In which the pond returns to idle away time with paranoid Zoe and the craven Craven ...

The pond will let its competition gently go - with due honours to those who dove directly into fetid reptile swamp - with a reminder that the use of the archive now makes the pond's business plan redundant. 

A few pages might need saving before exploring but at the moment the lizard Oz paywall isn't what it used to be, and all might tootle off the tracks with the wise use of an url.

That noted, how the pond would love to keep romping outside the reptile mind, enjoying yet again Petey boy, or Politico's talk of DOGE-flation, or Kari Lake deporting her employees. 

And what of Vlad the sociopath having fun? Russia Is Suspected to Be Behind Breach of Federal Court Filing System, Federal officials are scrambling to assess the damage and address flaws in a sprawling, heavily used computer system long known to have vulnerabilities.

The path to the destruction of an empire is long and wide.

And just to pre-empt our Henry this Friday, is Emperor Donald's court now best compared to that of Tiberius, Caligula or Nero?

It would merely be sordid or salacious, except that MTG is supposedly a rep in an honoured Congress and the always looming Loomer is supposed to have the ear of the cantaloupe Caligula (always go the alliteration), and has claimed responsibility for a number of high profile, not insignificant, sackings in recent weeks.

Sure it's plentiful fodder for the likes of Esquire, Marjorie Taylor Greene vs. Laura Loomer: The MAGA Feud That’s Breaking the Internet,Yeah, two loonies beefing on X is amusing. It’s also everything wrong about America right now.

Or for a sniggering outing by the Bulwark finger boys on YouTube The Laura Loomer / MTG / Arby’s Scandal That No One Asked For

Meanwhile, the cantaloupe clown is about to sell Ukraine down the river to distract from the Epstein affair, and Europe is burning.

The pond half-expected the Riddster to turn up this day to reassure Europe that everything was fine, the planet was in tip top shape, but it wasn't to be. 

Any talk of the consequences of climate change is officially banned at the top of the lizard Oz page ...

Instead, the lesser member of the Kelly gang led the way with yet another reminder ...

EXCLUSIVE
No free ride in defence of free world, Pentagon tells Indo-Pacific
By Joe Kelly

US Defence chiefs demand Australia match European NATO spending levels of 5pc of GDP as China threat looms ahead of critical 2027 deadline.

It's now 5pc? All that did was remind the pond of the keen Keane in Crikey ...

Late last week, the US again told Australia it should increase defence spending to 3.5% of GDP — a different figure to the 3% urged in March, but one should never expect consistency from Donald Trump. How did America deliver its message? A letter between ministers? Communications between the Pentagon and Department of Defence officials? A speech by the acting US ambassador?
No, via News Corp. Trump’s Pentagon briefed staff at The Australian and directly linked the demand for increased spending to AUKUS: “It is vitally important that they are able to raise defence spending to 3.5% of GDP … we can say with confidence that if Australia does not raise defence spending, it is going to struggle to field the forces required to defend Australia but also to make good on its commitments to others.”
It’s not especially surprising that News Corp should be the chosen mechanism of delivery. It is a US company; it exists to serve the interests of its American owners. Like other large US companies, it also has a complex but ultimately dependent relationship with Trump. And it is not a media company, which might mean its Australian outlets undertake journalism and thus have some working concept of the public interest in the Australian context.
The inaptly named The Australian is more like a messenger service to transmit requests from the imperial capital to one of its frontier provinces. Moreover, it’s hardly the first time the national broadsheet has been used to convey Washington’s wrath that Australia is not spending enough money on defence (and, specifically, the American companies that benefit from such spending).

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, and so there was more fear and TG loathing ...

EXCLUSIVE
Five-year-olds taught their body parts may not match their gender
A controversial update to Victoria’s school curriculum now teaches gender identity to five-year-olds, while experts warn of a dangerous ‘school-to-clinic pipeline’.
By Rachel Baxendale

But perhaps the most shameful EXCLUSIVE in a hive mind world of shame was this one ...

EXCLUSIVE
Joyce issues warning for aviation’s future in return to public eye
Almost two years after his dramatic exit from Qantas, Alan Joyce is back with an ultimatum.
By Robyn Ironside

An ultimatum? A broadside to the Ironside? 

Just go away and this time stay away ...

And the reptiles were still banging away about their devotion to genocide ...with Ben packing it ...

RECOGNITION
‘A disgraceful day for Australia’: Israel’s despair after Hamas lauds PM’s ‘courage’

Israel has condemned Australia after Hamas praised Anthony Albanese’s plan to recognise Palestine, with an Israeli minister calling it a ‘profound moral failure’.
By Ben Packham

And conducting a genocide isn't a profound moral failure. 

The bromancer was still singing his eternal tune ...

COMMENTARY By Greg Sheridan
Hero to Hamas, zero to US – foreign policy at its absolute worst
You have to live in a special ALP fantasyland not to see the recognition of a Palestinian state as a victory for Hamas and for terrorism.

The pond is unnaturally devoted to the bromancer, but simply couldn't go there this day. 

Instead how about a few 'toons to celebrate the bromancer's devotion to genocide?

That stopped the conversation in its tracks, but the pond supposes it should check out what's on the extreme far right this day ...

Why there's ancient Troy celebrating a nuking (next stop nuking Gaza to bring peace, eh Troy?), but he's right, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq certainly enjoyed a long run of peace.

The malicious Maley was also in war monger mode, but the pond was only up for light hearted moments, so come on down Zoe, in a rag dedicated to intolerance and nukings and such like, blather about intolerance, and remember to muster as much intolerance, hate and bile as you can. It adds to the irony overload...

The header: We’re losing a generation of Australians to new age of intolerance, Australia is not a charity. We are a sovereign nation with an enviable culture and lifestyle that needs to be protected. We need migrants who want to join us, not change us.

The caption for the endlessly repeated, truly terrifying - to the genocide-loving reptile mind - snap:

 Demonstrators march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge during a pro-Palestinian rally.

The pond should have realised. It was just like reading the bromancer, only more confused, perhaps amazingly, even more intolerant, and certainty more stupid ...

The pond is eternally grateful for having been changed by migrants. An eternity of three vegies and a chop or a banger, likely with the spuds mashed, is too hideous to think about for a nanosecond. But let's get on with the bigotry, fear and loathing ...

It has been a strange sight watching young white people I grew up with in Newcastle posting videos from Sydney’s pro-Palestine march. When did they suddenly become interested in the Middle East? These are the same people who posted black squares during Black Lives Matter, put pronouns in their bios and started saying they were on “unceded” land.

Chriscoveries, an X user who documents many marches in Australia, posted an elucidating video. It shows a young woman from Sydney. In the video she admits: “I’m a bit embarrassed to be in front of the camera because I’m lacking in knowledge in a lot of areas.” When asked whether she supports Hamas’s policies, she replies: “No, because I don’t understand them. I don’t know what their policies are … I just see the atrocities that are occurring.” In a strange turn, she adds: “It’s just media, we are just being brainwashed … we’re just seeing all this. I feel like, ‘Oh, this is terrible,’ and now I’m going to go to a protest because I feel like going to a protest will make a difference.”

On a bad day I’d assume these people are anti-Semitic, but for many of the non-Muslim marchers it’s not that. These aren’t bad people: they’re lost people, searching for meaning. Participation in civic institutions has declined sharply during the past few decades. Union membership, once the heart of working-class solidarity, has shrunk from nearly half the workforce to just 12.5 per cent.

Would it truly be an exercise in intolerance without the presence of shockingly shameful Sharri, full disrespect? Sky News host Sharri Markson says Sheikh Dadoun was among those in the crowd during the pro-Palestine demonstrations on the Harbour Bridge over the weekend. NSW Police have launched a series of investigations into the Sydney Harbour Bridge protesters over death chants, waving terrorist flags, and displaying Hamas and Nazi symbols. “That is the protest that Albanese and others have praised – it’s just appalling,” Ms Markson said.

Zoe of course is all on in genocide, mass starvation of civilians and the joys of ethnic cleansing ...

Australians reporting “no religion” jumped from 7 per cent in 1971 to 39 per cent in 2021; church attendance has collapsed. Volunteering is down 10 points since 2010, especially among the young.

A third of local newspapers have vanished. In 2007, nearly three-quarters of Australians felt they belonged in their community; by 2022, barely half trusted most people. The civic glue that once bound Australians together has dried out and people feel atomised. But we are human and it’s normal to find that glue somewhere else.

So where have young people gone? Social media. While community halls go dark, phones stay lit. Australians aged 18 to 24 spend more than seven hours a day on their devices. Almost 100 per cent use social media daily and nearly 40 per cent are online for more than three hours. Social media has become the new community hall, but what community is being fostered there?

We know that between October 2023 and early 2024, posts with pro-Palestinian hashtags totalled 109.6 billion, compared with just 7.4 billion pro-Israel – a ratio of 15:1. I’ve had people tell me I’m the only pro-Israel voice on their feeds.

This imbalance reflects demographics: Jews make up just 0.2 per cent of the global population while Muslims – who often harbour deep hostility towards Jews – make up nearly 25 per cent, meaning Jewish voices are easily drowned out online. The effect is measurable.

According to the Anti-Defamation League’s 2025 Global Index, one in five Australians now holds anti-Semitic views – up from 14 per cent a decade ago. Among 18 to 49-year-olds, 18 per cent say the Holocaust death toll is exaggerated, 9 per cent have never heard of it and 8 per cent think it’s a myth.

Just to add to Zoe's fears, difficult, uppity blacks were also involved, Demonstrators attend a Black Lives Matter protest to express solidarity with US protestors in Sydney.

On and on Zoe ranted ...

While 57 per cent of Australians view Palestine favourably, only 40 per cent feel the same about Israel. Alarmingly, 20 per cent express support for Hamas, including 33 per cent of those aged 18 to 34 and 39the per cent of adult migrants.

A Pew study from June found about three-quarters of Australian adults hold an unfavourable view of Israel, with those on the left twice as likely as those on the right (90 per cent as against 46 per cent). Across high-income countries, including Australia, younger people are far more critical of Israel.

On top of spending hours a day being brainwashed on social media, millions of Australians also tune in each night to Channel 10, the ABC or SBS, assuming they’re getting neutral coverage of the Middle East. In reality they’re consuming narratives shaped by foreign interests, most notably Qatar. Through formal content-sharing deals, Al Jazeera, a state-run outlet owned by the Qatari royal family, syndicates its overtly anti-Israel content directly into Australian public broadcasters.

Then there’s demographics. Islam is now Australia’s second-largest religion and the Muslim population is growing fast – more than twice the national rate. Muslim women have the highest fertility and immigration adds to the rise; many new citizens come from Muslim-majority or Muslim-influenced countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Sri Lanka.

The white kids from Newcastle marching alongside conservative Muslims on Sunday don’t know this but anti-Semitism in much of the Muslim world is not just common; it’s rooted in scripture. Classical Islamic doctrine frames lands once under Muslim rule, such as Israel, as religiously mandated to be reclaimed. Migrants from these cultures often bring such views with them, shaping institutions and normalising attitudes among wider Australia.

These protesters are also the products of the long march through our culture-making institutions: universities, media, schools and the arts. What we now call “woke” ideology is essentially cultural Marxism: power reductionism, race essentialism, gender dogma, historical self-flagellation.

Young Australians are taught to hate their civilisation and see the world through a rigid victim-oppressor lens. In this world view, Israel is cast as the ultimate oppressor, Palestine the eternal victim. Jews are framed as privileged and powerful; Arabs as marginalised and brown. Students graduate steeped in this narrative and go on to shape media, academe and the arts, cementing the ideology that formed them.

Another terrifying image followed, Demonstrators march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge during a pro-Palestinian rally.

Oh wait, it was just more of the same, and then Zoe asked an important question:

So what can be done? 

Good one Zoe, perhaps end the attempt at genocide, perhaps end the mass starvation, as a form of war crime, and as a way of ethnic cleansing towards a new Riviera?

Certainly not, none of that. Just good old fashioned bannings ...

First, we must block hostile regimes – Qatar, China, Russia, Iran – from funding or infiltrating our media and universities. Australians shouldn’t be absorbing narratives crafted in Doha or Beijing. While direct funding of Islamic institutions in Australia hasn’t been confirmed, Qatar has partnered with more than 20 Australian universities, mostly in Islamic and Arabic studies, part of a broader soft-power strategy seen across the West. Ban state-backed media deals and cut off foreign university funding that undermines our interests. As Donald Trump rightly pointed out, TikTok – owned by China’s ByteDance – poses a serious influence risk. Social media should be tightly regulated for children, as my colleague Claire Lehmann argued persuasively in The Australian last year.

Second, immigration. Trump’s so-called Muslim ban was branded xenophobic but it targeted countries plagued by terrorism and extremist indoctrination – not Islam itself. Australia should adopt a similar approach: prioritise high-skill migrants who share our values and want to integrate, not just those with the most harrowing stories. Migrants from places such as Iran, Malaysia and Albania often adapt well; those from regions steeped in anti-Semitism, homophobia and ideological extremism – such as Gaza, Pakistan and Afghanistan – should require far greater scrutiny.

Australia is not a charity. We are a sovereign nation with an enviable culture and lifestyle that needs to be protected. We need migrants who want to join us, not change us. Taking in people who do not value democratic pluralism, gender equality, free speech or religious tolerance is a dangerous form of naivety that, in the long run, is suicidal. Right now it’s mainly affecting the Jewish community, but in the long run it will degrade Australia on the whole.

Let’s neutralise the ideological capture of our institutions. This is the hardest fix. Critical theory – now called woke – has overtaken schools, media and the arts, promoting civilisational self-loathing while offering nothing to believe in. Stripped of meaning, young Australians search elsewhere. For some, they find it in Islam.

Across the West, thousands convert each year – about 20,000 in the US, 5000 to 7000 in Britain and France, and a growing number in Australia – drawn by Islam’s moral clarity, discipline and sense of purpose. If we don’t offer something real and rooted, they’ll keep drifting towards the strongest culture in the room.

Zoe Booth is content director and host of the Quillette Cetera podcast.

Completely clueless, but please the pond allow to reassure Zoe, getting a mite agitated about genocide doesn't mean the pond's atheism is going to unravel any time soon ... but the pond does wonder what it is she ingests before embarking on that sort of paranoid ranting ...it must be down there with what ever Uncle Leon consumes.

And so to end with a little light relief, because the craven Craven entered the conversation ...

The header: Less work, lower pay: four-day week is no sweet deal, The grab for a four-day week is a bit like working from home - everybody claims their productivity soars but there are an awful lot of extra coffee breaks and the occasional afternoon nap.

The caption for the image designed to get the craven Craven going: Sally McManus’s ACTU is pushing for shorter working hours, including a four-day week. Picture: Monique Harmer

It was rated only a three minute read, so where's the harm?

First up it was a chance for the craven Craven to brood about his irrelevance ...a pitiful attempt to do a Malcolm Bradbury ...

As a former vice-chancellor of a university with thousands of staff, the prospect of a four-day week leaves me unmoved. Frankly, if I could’ve got even some of my staff up to four days, I would’ve doubled their attendance.

Of course, some academics worked 80-hour weeks, teaching, marking and counselling during the weekdays, then squeezing in their research after hours at weekends. Partly, I admired these “willing workers” – I was a former member of their self-flagellating union – but often I thought they were nuts.

Between study and development opportunities during the European spring, wellness leave for seeing a hairy tarantula and unsupervised work from home – which never produced so much as a podcast, let alone a book – no intelligent professor had to have a close relationship with actual work. The idea of a four-day academic week would lead to mass industrial action on many of our campuses.

The problem with work elimination programs such as the four-day week or the semi-retired but fully paid academic is that, at least in theory, the actual amount of work remains the same.

By the iron laws of economic necromancy, someone else has to do it. In a bludging workforce, that usually means the wilting dolt at the next desk. But in a four-day week, it simply means that 25 per cent of work goes missing, like a Jim Chalmers tax promise.

Ah of course, it was a chance to josh at Jimbo, Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers holds a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

We all work in our own way. The pond slaves away for no reward, save comments, trying to decipher the opaque mysteries of the hive mind ...

So, work reduction is a remarkable strategic move by bodies such as the ACTU when the notion of work is being challenged by two lurking economic riders of the apocalypse. These are Productivity and its grim twin, Artificial Intelligence.

No one actually knows what these things are but we can pretend. Even dimly we can tell they sound menacing, like a colonoscopy or Collingwood.

Put simply, human productivity is how much in goods and services each person produces. Like worker ants, the more food we bring back to the nest, the better our colony is.

So understood, productivity is a fair proxy for work done in a given society. So how will reducing national workload by one-fifth go for productivity? About as well as a serve of poisoned mushrooms at a family meal.

Indeed, indeed, an estimable Victorian joke ...

Putting aside the staggering projected “efficiencies” that never actually turn up, the best guess is you will have to hire an extra person to cover the same amount of work. This is where the looming shadow of AI is presented as a saviour. Once it has been unleashed on the world it will revolutionise the amount of required work; we would be unfortunate to need a four-hour week, let alone a four-day slog.

The blithe assumption always is that existing workers, freed from the drudgery of record-keeping and processing, will be absorbed into new and exciting jobs through a symbiotic love affair of labour with AI. If you believe this, you also believe in bunyips and unicorns.

In reality, as with many other significant advances in technology, a vast number of people simply will lose their jobs. These data processors and low-level document producers will have no chance of retraining as electro-poets, climate techno-bots or whatever other useful jobs AI may produce. They simply will be superfluous, as some already are.

Which brings you to the mathematics of productivity. If you have two people doing worthwhile jobs, and these suddenly become a one-person task, then unless the loser is implausibly redeployed as some robotic repair person, human productivity has not increased but dropped by half.

But, butt, billy goat butt, the pond sees endless blather on the ABC, like that wretched loon Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar assuring the pond that soon no one will have to work ...

Why it's going to be bliss on a copyright free stick ...

Sorry, the reptiles went with a more terrifying AV distraction, ACTU President Michele O’Neil concedes businesses like retail and hospitality will have to increase headcount to make their four-day working week function

Then it was back to the craven Craven, celebrating hard yakka, without giving any indication that he himself had ever indulged in it ...

So, what about the grab for a four-day week? Why would a workforce, facing existential threats by technology that will gut their personal productivity, demand a work reduction that proclaims their own obsolescence?

It is all a bit like working from home. Everybody claims their productivity soars. But there are no brilliant ideas emerging from conversations over coffee in the staff­room. Mind you, there are an awful lot of extra coffee breaks and the occasional afternoon nap. No one seems to ask the obvious questions about a four-day week. If people are working one-fifth less, do their wages go down in the same proportion? If employers have to hire more staff to cover the gap, what is the effect on profits, ultimately the source of wages and employment?

There also is some odd psychology going on here about the nature of work. The Great Generation – as well as trade unions and the Australian Labor Party – used to talk about “the dignity of work”. The idea was that not only is work an economic necessity but it also is a duty. In times of hardship, it is a positive privilege.

That is why hundreds of returned servicemen from World War I hacked the Great Ocean Road along Victoria’s western seaboard. Given a choice between the dole and working meaningfully for the dole, they made their choice.

zthere was an old saying: “I’d rather be carting rubbish than on the dole.” The four-day week sits ill with this basic proposition of usefulness and duty. Its implications for other unpleasant necessary work are deeply troubling.

Greg Craven is the former vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.

By golly, this toff would be right at home in Victorian England, perhaps as a venerable beadle lecturing the unwashed ...

'Dear me!' exclaimed the matron, in a much sweeter tone, 'is that Mr. Bumble?'

'At your service, ma'am,' said Mr. Bumble, who had been stopping outside to rub his shoes clean, and to shake the snow off his coat; and who now made his appearance, bearing the cocked hat in one hand and a bundle in the other. 'Shall I shut the door, ma'am?'

The lady modestly hesitated to reply, lest there should be any impropriety in holding an interview with Mr. Bumble, with closed doors. Mr. Bumble taking advantage of the hesitation, and being very cold himself, shut it without permission.

'Hard weather, Mr. Bumble,' said the matron.

'Hard, indeed, ma'am,' replied the beadle. 'Anti-porochial weather this, ma'am. We have given away, Mrs. Corney, we have given away a matter of twenty quartern loaves and a cheese and a half, this very blessed afternoon; and yet them paupers are not contented.'

'Of course not. When would they be, Mr. Bumble?' said the matron, sipping her tea.

'When, indeed, ma'am!' rejoined Mr. Bumble. 'Why here's one man that, in consideration of his wife and large family, has a quartern loaf and a good pound of cheese, full weight. Is he grateful, ma'am? Is he grateful? Not a copper farthing's worth of it! What does he do, ma'am, but ask for a few coals; if it's only a pocket handkerchief full, he says! Coals! What would he do with coals? Toast his cheese with 'em and then come back for more. That's the way with these people, ma'am; give 'em a apron full of coals to-day, and they'll come back for another, the day after to-morrow, as brazen as alabaster.'

The matron expressed her entire concurrence in this intelligible simile; and the beadle went on.

'I never,' said Mr. Bumble, 'see anything like the pitch it's got to. The day afore yesterday, a man—you have been a married woman, ma'am, and I may mention it to you—a man, with hardly a rag upon his back (here Mrs. Corney looked at the floor), goes to our overseer's door when he has got company coming to dinner; and says, he must be relieved, Mrs. Corney. As he wouldn't go away, and shocked the company very much, our overseer sent him out a pound of potatoes and half a pint of oatmeal. "My heart!" says the ungrateful villain, "what's the use of this to me? You might as well give me a pair of iron spectacles!" "Very good," says our overseer, taking 'em away again, "you won't get anything else here." "Then I'll die in the streets!" says the vagrant. "Oh no, you won't," says our overseer.'

'Ha! ha! That was very good! So like Mr. Grannett, wasn't it?' interposed the matron. 'Well, Mr. Bumble?'

'Well, ma'am,' rejoined the beadle, 'he went away; and he did die in the streets. There's a obstinate pauper for you!'

'It beats anything I could have believed,' observed the matron emphatically. 'But don't you think out-of-door relief a very bad thing, any way, Mr. Bumble? You're a gentleman of experience, and ought to know. Come.'

'Mrs. Corney,' said the beadle, smiling as men smile who are conscious of superior information, 'out-of-door relief, properly managed: properly managed, ma'am: is the porochial safeguard. The great principle of out-of-door relief is, to give the paupers exactly what they don't want; and then they get tired of coming.'

'Dear me!' exclaimed Mrs. Corney. 'Well, that is a good one, too!'

'Yes. Betwixt you and me, ma'am,' returned Mr. Bumble, 'that's the great principle; and that's the reason why, if you look at any cases that get into them owdacious newspapers, you'll always observe that sick families have been relieved with slices of cheese. That's the rule now, Mrs. Corney, all over the country. But, however,' said the beadle, stopping to unpack his bundle, 'these are official secrets, ma'am; not to be spoken of; except, as I may say, among the porochial officers, such as ourselves. This is the port wine, ma'am, that the board ordered for the infirmary; real, fresh, genuine port wine; only out of the cask this forenoon; clear as a bell, and no sediment!'

Talk about obstinate paupers, and that's why the pond would prefer to dream on with the infallible Pope ...