In which the pond scores a quadrella, a Jennie Jihading , a Caterist quarry whispering, a Lord Downer worshipping and a Major Mitchell squawking ...

 

So how to the reptiles at the lizard Oz deal with the trauma of thousands of Australians taking to the streets to protest (a trauma noted by a pond correspondent as well)?

Why they disappear the spectacle to the cornfield, and pretend it never happened. 

Just look at what replaced any mention of the weekend activities early this day in the hive mind ...

That's an incredible number of distractions, but the pond reckons the hive mind missed a trick. 

Over in the Nine rags they were whining about the cost ...

Over on the extreme far right, the reptiles sent in Zionist warriors Lord Downer and Major Mitchell to do battle, and help with the erasure of any mention of mass starvation, ethnic cleansing and genocide ...

The pond wasn't sure it could handle a bout of denialist Zionism early in the morning, so turned with relief to Jennie, rabbiting on about the perennial denialist bee  in her bonnet.

The pond knew it could recite her lines by heart, and there'd also be the terrifying spectacle of rampant wind mills, at this very moment killing whales outside Goulburn, and hideous solar panels daring to use the sun to immolate the land, and sure enough ...

Beyond the valley of caricature and irony ... so lay on McJennie ...

The header: Bowen was right: there’s no point in a target the country can’t meet, Our power prices are among the highest in the world and without assured baseload supply 24/7, deindustrialisation will gather pace.

The caption for the terrifying whale killing spectacle: Turbines at a wind farm near Bungendore, 40km east of Canberra. Despite the spin, Labor’s 2030 targets won’t be met. Picture: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

As a bonus, the reptiles reassured the pond that Jennie's jeremiad, jihad if you will, ran just three minutes as a read ...

The Productivity Commission’s report on the energy transition provides the imprimatur Labor needs to supercharge its failing energy plan. While Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen claims his policies are working, and on track to deliver Labor’s targets, his spin can’t hide an inconvenient truth. Expert opinion and the evidence provide no basis for his confidence. Labor’s 2030 targets won’t be met.
It’s an all too familiar story. Labor has said its modelling was “the most comprehensive ever done, for any policy, by any opposition in Australia’s history since Federation”. When reality struck, it was quietly abandoned just before the election. The promised $275 by 2025, the $378 cut and 604,000 green jobs by 2030 disappeared, never to be aired again. The 43 per cent reduction in emissions by 2030 was legislated, requiring the grid to operate with 82 per cent renewables, on the way to net zero by 2050.

It's an all too familiar column, and naturally it needs a villain, come on down Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen. Picture: NewsWire/Monique Harmer

The sight sent Jennie's jihad into overdrive ...

Labor refuses to disclose its whole-of-system costs for a transition held together by billions in taxpayer subsidies and relief packages. The secrecy is indefensible. The public’s right to know should be defended by a Labor government promising transparency and accountability.
The reason for this might lie in the eye-watering costs revealed in independent research. Take the Net Zero Australia report, a joint effort by three universities, chaired by Professor Robin Batterham. It found: “The modelled capital requirement $1.2 trillion to $1.5 trillion of commitments by 2030, and $7 trillion to $9 trillion by 2060 will not be met at the current rate; the gap is enormous.”
The outcomes don’t justify the billions spent on Labor’s watch. Emissions continue to flatline, increasing by 0.05 per cent in the year to last December, a 27 per cent reduction on the 2005 baseline. Bowen described a 5 per cent fall in emissions from industrial processes as “encouraging”, suggesting he missed the recorded fall of 12 per cent in steel production. Far from encouraging, it’s very concerning.
Labor has to rely on the Safeguard Mechanism, which penalises high emitters, to reach its target. This will be problematic, as our trade-exposed industries must be competitive to survive. The Future Made in Australia is already on shifting sands. Our power prices are among the world’s highest and, without assured baseload supply 24/7, deindustrialisation will gather pace.

Strangely, instead of the usual coal power stations that inspire reptile sighs of deep devotion, aluminium this day was the treasured sighting The aluminium produced at the Tomago smelter is now at risk.

Excellent, a meaningless image to accompany Jennie's jihad ..

Our metals smelters and Tomago aluminium smelter in NSW are now at risk; thousands of workers face an uncertain future. It makes no sense to provide taxpayer-funded bailout packages, while hitting them with a de facto carbon tax. A 43 per cent fall in emissions is predicated on the grid operating on 82 per cent renewables. After a collapse in investment, taxpayers now underwrite renewable projects in secret contracts under the Capacity Investment Scheme, operating off-budget. Investment risk is mitigated by socialising the losses. Even so, the renewables share averaged 41.6 per cent in the first quarter of the year, just halfway there.
The Clean Energy Council reported only 1.17GW of renewable energy generation reached financial close in the first six months of 2025. This is just a third of the 6-7GW requiredannually to meet the 82 per cent target. Already Wood Mackenzie forecasts reaching only 58 per cent renewable energy generation by the end of the decade, and Rystad Energy estimates a substantial shortfall of about 18 per cent by 2030. The minister often reminds us “there’s no transition without transmission”. In his own words he concedes the impossibility of reaching the targets. Soon after Labor’s election in 2022, five “urgently needed” transmission projects were identified: HumeLink, VNI West, Sydney Ring, New England REZ and Marinus Link.

Anyone worried that no terrifying snaps of threatening solar panels were deployed to assist Jennie in her jihad? Relax, The priority of energy policy should be ensuring affordable and reliable power 24/7 in a sustainable energy mix. Picture: Neil Fenelon

And so to a final bout of Jennie's jihad ...

Three years on, not one of the projects is at construction stage. All are years late and billions over budget, and most won’t be in operation by 2030. It’s Snowy 2.0 on a grand scale. Be warned: a tsunami of transmission costs is still to hit our power bills. So much for the claim that renewables are the cheapest form of energy.
The priority of energy policy should be ensuring affordable and reliable power 24/7 in a sustainable energy mix; not chasing arbitrary targets, at any cost. We’ve already paid a high price: the billions in subsidies and grants, power bills through the roof, energy poverty, industry and jobs at risk, property rights eroded, environmental degradation and the loss of social licence in many regional communities.
Our abundance of coal, gas and uranium exports sustain our nation’s wealth and in the past provided our comparative advantage with low-cost energy. Considering our 1.1 pre cent contribution to global emissions, what would a cost-benefit analysis of the transition reveal? We’ve been flying blind. It would have served the public interest had the PC pursued this line of inquiry. It has the opportunity to do so in its final report.
With Labor’s vanity project to host the UN COP next year, the Climate Change Authority, chaired by Matt Kean, will likely recommend new 2035 targets, in the 65-75 per cent range. Setting such arbitrary and unachievable targets will only compound existing problems.
Bowen should stand by his statement that “there’s no point setting a target which the country can’t meet”. If not, blinded by reality, we will continue on a path of economic self-harm, putting our future prosperity at serious risk.
Jennie George is a former ACTU president and Labor MP for Throsby.

Usually for balance the pond likes to make mention of what else might be happening on or to the planet and this research will do ...

And so on, and the pond found that headline about catastrophic consequences for future generations piquant, because that's also the Caterist's theme this day, as he turns his quarry whispering skills on vulgar youff ...

The header: Don’t be fooled – the Treasurer is eyeing off our retirement savings, Labor’s age-wars falsehood is that one group of people is being short-changed by the greedy behaviour of another.

The blurb for the meaningless snap: By targeting retirement savings as a legitimate source of taxation to pay for inflated recurrent spending, the Albanese government has found a new way to impoverish the future.

The Caterist is in what might be called the grind phase of the campaign to undermine the federal government - given that May disaster it will be a long and tedious grinding - and the pond was content to let the Caterist grind away ...

Australians are paying more tax than at any point this century. Yet Treasurer Jim Chalmers is signalling that the burden will rise further as he tries to close the widening gap between the government’s extravagant promises and what it can afford. Which is why we should be wary of Chalmers’s claim that his changes to tax policy should be viewed “through an intergenerational lens”.
Perhaps he really does intend to mend his ways and unleash a Trump-style razor gang on commonwealth spending as a prelude to lowering taxes and reducing the debt future generations will inherit. A more likely explanation, however, is that he’s seeking rhetorical cover before raiding our retirement savings. His proposal to tax unrealised capital gains from superannuation accounts above $3m may merely be a foot in the door so he can get to granny’s teapot.
The $4 trillion bucket of superannuation savings and $11 trillion-plus in residential real estate are tempting targets for a government running out of things to tax. To disguise this as addressing an ill-defined intergenerational injustice, however, is deeply misleading. The tax burden is not being transferred between generations, but rather between age cohorts, from those in the workforce to present and future retirees.
Like the transfer of student debt to the taxpayer, Labor is engaging in age-war politics. It is intentionally divisive, built on a falsehood: that one group of people is being short-changed by the greedy behaviour of another. Naturally, this imagined injustice calls for a collectivist remedy. Yet pretending that government is the answer undermines the incentive of the young to strive and save in the hope that they, too, may one day enjoy the dignity of self-funded retirement.
The grievances felt by millennials and Generation Z are all too apparent. Yet there is little objective evidence that, on balance, the obstacles they face are significantly worse than those of previous generations, let alone that the selfish behaviour of boomers is to blame. To the contrary. Since 1980, the share of personal income tax paid by people under 30 has fallen from about 26 per cent to less than 10 per cent, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office. The tax paid by those aged 60-69 has more than doubled.

Oh yes, vulgar youff, and you can take the destruction of the planet, the presence of micro plastics and all the rest as a bonus, as the real villain is unveiled...Treasurer Jim Chalmers. We should be wary of his claim that his changes to tax policy should be viewed “through an intergenerational lens”. Picture: NewsWire/Martin Ollman

The Caterist was right into appeasing the hive mind demographic ...

Personal wealth has increased dramatically since the economic reforms of the 1980s, but there is no evidence that baby boomers are hogging it. Instead, household wealth, like wisdom, accumulates with age from Gen X (average wealth $96,000, based on KPMG analysis) to millennials ($757,000), Gen Z ($1.88m) to boomers ($2.31m).
Far from a rank injustice, the figures paint a picture of a healthy, middle-class society where individuals are inspired to work hard and save for the future.
The challenges of home ownership today are undoubtedly greater. Yet we should resist the temptation of declaring them insurmountable, which removes the incentive to try. Policies to assist young people in entering the housing market would help their chances of fulfilling the intergenerational contract, which places an implicit duty on each generation to build on the inheritance of the last. Yet Labor’s dismal redistributive fiscal policy hardly achieves that goal.

Punishing those who have invested in residential property, or ending negative gearing, will not add a single home to the housing stock. It will, however, reduce the rental stock, with many unfortunate consequences.

Intergenerational equity is an intellectually lazy concept that is being much abused by this government. The Coalition must avoid getting sucked in by its superficial appeal, since it is grossly distorts the intergenerational moral compact articulated by Edmund Burke: “A partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

You've never had it so good vulgar youff and did the pond ever tell you the story of how it got up early in morning in Tamworth to feast on tar from street before heading off a 25 hour a day shift at coal mine?

Labor’s naked play for young voters obscures the fundamental injustice of budget deficits locked in for the foreseeable future. Paying for today’s indulgences by borrowing shifts the burden from today’s taxpayers to future generations. As Thomas Sowell explains in his comparison of politics and economics, the real winners in this game are politicians whose apparent generosity and compassion gain them short-term political support.
The Albanese government has excelled in finding ways to steal temporary political advantage by kicking the obligation to pay for its follies down the road. The Capacity Investment Scheme commits future taxpayers to subsidise energy companies if the wholesale price of energy falls below the contract price.
 Paying off student loans does not rub out the debt. It simply transfers it from the private column to the public.
By targeting retirement savings as a legitimate source of taxation to pay for inflated recurrent spending, the Albanese government has found a new way to impoverish the future. By casting wealth gained through frugal habits as disreputable, Chalmers relinquishes his rights as a would-be reformer.

For some bizarre reason, the reptiles decided to introduce the French clock devotee on his way to Paris, apparently unaware that everyone in the hive mind loathes the notion of super and considers it a gigantic burden and an epic failure, Treasurer Paul Keating in 1986. His reform enshrined the principle that retirees should not be a burden on the working population but live from the proceeds of money honestly invested over the course of their working lives.

Then it was time for a final burst of Caterism...

The effect of this policy will be to deform the achievements of successive governments from the early 1980s to 2007, notably the Labor government of Paul Keating. Compulsory superannuation was an attempt to put an end to the Ponzi scheme under which current working taxpayers covered unfunded pension liabilities.
Keating’s reform enshrined the principle that retirees should not be a burden on the working population but live from the proceeds of money honestly invested over the course of their working lives. At the turn of the century, 66 per cent of retirees drew a full state pension. Today, about 44 per cent do so. Treasury forecasts that by 2063, only 21 per cent will rely on a pension.
The greatest gift we can bestow on future generations is a productive and growing economy, replete with opportunities and hope. The fairest thing we can offer Gen Z and those who come after them is an even break, so they, too, can grow prosperity.
That requires political leaders prepared to fight the instinct for self-preservation. The honour of entering the annals of political history as a reformer demands the courage to make decisions that are unlikely to deliver benefits in the present electoral cycle.

And so to the Zionist wretches the pond left until last ...

The header: Benjamin Netanyahu’s a great leader in times of war and peace, Over the last ten years, Israel’s per capita GDP has grown an astonishing 73 per cent while the numbers in Australia are declining.

The caption: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Picture: Amir Cohen/AFP

Now the pond would rather be anywhere else and for those who agree, it's possible to find Lord Downer in the archive, wherein he can be seen in his original glory ...

Incidentally so can JD, showing off his stunning knowledge of history ...

Using the Second World War to illustrate his point, Vance claimed concessions and diplomacy are vital to end major conflicts—but seemingly forgot that the war ended due to unconditional surrender.
“If you go back to World War II, if you go back to World War I. If you go back to every major conflict in human history, they all end with some kind of negotiation,” Vance said.
Unfortunately for Vance, World War II not brought to an end, but came to a close with the unconditional surrender of Germany on May 7, 1945, and Japan on September 2, 1945.
“Vance says WWII ended in negotiation -someone tell that to Hiroshima,” one user wrote on X.
Another added, “World War 2 ended with the exact opposite of a negotiation.”

What a stupid man he is, and speaking of stupid men in awe of Nietzchean supermen, explaining how there'll be no negotiating, just a lot of Benji worship (and not just of the movie star hound)..

If Anthony Albanese ever met Benjamin Netanyahu, he might begin by asking him about economic management. Under Netanyahu’s leadership, Israel has achieved notable economic milestones: unemployment hit historic lows – though its crept up a little in the past two years – and the hi-tech sector has driven exceptional productivity growth, exports and tax revenue. Fiscal discipline reduced debt-to-GDP from more than 100 per cent to about 60 per cent, culminating in OECD membership.
Over the past 10 years, Israel’s per capita GDP has grown an astonishing 73 per cent and today its per capita GDP is similar to the UK, France and Germany. Netanyahu was in power for all but 18 months of those 10 years. Our Prime Minister might like to think about this data, given that on his watch Australia’s per capita GDP has been declining. But it seems improbable the two prime ministers will meet in person, let alone discuss economics.
Australia’s relationship with Israel has collapsed. As the Israeli Prime Minister has pointed out, if a liberal democratic country’s policies are lauded by an Islamic terrorist organisation bent on destroying a liberal democratic state, something has gone terribly wrong.
The truth is, Benjamin Netanyahu is a remarkable and unusual politician. Not only has he managed to stay in office to become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, but he has grasped the country’s existential security challenges and gone a long way towards solving them.

The reptiles introduced a prize irrelevant loon choosing not to be troubled by mass starvation, ethnic cleansing and genocide ... Former Howard government minister Peter McGauran says the rift between Australia and Israel is “deeply troubling”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likening Australia's Palestinian statehood support to “appeasement”, warning the West will pay the price for the push. “The Prime Minister has brought it on himself,” Mr McGauran told Sky News Australia. “He has been too weak and indecisive, especially in the early days of the rise of anti-Semitism, and he is recognising a Palestinian state, which at this time, is an endorsement of Hamas.”

Lord Downer carried on ...

Since the Yom Kippur War in 1973, and the subsequent Camp David and Oslo accords, the threat to Israel’s existence has not come from neighbouring Arab states. It has come from Iran. Iran gradually built up Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, as well as developing ballistic missiles and a nuclear weapons program.
The leadership of Iran made it clear they wanted to destroy Israel. So too did the leadership of Hezbollah and Hamas. They said it over and again.
Still, Netanyahu went out to build relations with the Arab world. He negotiated the Abraham Accords which consolidated Israel’s relationship with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Morocco. He inherited a working relationship with Egypt, which goes back to Jimmy Carter’s time in the White House.
But after October 7, 2023, Netanyahu decided that Israel had to take on its enemies and defeat them. Obviously, Israel had been planning carefully to do this for a long time. To make the decisions that Netanyahu made, while at the same time managing a fragile coalition government in a fractious Israeli political system, required huge political courage. Netanyahu used October 7 as the time to retaliate and deal with Israel’s sworn enemies once and for all.

Cue a snap, Israeli army Merkava main battle tanks move along the border fence with the northern Gaza Strip. Netanyahu used October 7 as the time to retaliate and deal with Israel’s sworn enemies once and for all. Picture: Menahem Kahana/AFP

It should be remembered that Lord Downer himself is something of a warrior...

Okay, okay, the pond just wanted a little light relief, because Lord Downer becomes more nauseating with each line ...

The attack on Hezbollah, which had been consistently firing missiles into Israel over many years, and more recently had caused the evacuation of the north of Israel, was masterful. The detonation of the pagers, the military action across the border into Lebanon and the decapitation of Hezbollah leaders destroyed the effectiveness of the organisation.
Then there was Iran. It took immense courage to launch military strikes against a huge country such as Iran, with around nine times the population of Israel and a substantial military. Not only did the Israelis destroy Iran’s air defences but, with the help of President Donald Trump, destroyed Iran’s nuclear facilities.
I know critics say they could rebuild them. But those critics are obviously not economists. It would cost billions for an impoverished country such as Iran, suffering as its economy has from sanctions over many years. I don’t think it will happen.
So to have destroyed the threat of Hezbollah to the north of Israel and neutralised Iran is an extraordinary achievement that two years ago few analysts would have thought possible. Indeed, feckless governments only interested in opinion polling, such as our own, were demanding that Netanyahu stop his attacks on Hezbollah, and not attack Iran’s air defences and nuclear facilities. The Australian government wasn’t the only leftist Western government with a large Muslim population that did the same thing for the same reason: politics.
As for Gaza, urban warfare is perilously difficult against a terrorist organisation, as the Americans know from Afghanistan and Iraq.
But in Gaza, the Israelis have been comprehensively defeated in the propaganda war. It is just astonishing how the media barely report explanations from the Israeli government and Israeli military, and constantly give credence to claims of genocide and famine, claims that come from a terrorist organisation. But as Netanyahu said the other day when asked why Israel was not winning the propaganda war: “We Jews have been losing the propaganda war for 2500 years!”

Claims that come from a terrorist organisation? So the UN, and various other relief agencies on the ground are terrorist organisations?

Try Haaretz for a little balance...

And so on, but sorry Leila Lord Downer and the lizard Oz are all in, Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t waver in the face of hugely negative propaganda. Picture: Debbie Hill/Pool/AFP

And so to Lord Downer's final flourish ...

What’s interesting about Netanyahu is that he doesn’t waver in the face of this hugely negative propaganda. It doesn’t change his mind that he needs to incapacitate Hamas’s military capability to strike again at Israel. And of course he wants the hostages released. It must be tempting for him to give in to the endless abuse and denigration of Israel and his government.
But Netanyahu is strong. He knows that to leave Hamas in control in Gaza will only lead to the recurrence of violence against Israel. After all, Hamas’s objective is the destruction of Israel. Unless the hostages are released and Hamas is disarmed, the war will just go on. Maybe it might make a bit more sense to demand that happens, rather than abusing liberal democratic Israel.
I worked for the United Nations for six years and also visited the United Nations in Gaza while I was foreign minister. I was always astonished by how deeply hostile UN officials were to Israel. It didn’t come as a great surprise to me that some UN employees were involved in the Hamas attack on Jews.
In time, Benjamin Netanyahu will be judged to have been one of the few truly effective leaders of his time. He will have made his country more prosperous and he will have made it more secure. By contrast, people such as UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres and our own Prime Minister will be seen as ephemeral populists with the moral compass of a wasp in a wind tunnel.

On second thoughts, the pond and Lord Downer can agree on one thing. Benji is a strong man ...see how he handles a feeble chook with a weak neck ...

And so finally to the Major in a full to overflowing day ...

The header: Feelings over facts: how Hamas duped Western media, Journalists and politicians who imagine Hamas as freedom fighters seeking to overthrow a colonial power are fools.

The caption: The decisions of Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong on Palestine could have implications for our relationship with the US. Artwork: Frank Ling

Oh Frank must you take credit when you could blame AI?

Never mind, the reptiles promised a 5 minute read, because the Major was in from the links and feeling his genocidal oats, and was willing to unleash a barrage of porkies.

Those who can't handle him now can find him in the archive, at least for as long as that format lasts.

For those with superhuman strength, and an ability to tolerate barking made fundamentalist, extremist, full on Zionist propaganda, the Major is your scribbler ...

Journalists in Australia who regularly call Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the “butcher of Gaza” and a war criminal also blame him for the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.
Yet Netanyahu’s position on Gaza before that horrific day was in line with what the left-wing leaders of Europe and Australia – now locked in battle with Netanyahu over support for a Palestinian state – believe Palestinians still need.
Under the headline ‘The Dream Palace of the Jews’, Tablet magazine editor-at-large Liel Leibovitz on July 23 wrote: “Israeli society, fragmented ..... (on) any subject imaginable, was in full agreement (before October 7) on one thing: the best way to handle the threat posed by Hamas in Gaza was by pursuing a cautious policy that focused on economic incentives … and revolved around the logic that the more prosperous Gaza grows, the harder it would be for Hamas to hold on to power.”
Leibovitz argues Netanyahu, his security agencies and the Israel Defence Forces all supported a European-style social democrat commitment of tens of millions of dollars a year to underwrite improved living standards in the Strip, which had been self-governing since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s 2005 withdrawal.
The Hebrew daily newspaper, Israel Hayom, has reported Shin Bet’s internal security agency boss Ronen Bar, speaking two days before October 7, told his audience the way forward in Gaza was “delivering substantial humanitarian aid as an act of goodwill”.
At that very moment Hamas’s leadership, in tunnels only a few miles away, was preparing its bestial Sabbath assault on civilian communities in southern Israel.
This goes to the heart of the progressive misreading of the aims of modern Islamism.
Journalists and politicians who imagine Hamas as freedom fighters seeking to overthrow a colonial power are fools.
Like ISIS, Hamas has believed since its first founding document in 1989 in destroying Israel and killing Jews.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke might be shocked that Simcha Rothman, the Knesset member whose visa he blocked last week, wants Hamas destroyed. But Rothman is right and Burke is pandering to the rise of political Islam in Labor electorates. Think the Muslim Votes group that fielded candidates at May’s election.

Cue a snap of one barking mad fundamentalist ... The visa of Simcha Rothman, a member of the Religious Zionist Party, was blocked by Tony Burke. Picture: NurPhoto

Incidentally for anyone wanting more on the barking mad Rothman, try Haaretz in the archive on Rothmann in New York, or an Haaretz editorial on Rothman's role in silencing the struggle for democracy,  or this memory of him as a cheap demagogue ...

Onwards with the Major ...

Journalists in Australia who cite the hundreds of thousands of anti-Netanyahu protesters on the streets of Israel last week as evidence Israelis don’t support the war against Hamas are wrong. Those protesters want Israel’s hostages back and an end to the war because they fear for the safety of their sons and daughters fighting in Gaza.
But they don’t want Hamas to survive in any form. Many critics of Netanyahu no longer agree with a “two-state solution” because they have realised what a Palestinian state would mean for the safety of Israel’s Jews.
An editorial in the centrist (by Israel’s standards) Jerusalem Post last Wednesday summed up the national mood.

Centrist? That's what they might call themselves, but that's pretty much like describing state media like Faux Noise as centrist ...if you want to get to centrist, perhaps best not to start from there ...

“The idea of establishing a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, which would effectively turn the centre of the country into a Gaza-envelope-like area, is one a majority of Israelis once entertained, but no longer. The Second Intifada disabused many of that notion, and Hamas’s October 7 massacre buried it even deeper.”
The Post argues France, Australia and others see a Palestinian state as the solution demanded by October 7.
“It is as if the world believes it can take steps that Israel views as profoundly inimical to its interests … it’s as if Israel has no agency of its own,” the Post said.
Remember Israel is a nuclear power with the strongest military presence in the entire Middle East. It destroyed Hezbollah in weeks and bombed Iran to its knees in a fortnight. It is a close US ally, something Australia may no longer be.

The Major is a canny player, always careful to introduce a billy goat butt, if only so he can sink the butt like a hole in one ...

None of this is to suggest Netanyahu is above criticism. He has made many mistakes in Gaza, including adopting war aims that may be unattainable.
This column last week argued his lack of a formal strategy to rebuff false Hamas claims that Israel is deliberately starving Gazans was a trigger for rising anti-Semitism globally.

Butt, if the pond can be allowed a butt, Israel is deliberately starving Gazans, and any attempt to deny it is the sort of Orwellian lie that reptiles purport to deplore...

Best blame the victims ...

Nor was there anything to be gained by Netanyahu’s public attack on Anthony Albanese last week. Yet his letter criticising the PM for not dealing with the rise of domestic anti-Semitism did make some serious points that would have been better made privately.
Most thoughtful people wish the Palestinians a reprieve from the horrors of the past two years. But they also know much of the blame for what has happened to civilians in the Strip should be sheeted home to Hamas, which deliberately uses its people as human shields.
The approach of Albanese, Burke and Foreign Minister Penny Wong is about pacifying Muslim voters in Labor seats, but it risks the sort of Islamisation of domestic politics that is threatening social cohesion in the UK, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany.

Then came a cynical caption for an alleged villain, The approach of Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke is about pacifying Muslim voters in Labor seats. Picture: Martin Ollman

The pond began to run out of steam, with the Major able to pick sundry resources to explain why in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed bigot will always end up king...

Albanese needs to do more than simply keep repeating that there can be no role for Hamas in a future Palestinian state. The PM needs to show he understands the misinformation war Hamas is using in Western media. To date, he has only fed into concern about false images of children allegedly starving but in fact suffering genetic illnesses.
The Free Press in an August 18 investigation – ‘They Became Symbols for Gazan Starvation. But All 12 Suffer from Other Heath Problems’ – analysed photos of Palestinian children published by Western media to back the starvation myth. Every one was found to be suffering from other diseases.
Why can’t Albanese or his ministers ever admit Hamas hides behind its civilians and kills them if they object? The Arab League has been more forceful criticising such tactics than most European governments, Canada and Australia.

At this point the Major resorted to simpleton Sharri, featured in the Beast as a lickspittle fellow traveller and humbug asker of Dorothy Dixers ...

You could hear the frustration in Netanyahu’s voice in his exclusive interview with Sharri Markson on Sky News Australia last Thursday.
“When the worst terrorist organisation on Earth – these savages who murdered women, raped them, beheaded men, burnt babies alive in front of their parents and took hundreds of hostages – when these people congratulate the Prime Minister of Australia, you know something is wrong,” he said.

Actually if the pond might be so bold, that bit about the burned babies is yet another bit of propaganda. 

For a more considered look at the Hamas atrocities, try Haaretz, Hamas Committed Documented Atrocities. But a Few False Stories Feed the Deniers

None of which excuses an attempt at genocide, unless you happen to be deep into the joy of atrocities, a genocide lover of a Major kind...

Readers wanting more insight into what Hamas is doing via the Western media can read for free another piece by Tablet’s Leibovitz, titled ‘Hamas Is Winning the Culture War’, published on August 11.
Leibovitz argues most Western activists do know Hamas is stealing aid and selling it for profit as well as shooting at its own civilians at aid depots.They know the photos of starving kids are false.
“The point of the photographs was to provide onlookers with a fig leaf of an excuse to embrace the narrative of a terrorist organisation whose aims are in fact, openly, genocidal,” Leibovitz says.
“But what else is a good liberal-progressive person to do?
“All you need to do is look at the pictures and feel empathy with the hungry child. Only a monster could possibly confront such undeniable evidence of human suffering and respond with calorie counts and numbers of aid trucks.”
Or indeed point out what Netanyahu did with Markson: Israeli aid now amounts to more than a tonne of food for each and every Gazan.
Yet this is where Western journalism now sits. Feelings trump evidence. All Israel can do is finish the job in Gaza and make sure October 7 never happens again.
Unfortunately for long-suffering Palestinians betrayed by their own leaders for a century, Wong may be right: There may be no Palestinian state left.

Roll on the genocide, roll on the ethnic cleansing, there's nothing like having simpleton Sharri and Major Mitchell squawking away to help with the cause ...

And so to end with a little light relief, unless you happen to be Ukrainian or American, or someone currently on planet Earth ...though the old song about health issues is returning with a vengeance ...