisle must be worth listening to, but Albanese has not sought Kelly’s counsel. Ley, on the other hand, showed wisdom and moral clarity this week by repeatedly putting the onus on Hamas rather than Israel.
Sky News host Chris Kenny says recognising a Palestinian state is a case of “politicking” coming before reality. “The move by the UK, Canada and dozens of other nations to recognise the non-existent nation of Palestine is a case of politicking triumphing over reality,” Mr Kenny said. “And of virtue signalling trumping hard work and real policy. At best it is putting the cart before the horse, at worst it is rewarding the bloodthirsty slaughter of innocent people, carried out by the Islamist terrorists of Hamas.”
The dominant media narrative has matched the political zeitgeist, characterised by the demonisation of Israel. When politics and media work in such a synchronised way the truth tends to go missing (remember the Covid pandemic and the shared political and media penchant for alarmism and censorship).
During the Gaza war the media and politicians have run hard on false claims that Israel bombed a hospital and killed 500 people, erroneous accusations that Israel deliberately killed aid workers, and ridiculous warnings that 14,000 babies were about to die within 48 hours. Media and politicians routinely quote casualty figures and battlefield assessments from unaccountable Gazan authorities (in other words, they quote the Hamas terrorist organisation) yet openly doubt statements from Israel.
While Western media have been cheering the statehood push as some sort of anti-war progress, even ABC Middle East correspondent Allyson Horn had to admit it was merely symbolic. “The reality is it is unlikely to change anything on the ground in Gaza or Israel at this point in time,” Horn said in an online video.
Which begs the question, what is the point? This is the very definition of virtue-signalling – making a statement or taking some faux action that demonstrates empathy and a progressive political bent but does absolutely nothing for the dilemma at hand.
Almost two years after the October 7 atrocities, when Albanese and state authorities failed to clamp down on anti-Israeli hatred and baulked at offering proper support to Israel’s defence, we are in a worse place.
Australia’s ambivalence over Islamist extremist messaging, impotence against anti-Semitism, diplomatic distancing and demonisation of Israel could only please the Islamist terrorists of Hamas and their supporters.

By the time the pond got to  "political zeitgeist" and "virtue-signalling" and all the other mindless reptile short cuts and verbal tics, the pond was pleased it had left this undigestible lump of verbal porridge in an unreadable form, sans snaps so that the hate speech might stand in its own mess.

Here, have a visual reward, having gone without the images designed to distract while reading the dog botherer ... 

And so to a treat, and who or what better than the onion muncher, in mourning for a fellow ratbag ...

The header: Former Treasury chief and national treasure Jone Stone still offers us wisdom, inspiration, John Stone wanted everything to be the very best whether that was a Treasury minute, the policy of a government, or the state of our nation. Naturally enough, he was often disappointed.

The caption:  Former Treasury chief and Nationals senator John Stone has died aged 96.

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

What's droll here is to see how the onion muncher tiptoes around all that was problematic with this stone thrower. For that you have to read Dominic Kelly's portrait in Inside Story, John Stone, political activist, The former Treasury head was revealed to be an arch-reactionary in his long second career.

You're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but when the dead spent much of their time alive speaking ill of the living, why not break that convention, especially for a Quad ranter?

Of course it takes an arch-reactionary to recognise another arch-reactionary:

Advancing age did nothing to dull Stone’s passion for political debate. In March 2016, conservative columnist Miranda Devine coined the term “del-con” to describe those “delusional conservatives” — including Stone — who remained firmly in Tony Abbott’s camp following Malcolm Turnbull’s successful coup. Though Stone preferred the term “dis-con” — disaffected, rather than delusional — he embraced the criticism. It prompted a regular “dis-con notes” column in the Spectator, where he attacked Turnbull ferociously, mocked the Liberal “bed-wetters” who installed him, and gave forthright advice to Liberal MPs about standing up for conservative values. He urged a restoration of Abbott or, failing that, a new leader with comparable right-wing bona fides, such as Peter Dutton.

Yes, two of the great Liberal disasters in the past few decades, the onion muncher himself and the mutton Dutton - even more disastrous than Stone's embrace of Joh for Canberra - and worth bearing in mind when one of those epic disasters turns to providing a eulogy for that devotee of Liberal disasters ...

With John Stone, whom we honour and mourn, it’s hard to find any sphere in which he did not excel. He was a brilliant student. He was outstanding at sport. He was the 1951 West Australian Rhodes Scholar. He swiftly rose through the ranks of Treasury – in those days, clearly, the elite of the Australian Public Service. For five years, he was Treasury head; and, in that capacity, helped tutor Paul Keating, Labor’s greatest treasurer and less, directly, Bob Hawke, Labor’s greatest prime minister.
John was, for three years, a member of the Senate and a Coalition frontbencher. He is the only federal departmental head, thus far, subsequently elected to the federal parliament. And after leaving parliament, as well as serving on the boards of some leading public companies, he was a fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs, a friend of the Centre for Independent Studies, and the leading spirit in the foundation of two important intellectual bodies: the HR Nicholls Society, to promote freedom of association in the workplace, and; the Samuel Griffith Society, to promote respect for our Constitution and for the rule of law more generally.
As well, John was a prodigious contributor to newspapers and magazines – especially Quadrant – to which he gave an almost sublimely perceptive essay on the imperfectability of politics, in which he declared, rightly in my opinion, that John Winston Howard was our greatest-ever prime minister.
In everything he did, his great stay and strength, his soulmate, was his late wife, Nancy, and his great pride was his children – all of whom, in their own way, are faithful reflections of their parents.

He was also a racist and a bigot, but never mind, have a snap, John Stone, head of Treasury (1979-1984) and National Party senator (1987-1990).

On the onion muncher munched ...

John Stone was an intellectual perfectionist. He wanted everything to be the very best – whether that was a Treasury minute, the policy of a government, or the state of our nation. Naturally enough, he was often disappointed – especially with politicians – because politics is the art of the possible, even if its best practicians are constantly seeking to expand the bounds of what’s possible in the best possible direction. It’s typical of John that he wanted governments to do the right thing, for the right reason, in the right way.
It’s often said that he opposed the decision of the Hawke government, late in 1983, to float the dollar. Indeed, this canard has been repeated in some of the obituaries. In fact, what he opposed was the lack of due process: a governmental decision, made without a proper cabinet discussion, and without proper Treasury advice, about all the other policies that might have to be changed in order to optimise the decision to float. But as he said in his rightly celebrated Shann Memorial Lecture in 1984 – delivered, quite properly, after he had already resigned as Treasury head – the decision to float the dollar was one of the best decisions ever made for the long-term benefit of our economy. It’s also typical of John that, having made it abundantly clear what he thought, he never bothered to take issue with the critics – leaving the crystal-clear record to speak for itself.

Cue another snap, John Stone in 1987.

Is there an irony here?

Think about this one, which featured in the lizard Oz obit.:

Mr Howard said he embraced much of the economic advice he received from Mr Stone but the pair “parted company politically” over the 1987 push to install Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen as prime minister. Mr Stone was elected to the Senate the same year. “He gave that push considerable economic credibility. The former Queensland premier’s very conservative views on social issues were attractive to Stone,” Mr Howard said.
“His sure-footed and logical approach to economics deserted him when it came to politics.”

Now that's an admirable understatement. 

Put it another way: Stone went off with the pixies to the land above the magic faraway tree, where the onion muncher also now dwells ...

In that Shann Memorial Lecture – ostensibly about fiscal extravagance, tariff protection, and industrial arbitration – John was actually highlighting three much deeper and more abiding faults in our Australian approach to government: first, our tendency to think that government – especially government spending – can solve all problems; second, our tendency to think that somehow we can shield ourselves from competition and what’s going on in the wider world, and; third, that workers live in a different economic universe – one governed by a Thomistic notion of the just price. John’s message, then, is just as relevant today as it was in 1984. We are running deficits stretching as far as the eye can see. We have a government addicted to subsidising politically correct business ventures. And we have a workforce once more being subjected to attempted union control – even if that means fewer jobs and less prosperity. Not for a moment, though, do these recurring challenges suggest that John failed in his efforts to counter economic folly – merely that some battles are never finally won.
In that 1984 Shann lecture, he described our political class as “unworthy men masquerading as leaders”. Perhaps that was an overly harsh description of the parliament that then included our best Labor and best Liberal prime ministers. But it did hint at the great truth: that no elected politician – indeed, probably no human being – can be as good as he or she should be. Our challenge is not to achieve an impossible perfection, but “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” in the quest to be better.
The fact that he himself sought, just three years later, to become one of those “unworthy men masquerading as leaders” was actually John’s tribute to the significance of public life. And his failure, in 1990, to win the seat of Fairfax was no reflection on him – just on a generally miserable national campaign. Anyone, indeed, who could beat Bob Hawke in an election – the 1951 University of Western Australia Guild election – had the right stuff for public life.
Inevitably, there is a sense of loss; we are sad because we are human. But really, we should be uplifted and inspired by this life that testifies to so many wonderful possibilities, if only we are prepared to “have a go”, which John always was. There’s a figure of speech referencing “drips wearing down stone”; I like to think John was a stone wearing down drips!
At the close of his Shann lecture, John posed the question: “Have Australians, today, the will to do great things together again?” He believed that we were. So what is there to be said but this: we should not let him down.
An edited extract of former prime minister Tony Abbott’s eulogy at the celebration of John Stone’s life in Sydney on Wednesday.

Here, have another irony ...

...On the far right of the political spectrum something sociologists have come to call "new racism" seems to be taking hold. Old racism argued that the intractable differences between human groups were rooted in biology and blood. This form of racism was discredited by Hitler and the Holocaust. A new racism took its place. It argued that differences between human collectivities were based on the ultimate incompatibility not of blood and biology but of culture and religion.
After September 11, in Australia, this kind of new racism emerged with surprising swiftness. Let one important example suffice. Former Treasury Secretary John Stone had long been an opponent of Asian immigration. Following September 11 the focus of his concern shifted to Muslims instead. According to Stone, Australia was, from the cultural point of view, a "Judeo-Christian" country. Because of its supposed incompatibility with such a culture, Stone argued now that all future Muslim immigration must end.
Stone was aware, of course, that on account of his suggestion he would be accused of racism. Such accusations were, he claimed, both mischievous and wrong. In advocating a racially discriminatory immigration policy Stone pointed out he had no interest in the colour of a potential migrant's skin. The only issue that concerned him was "culture" and not "race". In light of the academic definition of new racism, John Stone and his supporters unwittingly supplied an almost perfect textbook case. (Nine rag, possible paywall)

In short, he was a stone thrower, and he mainly left behind many broken windows.

Here, have some visual relief ...

And so to a bonus to the bonus, but it's only a three minutes read, so the reptiles say, and it completes the coverage of climate science this weekend ...

Think of it as a light soufflé or a digestif to help wash down all that's gone before.

The header: We need a gas reservation scheme that prioritises domestic energy needs, A Future Made in Australia will be nothing more than fine sentiment unless gas supply is assured for industry, households and our energy security.

The caption: A worker walks through the Queensland Curtis Liquefied Natural Gas project site. Photographer: Patrick Hamilton/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The malicious, endlessly repeated mantra: This article contains features which are only available in the web version,Take me there

Jennie isn't, of course, interested in gassing the country to save the planet, she's interested in gassing the country to gas the country ...

The government’s review of gas markets is timely as the interaction of our domestic and export markets is dysfunctional. LNG is exported without regard for our domestic needs. We’re the second-largest exporter of LNG, yet facing domestic gas supply shortages on the east coast. Our uncontracted gas is being sold on international spot markets, while at home our energy ministers are considering importing LNG.
This is contrary to commitments made before the LNG operations commenced at Gladstone.
For example, Santos explained it: “ … may initially supply domestic gas markets, but it is not diverting gas from local markets to export markets … therefore the project has no direct implications for domestic gas prices. The gas to supply the LNG facility will come from newly developed CSG fields.”
The AWU’s campaign for a 15 per cent gas reservation was prescient and would have avoided subsequent market distortions. The Gillard government’s rejection of the proposal was shortsighted, as a gas reservation scheme had been operating successfully in WA.
Former ACCC chair Rod Sims often raised issues that needed to be addressed. Gas meant for domestic markets was being diverted to fill shortfalls in overseas contracts.

How could it be compleat without including a spray of gas from petulant Peta? Sky News host Peta Credlin discusses how the government has been “forced to back down” on the aim to cut out domestic gas use. “The tale of two cities today in relation to decisions on gas, in Melbourne and across Victoria more broadly, the government has been forced to back down on a raft of controversial reforms,” Ms Credlin said. “Aimed at cutting out the use of domestic gas.”

The pond's main complaint is that the reptiles never give Jennie with bee in bonnet enough space in the hive mind, yet she seems to be a perfect fit ...

Large volumes, in excess of contract requirements, found their way on to international spot markets. Fuelled by this growth, production doubled on the east coast, while at home prices tripled, causing pain for households and manufacturing industry. The Ukraine war led to more uncontracted gas sold overseas at inflated prices. With domestic prices through the roof, the Albanese government was forced to apply a temporary gas price cap of $12GJ, well above the $7GJ recommended by the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
Structural gas shortages are predicted from 2028 as legacy fields in the Bass Strait decline. With alarm bells ringing, Viva Energy’s Geelong import terminal and Squadron Energy’s plant at Port Kembla are back on the agenda. Energy Users Association CEO Andrew Richards described the prospect of imported gas as a “significant failure of policy, planning and production. It is like importing sand into the Sahara!”.
Victoria’s proposal to authorise the Australian Energy Market Operator to contract LNG supplies is listed for the next meeting of energy ministers. At an estimated import cost of around $20GJ, taxpayers would again underwrite the policy failures of governments. As gas sets the price of electricity, these increased costs would be passed on in power bills.
Labor remains internally conflicted about gas, as witnessed in the response to the release of the Future Gas Strategy. The efforts of the Resources Minister and her use of existing levers in the Gas Market Code hasn’t led to a permanent reduction in the price of domestic gas, nor averted the threat of future shortages. Energy Minister Chris Bowen is on the record telling an international COP audience fossil fuels had no future in Australia, opposed gas as a transition fuel and excluded it from the Capacity Investment Scheme.

Any thoughts on how gassing the country might help gas the planet, what with it being a fossil fuel and all? Forget it Jake, have a couple of snaps, Resources Minister Madeleine King. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin, Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The pond kept getting whiffs of King Donald ...

Gee, thanks Jennie, and so to an urgent plea to find new and better ways to gas the country ...

By 2024, 25 per cent of our exported LNG was bound for the growing overseas spot market. The IEEFA estimates that the additional uncontracted gas exported from Queensland in 2023, was 150 per cent of the anticipated supply gap in 2030. Bowen seemed unaware of the extent of these uncontracted exports, when he deflected the argument about reservation to an issue of sovereign risk by breaking contracts.
The immediate solution to our gas supply shortage is not import terminals, nor breaking contracts, but using the power of government to divert uncontracted LNG exports into domestic markets. Levies and/or export controls should be used if negotiated outcomes are unsuccessful. This would finally decouple the domestic price from overseas spot prices. A mandated reservation scheme in future contract negotiations would reflect a social licence for the commercial use of our resources.
Gas is essential for the viability of manufacturing industry, now fallen to record lows. The saga of Snowy Hydro’s Kurri Kurri gas plant doesn’t augur well for the future. The plant was to compensate for Liddell’s closure back in April 2023, but it’s still not in operation. Labor appeased the virtue-signallers by promising the plant would start up on a 30 per cent gas and hydrogen mix, and be fully operational on hydrogen by 2030.
We now find the costs have blown out to at least $1.4bn for a quasi gas plant that’s 24km from the main gas trunkline and can only run on gas for a maximum 10 hours, before taking a day to refill. Forget any idea of a hydrogen plant by 2030, if ever. Recently the EPA intervened when the locals complained about diesel fumes in a recent test run. But the plan is to use diesel when gas is unavailable.
It’s time reality trumped the rhetoric. A Future Made in Australia will be nothing more than fine sentiment unless gas supply is assured for industry, households and our energy security. This can only be realised by a gas reservation scheme that prioritises our domestic energy needs.
Jennie George is a former ACTU president and former Labor member for Throsby.

Excellent stuff, and now for some viewing pleasures for kiddies eager to learn the reptile way, coming to you by way of an affiliate ...

Last but not least, and even allowing that some might have already seen it and many might not care, the pond actually learned a few things about Joe Rogan in this revealing filmic bio ...

The pitch:

Joe Rogan: The Path to Roganlightenment 
From his humble beginnings in Newark to his scrappy days in Boston, Joe Rogan has always pushed his brains to the limit. Rogan's stand-up comedy led him to a career in television, eventually inspiring him to start his own podcast where he could ask the really important questions, like, "Wouldn't it be crazy if a wolf wore a fedora?"

The view: