In which the pond moves from King Donald and the deeply weird to a deeply dull and predictable Killer outing ...

 

The pond deeply regrets that the bromancer failed the pond's "foreign editor" test, though perhaps a weekend offering will emerge later in the day ...

What a chance to celebrate King Donald and Pete was lost by the bro...

Each day the bromancer stays silent as King Donald achieves astonishing new levels of diplomacy...

Trump Secretly Admits He Has Started a New War

At least two of the boats struck last month came from Venezuela (even though the surge of overdose deaths in recent years has been driven by fentanyl from Mexico) but very little proof of who or what was on board has been provided.
Experts have also questioned why U.S. forces would launch a missile if they could simply stop the boat and arrest the crew, which is usual maritime practice.
And at the United Nations General Assembly last week, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said Trump’s actions were akin to “murder” and called for him to be criminally investigated.

In that spirit, scores of world leaders have admired him while the bro stays silent...

World Leaders Share a Laugh at Trump, 79, for Ending Nonexistent War

A group of world leaders openly laughed at Donald Trump over his boasts about ending a conflict between two countries that were never at war.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama joked with French President Emmanuel Macron about the 79-year-old Trump’s repeated gaffes, in which he claims to have resolved a war between Azerbaijan and Albania, when he actually means the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
“You should make an apology to us,” Rama told Macron while standing next to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, in a moment recorded by Azerbaijani outlet News.AZ. “Because you didn’t congratulate us for the peace deal that President Trump made between Albania and Azerbaijan.”

And again ...

Trump, who is on course to be the oldest sitting president in U.S. history, went one step further during the American Cornerstone Institute’s Founders’ Dinner in September, when he suggested he ended a conflict between Armenia and Cambodia—two countries more than 4,000 miles apart that have never been at war with each other.
“Cambodia and Armenia,” the 79-year-old said in a typically rambling speech. “It was just starting, and it was a bad one. Think of that.”

Moving along, the pond's atheist logarithms were awitter and atitter with the news that atheists had been deemed likely terrorists by King Donald ...

It's one of those mindless bits of grab-all-isms ....

...Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.

The cure for the disease?

The United States requires a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.  Through this comprehensive strategy, law enforcement will disband and uproot networks, entities, and organizations that promote organized violence, violent intimidation, conspiracies against rights, and other efforts to disrupt the functioning of a democratic society.

Sounds like the real disease, rampant fascism, needs a cure, but perhaps it'd not be wise to mention being an atheist in the new disunited states:

Oh and the shutdown continues apace with useless polls all the go ... We asked 1,000 Americans who they blame for the shutdown

Enough of the comedy already ...

As it so happens, the pond much preferred to reference Laura Bullard's The Real Stakes, and Real Story, of Peter Thiel’s Antichrist Obsession, Thirty years ago, a peace-loving Austrian theologian spoke to Peter Thiel about the apocalyptic theories of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. They’ve been a road map for the billionaire ever since. (*archive link if you must)

Every so often Wired comes up with a ripper read, though it might be only of specialist interest - the pond's partner found it very tough going and at the end could only mutter "deeply, deeply weird".

But it had the lot, from the apocalypse to bonkers billionaire hawk tuah hawker of doom Peter Thiel, to his hapless puppet couch-molester JD to Girard, Palaver, Schmitt, Nazis, mimetics, and barking mad Catholic fundamentalism.

The pond won't dive in at length.

Instead here's just the first two pars as a teaser trailer ...

Peter Thiel’s Armageddon speaking tour has—like the world—not ended yet. For a full two years now, the billionaire has been on the circuit, spreading his biblically inflected ideas about doomsday through a set of variably and sometimes visibly perplexed interviewers. He has chatted onstage with the economist podcaster Tyler Cowen about the katechon (the scriptural term for “that which withholds” the end times); traded some very awkward on-camera silences with the New York Times columnist Ross Douthat; and is, at this very moment, in the midst of delivering a four-part, off-the-record lecture series about the Antichrist in San Francisco.
Depending on who you are, you may find it hilarious, fascinating, insufferable, or horrifying that one of the world's most powerful men is obsessing over a figure from sermons and horror movies. But the ideas and influences behind these talks are key to understanding how Thiel sees his own massive role in the world—in politics, technology, and the fate of the species. And to really grasp Thiel’s katechon-and-Antichrist schtick, you need to go back to the first major lecture of his doomsday road show—which took place on an unusually hot day in Paris in 2023. No video cameras recorded the event, and no reporters wrote about it, but I’ve been able to reconstruct it by talking to people who were there.

Oh and before setting out, you'll need this glossary...

Deeply, deeply weird ...

Call the pond fascinated, while suitably inclined to hilarity and deep suffering, and consider it a warm-up to Killer Creighton, relegated to a late arvo appearance, as much for dullness and predictability as for needing the space for Our Henry ...

Killer is astonishing expert at economics, as recently celebrated in the pond ...

Want to know more?

Jim Chalmers should ignore the ‘gurus’ and look to Argentina for economic tips

Of course Killer's not the only clown in the karnival of kircus klowns ...

Sen. Mike Lee has railed against spending on foreign aid. With a $20B bailout for Argentina on deck, he's not saying a word.

Sen. Mike Lee once called Argentina’s Javier Milei the first politician he’d “idolized.” Now, as the Trump administration reportedly prepares a $20 billion bailout to prop up Milei’s government ahead of U.S. midterms, the Utah Republican—long a foe of foreign aid—has gone quiet.
Will Lee’s anti-foreign aid absolutism survive when it’s a foreign leader he champions?
Since he became president of Argentina in 2023, Lee has lavished praise on Javier Milei and his libertarian economic proposals to shrink the state and deregulate the economy. He's urged the United States to follow suit. Now, with Washington weighing tens of billions of dollars to rescue Milei, Lee doesn't have much to say.
Milei was propelled to victory due to widespread voter dissatisfaction with the country’s economic crisis and persistent poverty. Inflation skyrocketed to more than 140% in 2023. He promised to enact a sweeping overhaul of the economy plus enormous cuts to government spending. Supporters dubbed his policies “chainsaw economics” due to his penchant for brandishing a chainsaw during the campaign.
Lee was immediately smitten, applauding Milei’s fiscal austerity and deregulation push.
In January 2024, Lee posted on social media that Milei was the first politician he’s idolized, and that the U.S. should follow Argentina’s lead.

Sad to say, after all that, Killer's outing this day was very disappointing, a strictly by the numbers bashing of furriners, part of the seemingly endless ongoing murmuration of the hive mind on this matter...

The header: Residency the bait as universities cash in on foreign students, You might’ve wondered why Uber-driving foreign graduates have forked out so much money for Australian degrees. It has little to do with academic ambition or a thirst for learning.

The caption for the meaningless snap, illustrating only the emptiness of the lizard Oz graphics department: The back blocks of an Australian university campus. ‘More than 50 per cent of international graduates working in Australia are employed well below their skill level and many are working outside the field of their qualification,’ a report says. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Diego Fedele

Killer was right on to the invading hordes ...

If you’ve ever had the awkward experience of being driven around in an Uber by a South Asian with a PhD or masters degree, you might’ve wondered why these hardworking foreign graduates had forked out tens of thousands of dollars a year for their degrees.
The answer has little to do with academic ambition or a thirst for learning. It’s for the right to work, ideally permanently, in Australia – which, even in relatively low-skilled jobs, delivers a better living standard than professional jobs available in their home countries.
Australia’s higher education sector has a real shot at a medal in the ticket-clipping Olympics, siphoning off tens of billions of dollars in revenue from foreign students who, in truth, would never pay the fees charged were it not for the right to work and the possibility of residency.
A new report by Jobs and Skills Australia, published in August, perhaps unintentionally bells the cat on this racket. “More than 50 per cent of international graduates working in Australia are employed well below their skill level and many are working outside the field of their qualification,” the report found. One anonymous engineering employer, who had recently hired a foreign student, candidly told the department: “A lot of his (student) mates just come here to earn the money, drive the Uber.”
The report also made plain that migration – not education – drives enrolments. “Nearly 70 per cent of international higher education students reported that the possibility to migrate was a reason for choosing to study in Australia, rising to 77 per cent of Indian and 79 per cent of Nepali higher education students.” For these cohorts, the degree is merely the ticket (an expensive one) to live and work in a rich country.
Yet for all the hype, the economic return for these students is dismal. International graduates in business and management, the most popular areas of study, were earning just $57,000 a year in 2022 compared to $115,000 for equivalently qualified domestic students.
In engineering and computing, foreign graduates were earning $40,000 a year less than locals. It’s a startling gap. They are, in effect, a source of cheap (yet highly educated) low-skilled labour, holding down wages in food, accommodation, retail, ride-sharing and point-to-point delivery sectors.
“Over 90 per cent of Indian and nearly 96 per cent of Nepali higher education students cited the ability to work while studying as one of the reasons they chose Australia,” the report noted. Consider the US comparison. There, foreign students are effectively barred from low-skilled jobs. They can work only on campus during their studies, for no more than 20 hours a week, and do not have automatic access to post-study work rights. Australia, by contrast, hands out the Temporary Graduate visa almost as a matter of course.
Our universities and vocational colleges have been milking this discrepancy royally: enrolments surged to 787,000 in 2023, up from just over 410,000 a decade earlier. The US, with 13 times Australia’s population, had just 1.1 million international students in 2024.
The motives are even more plain in the vocational sector. It is telling that the average age of foreign students enrolled in VET courses – the ones that require little preparation – is three years older than that of international university students. These courses in cookery, business and marketing are less about education than immigration pathways.

The pond didn't feel the need to interrupt, but as an aside, in a recent visit to the RPA, noted that the hospital, and quite possibly the entire NSW health system would collapse without the presence of migrants, offered a singularly diverse and useful population of health carers.

The pond was extraordinarily grateful for their attention and care.

Naturally Killer didn't care about any of this, and turned to blaming invading cuckoos for the housing crisis, with the reptiles dragging in Ming the Merciless acolytes, Menzies Research Centre Chief Economist Nico Louw says the government has fallen short on making significant changes to migration policies that would help address the housing crisis. “It seems that most of our vice chancellors, particularly at the elite universities, seem to think that their job is to run an export business to bring in international students,” Mr Louw said. “It's impossible to have a realistic debate about it in this country. “Every time you say anything to do with international students, the Vice Chancellors act as though it’s the end of the world and the universities are all going to fall over.”

It was all drearily predictable and familiar, roughly akin to King Donald's war on migrants ...

“Graduates’ persistence means they have become an important feeder group to Australia’s permanent migration program,” the Jobs and Skills report noted, pointing out that 40 per cent of international students who began courses in the early 2010s had become permanent residents within a decade. Many had to churn through “five or six different visas before being granted permanent residence”.
All this is expensive, time-consuming and degrading for the foreign students themselves. They have become so numerous they often struggle to socialise with native Australians at all. Even the English proficiency, once a selling point of Australian education, is now being undermined by sheer numbers.
It’s not clear that the system helps their home countries much either. Nations such as India and Nepal are effectively deprived of bright young people so they can deliver food to Sydney and Melbourne’s middle and upper classes.

The paranoid fear of furriners continued apace in the next clip, with faint echoes of Faragism on the front palate and Geert Wilders on the back... Microbusiness Chief Economist Leith Van Onselen discusses an influx of international students at Australian universities. At the University of Sydney last year, international students outnumbered domestic enrolments for the first time in its 170-year history, raising questions about who higher education really serves. “Australia has the highest concentration of international students in the world … behind Luxembourg,” Mr Van Onselen told Sky News host Danica De Giorgio. “Jobs and Skills Australia released a report this week, and it basically admitted that international students mostly come to Australia for work and permanent residence. “They basically admitted that the whole international education system is basically one big migration scam.”

What's the chance of seeing a gown in university grounds outside of graduation day? 

Never mind, it's just a visual cliché, designed to match the stereotyping and the paranoia ...

If we are going to persist with this charade, we should at least be more honest and efficient about it. One obvious solution would be to establish a new visa – call it the Cheap Foreign Workers Subclass 650 – with a much higher application fee, and cut out the higher education sector entirely. This would allow our universities, where foreign students now make up close to half of all enrolments, to shrink back to their core, original purpose: educating Australians.
The institutions would howl, of course, because they have become addicted to the billions from international fees. They constantly boast that foreign students generate a $51bn “export industry”. But this is highly misleading. For a start, the estimated $US9bn ($13.6bn) in cash remittances sent home every year should be deducted. This headline number also conflates tuition fees with spending on rent and groceries.
In fact, the size of this supposedly “fourth-largest export industry” is more akin to what the federal government could collect directly if it charged these hardworking young foreigners for the right to live and work in Australia. At least then taxpayers would be getting something back, which governments could spend on infrastructure for all rather than new university buildings and armies of overpaid university bureaucrats.
The costs and benefits would be clear. Right now, the universities are clipping the ticket, the students are driving Ubers, and the public is told it’s all an “export miracle”. It is nothing of the sort.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

The pond regrets the nose dive this post took - from high hilarity to the deeply weird to a standard bashing of furriners, an aged and worn bit of migrant panic, fear and loathing, straight out of the hive mind fear mongering playbook ...

But the pond is something of a completist, and does its best to help other completists in their completism, even if you occasionally get a dud, useless stamp in the reptile album.

You can still tick it off, and say it's been another Killer day for the karnival of klowns ...

And the cartoon for this outing is the immortal Rowe, celebrating a vaguely related theme ...

In which the pond ends up with Jennings of the fifth form and Our Henry ...

 

This is a day to tread on eggshells, because the reptiles really made a meal of a terror attack in Manchester, recalling the line wrongly attributed to Stalin, Aber das ist wohl so, weil ein einzelner immer der Tod ist — und zwei Millionen immer nur eine Statistik.

Put it another way, three dead in Manchester and c. 68.3k and counting dead in Gaza.

Observe how it is done ...

By way of contrast, this was how it was noted in Al Jazeera today ...

If you squint, you can see the news, but the pond's beat is the lizard Oz, so back to the reptiles ....

You can see how the killer did a great favour to Benji and the lizards of Oz. 

Swept from view was any talk of the illegal detention of boats on international waters, or a protest in Sydney streets about same, or the ongoing genocide in Gaza, or anything else outside the hive mind, or if you will, Plato's cave.

Instead the reptiles served up an insensitively titled ...

HOLY HORROR
Three dead, ‘multiple’ injured in terror attack on Manchester synagogue
Manchester police say alert members of the Jewish community prevented an even bigger tragedy after a car rammed a crowd outside a synagogue on Yom Kippur, killing two people before the attacker was shot dead.
by Jacquelin Magnay

The reptiles went the full hog, with the blame game cranked into high gear ...

RiSING ANTI-SEMITISM
‘Today is the day we feared’: UK Jews knew an attack was inevitable
Israeli leaders say Keir Starmer must share the blame for the Manchester synagogue terror attack as UK Jews say they had long feared such an assault amid rising anti-semitism.
By Jacquelin Magnay

The malignant Magnay scored a trifecta at the top of the page, as if her blame gameslant wasn't already apparent ...

COMMENTARY by Jacquelin Magnay
Starmer’s stoking underscores synagogue horror
Critics are blaming Keir Starmer’s handling of pro-Palestinian protests and stoking of political tensions for sparking Britain’s first deadly synagogue attack that left its Jewish community reeling.

This is how it works: a terrorist massacre of three prevents any mention of the terrorist massacre of many.

What else?

Well the trans jihad continued apace ... and Jack the Insider joined in ...

Harry Potter and the Celebrity Storm puts trans rights before victims
In normal circumstances, this unseemly feud would be best left to the confines of a social get-together where, after a few after-dinner stickies, matters would descend into wailing and gnashing of teeth.
by Jack the Insider
Columnist

Jack tried to dress it up as a celebrity feud, but it was the same old trans hysteria on parade.

The hysteria continued over on the extreme far right ...

There, another in the murmuration, another participant in the jihad ...

Women at greatest risk of Allan gender ideology injustice
Most Australians have no idea that a convicted male sex offender who identifies as a woman is currently serving a sentence at Dame Phyllis Frost Centre, a women’s prison in Victoria.
By Stephanie Bastiaan

The pond isn't going to be trolled by TG bigotry and hate - it's far too unhealthy and best left to the archive cornfield - though the workings are there for any correspondent to observe...

Instead, on to a discussion of Gaza, and unfortunately it involved leaving Killer Creighton aside for a late arvo post, and a contemplation of Jennings of the fifth form v. Our Henry.

First the lightweight ...

The header: Little hope in Gaza peace plan better than no hope at all, Trump's Gaza peace plan hinges on international backing and Hamas disarmament, but faces major hurdles from Palestinian ideology and regional reluctance for peacekeeping.

The caption: A Palestinian woman hugs a pair of shoes as she mourns outside Deir al-Balah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. Picture: Bashar Taleb/AFP

The pond usually doesn't pay any attention to Jennings of the fifth form, and only offers this outing as an experiment, to see if there's any light or air between him and Our Henry ...

Donald Trump’s so-called “comprehensive plan to end the Gaza conflict” rests on a slim hope that it will generate international and regional support.
In order to be optimistic about this plan one would need to have no knowledge of the history, culture or ideology of the Palestinian people or the Israelis.
For example, the people of Gaza over decades have shown no interest in the economic and development opportunities that so motivate President Trump.
Hamas remains wildly popular in Gaza and the West Bank, even after close to two years of heavy fighting, showing the strong ideological support the terror group has from ordinary Palestinians.

"Wildly popular"? Does he have any receipts? 

Depends upon the ancient poll you reference or the rag, as per this in the AFR...

The Islamists are isolated at home and regionally: in Gaza many blame Hamas for bringing down on them the destructive might of Israel’s military machine. The group’s leaders are also being pressured by Arab and Muslim states, including the more friendly Qatar and Turkey, to accept Trump’s proposal for a ceasefire and post-war plan for Gaza.

Exhausted Gazans traumatised by war and loss are desperate for an end to the fighting and a chance to rebuild their lives. Many have urged Hamas on social media to accept Trump’s plan.

“The humanitarian situation is disastrous, and we know Trump has given Israel a green light to continue if the plan is rejected,” said Mustafa Ibrahim, a political analyst in Gaza. “People hope Hamas will accept it even if it is a bad deal.”

In a social media post, the Gaza-based poet Nima Hasan said Hamas should agree this time. “It knows its adventure has come to an end. Killings continue in Gaza and the bombing has not stopped for a moment. Accepting now means the losses would be less than later,” she said.

And so on, and it's likely that genocide, mass starvation and ethnic cleansing isn't that "wildly popular", but the pond digresses, and must race ahead to get to Our Henry ...

When a society sees more benefit using women and children as human shields to sustain terror attacks against Jews, the hope of redeveloping Gaza is not going to gain many supporters.
For its part, Israel rightly sees Hamas as an existential threat. Jerusalem will not compromise on its security even while backing Trump’s peacemaking attempt.
American military power, diplomatic heft and, above all, money are the critical differences that might lend this peace process some forward momentum.
What will be vital in coming days is whether any Middle Eastern country is prepared to sign up to the peace process. Article 15 of the plan says Jordan and Egypt will be consulted on how to provide support to “vetted Palestinian police forces in Gaza”.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap, proposing a shameless misrepresentation of Palestinian people, The people of Gaza have shown no interest in the economic and development opportunities that motivate President Donald Trump. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

It's true that few Palestinians showed any interest in moving to a desert, so that after their eviction, King Donald might erect a new Riviera, a grand tourist destination (no bearded black servicemen or Palestinians allowed), but that's hardly the same as saying the Palestinian people have no interest in economic and development opportunities or a good life.

Must press on, the siren song of Our Henry is calling ...

The plan will create an “International Stabilisation Force to immediately deployed to Gaza”.
No Middle Eastern country has been prepared to do peacekeeping in Gaza. If Trump persuades some Muslim countries to step forward that will be a Nobel Peace prize-worthy outcome. There will be pressure on Trump to use the American military. After two decades of the “Global War on Terror” there is little American appetite for deploying military forces to the Middle East. To avoid that the United States will have to dig deep to fund non-American military, aid and redevelopment support.
Article 9 of the plan says “Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic apolitical Palestinian committee responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services for the people of Gaza”. Finding and funding such people will be hard, but Trump’s personal commitment should not be faulted. He will chair a Board of Peace to “set the framework and handle the funding for the redevelopment of Gaza until such time as the Palestinian Authority has completed its reform program”.
Former UK prime minister Tony Blair will be on the Board of Peace. Here is an opportunity for Anthony Albanese. 

Stop right there? Joining with Tony Bleagh, the butcher of Baghdad, is an opportunity?

Dear sweet long absent lord, fond memories of the colonial mindset...

How British colonialism killed 100 million Indians in 40 years, Between 1880 to 1920, British colonial policies in India claimed more lives than all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China and North Korea combined.

What good training for the monstering of Iraq, and now perhaps Gaza, but sorry, it's another digression, and the pond must race on to get closer to Our Henry ...

After a lifetime of performative theatrics on the Palestinian cause, Albanese should step forward to directly assist in the transformation of Gaza. The Prime Minister could ask for a role on the Board of Peace.

Ah yes, we could show what we've done at Bondi.

Australia could link its own so-called “conditions” for recognising Palestine to the Trump plan. This offers a means to reform the Palestinian Authority, hold elections, disarm Hamas and reform education in Gaza. Supporting Trump’s plan could transform an otherwise uninspiring current political relationship between Australia and the United States. How Hamas responds to this proposal is another unknown factor. Article 13 says “Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form”. The peace plan requires Hamas to hand over its weapons to be destroyed, along with giving up “military, terror and offensive infrastructure including tunnels and weapons production facilities”. Hamas cannot accept these terms; it has been fighting to entrench its control over Gaza, not to make peace.
Article 6 of the peace plan allows Hamas members who commit to peaceful coexistence to receive an amnesty: “Members of Hamas who wish to leave Gaza will be provided safe passage to receiving countries.” No country will want to accept these terrorist fighters. Qatar was happy to house the Hamas political elite. It will be considerably more wary of receiving dozens of combat-hardened jihadis. Could Albanese offer to Trump the possibility of relocating Hamas fighters to Australia? Perhaps they could be greeted at Sydney Airport, as Gazan refugees were this week by Immigration Minister Tony Burke. I do not seriously make that suggestion.
Australia should resist under all circumstances providing safe haven to former terrorists, even those “granted” amnesties.

And so to a pictorial ultimatum... The peace plan represents not the best hope but the only hope for peace in Gaza. Picture” (sic) Bashar Taleb/AFP

Some peace ...but now to praise King Donald and Benji (not the movie star):

Trump deserves credit for articulating a plan, even in sketchy terms, about the future of Gaza and for adding the weight of the American administration to its implementation.
Trump goes where Middle East experts fear to tread. Courage and audacity are surely needed to find a solution to an otherwise intractable problem.
Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu understands where his country’s fundamental strategic interest rests, which is ensuring the US supports it. In his past two visits to the White House, Netanyahu has looked bemused. He knows that if Hamas rejects the deal that will strengthen his use of the Israel Defence Forces in Gaza.
The peace plan represents not the best hope but the only hope for peace in Gaza. It is a faint hope at that. But the international community should get behind it in the absence of any better solutions.
That means Australia should embrace the plan and work out how best to support it. Albanese should engage his friend President Prabowo of Indonesia: How could Australia support an Indonesian military role for the International Stabilisation Force?
Australia could help train Indonesian peacekeepers, as we have done in the past, and provide logistic and sustainment support.
A prominent role for Indonesia could lift Jakarta’s international standing, not least in Washington DC. It could become the basis for a rejuvenated defence relationship with Australia.
Albanese has long declared there is no place for Hamas in Gaza. Backing Trump’s plan would test that claim, giving Australia a supporting role in reforming the Palestinian Authority, disarming Hamas and rebuilding Gaza, while strengthening ties with Washington and Jakarta. It is not perfect, but it is the only plan on offer. It deserves our support.

Time to pause to celebrate with the immortal Rowe, as this day the reptiles at the top of the digitral edition entirely ignored King Donald's skill with a pillow ...

Done and dusted, or perhaps smothered in delight, and not a mouse stirring ...

When at last the pond got to Our Henry, there was incredible disappointment:

The header: President’s peace plan blows PM aside, Thanks to Donald Trump, the reality principle at last intervenes. It’s high time our government too got real about the Middle East.

The caption: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the United Nations headquarters on September 24. Picture: AP

Why was the pond shattered?

The pond searched high and low for the usual historical references, but they were hard to find. There was one, but best to avoid blinking.

Perhaps Thucydides might not have been relevant, but surely the Roman plans to turn Carthage into a new Riviera might have been mentioned?

Whatever, there was much celebration of King Donald and Benji (not the movie star):

Were they not so blatantly misleading, Anthony Albanese’s claims that Donald Trump’s peace plan for Gaza “focuses” on Palestinian statehood, and that the recognition conference he attended “played a role in building momentum towards peace”, would be nothing but risible.
In effect, displaying a far greater grip on reality than Albanese showed at the United Nations, the plan makes even the Palestinian Authority’s involvement in the future governance of Gaza conditional on completing fundamental reforms. And, while setting those reforms as a necessary condition, the plan explicitly limits itself to noting that they “may” open the road to eventual recognition of Palestinian statehood.
That hasn’t stopped the plan’s widespread endorsement by Muslim-majority countries. Unfortunately, their approval doesn’t ensure the plan will be accepted by Hamas, any more than does the immense relief a cessation of hostilities would bring to the people of Gaza. As far as Hamas is concerned, Gazans’ terrible suffering is hardly a cause for regret. It is, on the contrary, Hamas’s supreme asset in its campaign to gain sympathy, and hence protection, from the world’s useful idiots.
But regardless of how Hamas responds, this much is certain: Trump’s plan, which makes it clear that Hamas faces a choice between its terms and destruction, sets the ground for achieving the goal Benjamin Netanyahu announced immediately after October 7 – ending the threat Hamas poses to the ability of Israelis to live in peace.

At this point the reptiles inserted an audio interruption, already deployed in other stories, and again reduced to a screen cap and merely noted for the record ...

Our Henry was in full triumphalist mode ...

The progress Israel has made towards that objective has defied all expectations. Hezbollah has been crippled; as well as being expelled from Syria, Iran has been battered on its home ground; Hamas has been decimated. The political map of the Middle East has been redrawn.
But not a single one of those achievements would have been secured had Netanyahu heeded our government’s verbiage. The victims of October 7 had not even been buried when it urged restraint; within a month, with Hamas still largely intact, it began to clamour for a ceasefire.
Nor did it get any better after that. Rather, on the very morning before exploding pagers shattered Hezbollah’s ranks, opening the road to the toppling of Bashar al-Assad, it demanded that Israel take no action that could extend the conflict to Lebanon.
And literally as the US’s B2 bombers were preparing to take off, it expressed “alarm” over the developing conflict with Iran and called “on all parties to refrain from actions that would further exacerbate tensions” – a call it shamefacedly tried to retract once the American operation was announced.
But Netanyahu, for all his faults, knows one big thing: that the aim of war is victory. Aristotle put it well, centuries ago, when he defined victory as the “telos” of military science; that is, the animating purpose that must be held if the lives of a nation’s young men and women are to be put at risk. For victory not only demarcates the threshold between war and peace, it also suggests the possibility of an end to violence, and the prospect of a better future.

"For all his faults"? 

A cunning aside, because you won't find any alleged faults listed here, you'll just have to settle for that mention of Aristotle ...

It's not much, but it'll have to do ...and the pond resisted the chance to throw in Plato's allegory of the cave, wherein Socrates (the main speaker) explains to Plato’s brother, Glaukon, that we all resemble captives who are chained deep within a cavern, who do not yet realize that there is more to reality than the shadows they see against the wall.

Or, if you will, readers trapped in the lizard Oz hive mind.

Cue a snap designed to terrify, Supporters gather at the site where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in Israeli air strikes in September 2024, a day before the first anniversary of his death, in the Haret Hreik suburb south of Beirut, Lebanon. Picture: AP

The pond yearned for more Aristotle, but was disappointed by the names Our Henry trotted out ... though to be fair, there was yet another celebration of Western Values (as seen in places such as India and the Belgian Congo)...

No less importantly, victory has a moral dimension because the contestants represent utterly different views of what the world should look like – and it is the victor’s values that will frame the new status quo. Joe Biden’s precipitate retreat from Afghanistan allowed the Taliban to impose Islamism’s barbaric worldview on hapless Afghanis, condemning them to medieval backwardness; disarming Hamas and Hezbollah, and containing Iran, won’t eradicate the Islamist death cult but they are a vital step in the process.
Trump seems to understand that. And he and JD Vance clearly understand that there are, in the struggle to defend the West’s values, lifters, such as Israel, and leaners, who want protection delivered to them on a plate.

Ah couch molester JD. The pond had wanted to link to a splendid Wired story about JD, Thiel and the rest of the barking mad Catholic fundamentalists, but will save that for the late arvo Killer edition.

Back to Our Henry ...

That we are among the leaners is beyond doubt. There are no perfect ways of measuring the relativity between the burdens countries bear in providing collective security and the benefits they derive from its joint provision. But a measure, first devised by Mancur Olson (who later won a Nobel memorial prize in economics) and Richard Zeckhauser, and subsequently extended by Todd Sandler and Keith Hartley, has influenced every American administration since that of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
The results of bringing that indicator up to date are stark. The extent of European free-riding on the US alliance is even larger today than it was in 1966. And while the US bears 65 per cent of the West’s defence burden and reaps no more than 35 per cent of its collective benefits, Australia secures 7 per cent of the benefits in exchange for picking up only 2-3 per cent of the tab.

To help our Henry in war monger mode, there was a snap of some splendid destruction, teaching them what for, Smoke rises following an Israeli military strike in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip on Wednesday. Picture: AP

That sent Our Henry off on a final apocalyptic rant, a yearning for oblivion, a mighty smiting and smoting ...

Yes, there are areas where we top the league table: but they are hardly worth vaunting. We have nearly four times as many senior officers relative to the size of our defence force as the US. Moreover, our senior brass, although they have less than half the combat experience of their US counterparts, are paid twice as much, and are even more richly compensated compared to their battle-hardened Israeli colleagues.
Those are, however, just symptoms of the underlying problem – which is the deeply ingrained assumption that, no matter how pitifully little we do or how petulantly we bleat, the US will always need us at least as much as we need it. Israel, for all the benefits it derives from its American alliance, has never made that assumption. Judaism commends, and the Talmudic sages command, wars of one type and one type only: those in defence of “the land of Israel”.
And if Jews have learned anything from the past it is that they must be able to assure that defence on their own. Nor does Judaism sugar-coat the heart-wrenching sacrifices that demands: the tragedy of war, say the rabbinic texts, cuts wide and deep, tearing “even a bridegroom from his chamber and a bride from her canopy”.
This week, those words resonated with special force. As Jews worldwide marked Yom Kippur, the holiest of Judaism’s High Holy Days, scores of Israeli families mourned the loss of sons and daughters, friends and neighbours. Day after day, the Islamists have rained missiles on purely civilian targets, ranging from hospitals to childcare centres. And day after day, Israelis, young and old, have huddled in bomb shelters, divided on many things but united in love for their country and pride in its achievements.
Whether the Trump plan, with its promise of a better life for Israelis and Palestinians alike, will crown those achievements remains to be seen. That the grounds for pessimism are always apparent, and those for hope always clouded, scarcely needs to be said.
But there are times when the past, rather than pulling history back, suddenly presses it forward, making it possible to open a new chapter in the book of life. If Hamas once again chooses death over life, destruction over reconstruction, war over peace, Australia must, on this anniversary of October 7, give Israel its unqualified support in consigning it to the darkness of oblivion.

Total oblivion, so that a new Riviera might be born.

In the end, was there much difference between Jennings of the Fifth Form and Our Henry?

Perhaps a sliver, perhaps just a solitary reference to Aristotle...

So goes the days in the pond's life, and in the meantime, not a single excuse for the pond to segue to an infallible Pope to wrap up proceedings ...

In which, with the bromancer going MIA, the pond gets Krugmanned ...

 

The pond gave the bromancer every chance to show his stuff as "foreign editor" and offer insights into the performance of King Donald and that tatted iron man wonder in their military speechifying...

But he squibbed it and rested on his laurels, such as they were, with this still his last appearance at time of writing ...

Brilliant plan, but hard days ahead
Trump’s new Gaza peace plan offers hope of ending the conflict, isolating Hamas while giving Netanyahu a path to withdraw and Palestinians a chance for reconstruction.
by Greg Sheridan

You've got until Friday bro, or you'll be considered hopelessly out of date and out of touch.

In the interim, while patiently waiting for the bro's assessment, the pond did a little reading, and as always, that was a dangerous thing to do.

Paul Krugman kindly keeps on sending the pond missives on assorted matters, and he had thoughts to offer, to be found here (or you too can sign up for the emails) ...

Bulging Biceps Don’t Win Modern Wars
Hegseth’s speech was vile. It was also stupid.

What could the pond do? 

Usually the pond relies on the bromancer for advice on foreign affairs, military matters, the war with China by Xmas, submarines and such like, but the pond decided to plunge in ...

Why did Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary — he may call himself secretary of war, but Congress has not, in fact, voted to change his department’s name — summon 800 top generals and admirals to Washington? I admit that I feared the worst — that he would demand that they pledge personal fealty to Donald Trump. But no: They were summoned to listen to a speech about “lethality,” followed by a highly political speech by Trump himself.
How do you achieve lethality, according to Hegseth? By telling the military that it’s OK to engage in hazing, sexual abuse and bigotry — he didn’t say that explicitly, but that was his clear message. Also, war crimes are no big deal. And members of the military, including the top brass, must shave their beards, lose weight and do pullups.
Hegseth’s speech was morally vile. It was also, however, profoundly stupid. Hegseth seems to have gotten his ideas about what an effective military looks like by watching the movie 300.
I am, of course, by no means a military expert myself. But I read and talk to people who are military experts, and think I have some idea about how modern wars are fought. Furthermore, there’s a clear family resemblance between Hegsethian stupidity about modern war and Trumpian stupidity about economic policy. Modern nations don’t achieve prosperity by emphasizing “manly” jobs; they don’t win wars by having big biceps.

The pond was outraged. The notion that some drone jockey sitting in his mum's basement could play war games was shocking. 

The Economist ran yarns about the blessings of videogames, How drones and video-game techniques are coming together in Ukraine’s war, The idea of the body count evolves

And if you trusted the globalist Graudian, it wasn't just the Ukrainians. The sociopathic Ruskis were at it too, with a devotion to child labour that only a Stalinist would love ...

Russia using children to design and test its military drones, investigation finds, Teenagers who take part in video games tell of being headhunted to work on technology used against Ukraine

Everybody knows that they'd be much better off doing weights, bulking up on steroids, and even the mystical muse of fartlek ... (sorry, fart here means speed, but having a Goons sensa human, the pond always loved the name).

Krugman was determined to get the pond agitated, and without the bromancer's able assistance, the pond was helpless to resist ...

War still requires extraordinary courage from the men and women engaged in combat — courage that, according to officers I’ve spoken with, is rooted in a sense of honor, not swaggering machismo. Combatants also have to be physically fit enough to endure incredible hardship.
But they don’t have to look like bodybuilders — and anyway, only a small fraction of a modern army engages directly in combat. These days, war is conducted largely with machines and ranged weapons, and most of an army’s personnel are employed, one way or another, keeping those machines and weapons in action and providing the intelligence that makes them effective. These noncombatants are every bit as essential to victory as front-line troops.
Actually, this has been true for a long time, at least since World War II. I very much doubt that Hegseth would consider the team led by Alan Turing, which broke Germany’s Enigma code, or the group led by Joseph Rochefort, which broke Japan’s naval code, warriors — even leaving aside the fact that Turing was gay. Yet they contributed as much to victory as any front-line soldier.
And the “warrior ethos” Hegseth touts is even less sufficient, on its own, to win wars today.

And so on, and the pond was so agitated, it expected the bromancer to rush into print forthwith to explain how tatted manly men would win. the war with China by Xmas ...

Then, following on petulant Peta's outburst this morning, which the pond had managed to avoid, Krugman was at it again ...

Fossil Fuels and Fossilized Minds
What’s driving the doomed attempt to revive coal?

Now it's possibly true that petulant Peta has a fossilised mind - something she might have picked up from the onion muncher - but this was another direct assault on the hive mind ...

Instead of terrifying snaps of hideous whale-killing machines, the pond copped this ...

I’ve just gotten back from the Netherlands, which is famous for its picturesque windmills. But wind power in Holland is more than a historical curiosity. There are also modern wind turbines almost everywhere you look, both onshore and off. And the ground is covered with dead birds and whales.
OK, not really. Wind power is, in fact, far cleaner and safer than burning fossil fuels. And I personally like the sight of wind turbines. After all, I value the comforts of modern civilization and find it reassuring to see the power needed to provide those comforts generated without harmful emissions.
But Donald Trump, as everyone knows, hates wind power and loves coal. Both passions are deeply irrational. Yet they are shaping policy.
Trump is doing his best to kill wind power, going so far as to order work halted on a mostly completed wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island. (Orsted, the Danish company behind the project, has sued and gotten the stop-work order lifted.)
And the administration is trying to revive coal, opening federal land for mining, removing pollution limits and providing hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies. But why?
Administration officials would have you believe that coal mining is an economically viable industry that has been sabotaged by liberals. On Monday Chris Wright, the energy secretary, declared — in a weirdly dated culture war cliché — that coal is “out of fashion with the chardonnay set in San Francisco, Boulder, Colo., and New York City.”
The truth, however, is that coal is a dying industry for very good reasons, and anti-wokeism is unlikely to revive it.
Coal stopped being a significant source of jobs decades ago:

Dammit, he even deployed graphs, like it was some kind of ABC finance report ...

And so on, with more graphs, just like those daily ABC finance reports, an unseemly gloating about the decline and fall of coal, as if taking a trip through the hoods and hollers of West Virginia wouldn't have shown the evidence on the ground.

Why aren't the reptiles confronting this coal-bashing villain head on? 

Where's the Canavan caravan when it's  needed?

How could petulant Peta cope? Her petulance this day was all about coal and the urgent need for the coal-ition to stand by it ...

The head of the Page Research Centre, Gerard Holland, denounces this as the “big lie”, taken for granted by much of our media, that “renewables are the cheapest form of energy”.
Holland reports that “more than $170m was spent in FY23-24 alone to destroy the social licence of cheap coal power, head off any pivot towards nuclear energy, and promote a rapid transition to renewables”. He notes that “much of this money came from overseas” and it represents more than Labor and the Coalition spent combined at the May election.
But the payday is huge: “For just a few hundred million dollars in activism, corporations that stand to benefit from the transition are now reaping billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies,” he said.
The Page submission sets out the sustained disruption campaign developed by Greenpeace after a 2011 conference involving a who’s who of green activists that was focused on, but not limited to, the Adani mine in central Queensland and that sought some $3m from local and US sources to “build a nationwide anti-coal campaign”. The strategy, according to the activists’ paper included in the Page submission, “is essentially to ‘disrupt and delay’ key projects and infrastructure while gradually eroding public and political support for the industry”.
According to the Page submission, just the largest entities (and their 2023-24 revenues) include the Sunrise Project ($77m), Greenpeace ($25m), the Environmental Defenders Office ($18m), the Australia Institute ($11m) and Climate Action Network Australia ($7m). The Page submission characterises this anti-coal coalition as having a financial engine (the Sunrise Project), a media theatre (Greenpeace), a research arm (the Australia Institute) and a legal disrupter (the EDO).Based just on published reports, Page reckons there’s at least $11m a year (or $108m over a decade) that has flowed in from other countries to attack fossil fuel.

Eek, could Krugman and his kind be behind a vast international conspiracy?

...Two decades back, a low power price from domestically produced and locally exploited coal and natural gas was Australia’s key comparative economic advantage, at least in manufacturing. Back then, about 80 per cent of our electricity came from coal, about 10 per cent from gas and the rest was mainly from hydro.
Since then, driven by climate anxiety and consequent government mandates for an ever-greater renewable power, wind and solar are now about 30 per cent of our total electricity generation, gas and hydro remain about 10 per cent each, and coal has dropped to about 50 per cent.
Meanwhile, power prices have roughly doubled in real terms and are now about twice those in the US. And under legislation passed early in the life of the Albanese government, within just five years wind and solar power is supposed to increase to about 70 per cent of the total while coal is supposed to drop to just 10 per cent.
But at the same time as domestic use of fossil fuels has declined, and is set to decline much further, much faster, the appetite for Australian coal and gas exports has soared.
In 2005, Australian coal and gas exports totalled just $25bn; in 2024 they were $160bn and, along with iron ore, were by far our biggest export earners and a massive source of revenue to both federal and state governments. The explanation for this gulf between coal and gas use in Australia, and Australian coal and gas use overseas, lies in a largely covert and foreign-funded political campaign that’s designed to anaesthetise domestic voters into submission while, globally, emissions increase.
This agenda has never been about the planet; it’s about a funding stream to destabilise capitalist economies and finance the broader left agenda while keeping the people bearing the brunt of it literally in the dark.

Damn you Krugman and your vast international agenda and your graphs ...

King Donald's going to put an end to this nonsense and pander to petulant Princess Peta...

Think of the whales littering the Hume down Goulburn way!

Without the bromancer to guide the pond, the pond kept roaming, and stumbled on the wretched Graham Readfearn, up to his usual Graudian tricks ...

News Corp embraces fantasy genre by turning climate crisis into ‘laughable’ science fiction, The National Climate Risk Assessment is attacked in the Daily Telegraph, while wind turbines became a frightening obstacle for firefighting planes and solar panels a source of mountains of landfill waste

Outrageous, with the Daily Terror given a relentless beating.

This was just one of a number of offensive remarks ...

This week the Daily Telegraph ran a page one story – “FANNING THE FLAMES” – on how aerial firefighting support pilots were refusing to fly near “giant net zero projects” for “fear of crashing into wind turbines”.
The printed version of the story didn’t include a response from the NSW Rural Fire Service but did include comments from a retired Yass Valley group captain who had sent a report to his local council outlining concerns about wind turbines.
Greg Mullins, a former commissioner of Fire and Rescue NSW, strong advocate for climate action and still a volunteer firefighter, was not impressed.
“These are just fallacies,” he told Temperature Check. “I can’t imagine there would be more than a handful of pilots that are not skilled enough to work out the hazards in their operating space.

Dammit, everyone knows the real story is the way these infernal machines are whale killers of the first water. 

Every day in the lizard Oz the pond can see the remorseless whirling monstrosities ruining the countryside.

Why, the pond has even seen whale carcasses littering the Hume, just a ways down from the beefy boofhead's Goulburn office, and likely enough Mr fancypants Readfearn will be rushing into print to say that the pond's been seeing things as a result of spending too much time in the overripe hive mind's imaginings.

Finally while out and about the pond stumbled on this story ...

No not this one, Stephen Miller Blows Up Over Gavin Newsom Insult, though it's pretty funny, what with fascists having no sensa huma ...

This one ...

Google Accused of Blocking Searches About Trump, 79, and Dementia

There was even a nice comparison ...

Be beast of course means be beastly good at ripping off stories in the Daily Mail style, and the original could be found at The Verge as Google is blocking AI searches for Trump and dementia.

...There’s been a lot of coverage of the mental acuity of both President Trump and President Biden, who are the two oldest presidents ever, so it’s reasonable to expect that people might query Google about it. The company may be worried about accurately presenting information on a sensitive subject, as AI overviews remain susceptible to delivering incorrect information. But in this case, it may also be worried about the president’s response to such information. Google agreed this week to pay $24.5 million to settle a highly questionable lawsuit about Trump’s account being banned from YouTube.
Google spokesperson Davis Thompson didn’t say why AI overviews weren’t triggered for these queries when asked by The Verge. “As we’ve said, AI Overviews and AI Mode won’t show a response to every query.” Thompson also pointed to a document that explains how AI Overviews may not show for every query and that AI Mode may choose to show links instead of generating a response.

Yeah yeah, sure ...

Now the pond would have caught up with the bromancer if he'd acted as a genuine "foreign editor", but it seems that only talk of white Xian nationalism really gets him going - surely Pete should have qualified? - and as the pond has been speaking of drones and vulgar youff in mum's basement playing video games, the pond must end this late arvo post with a TT ...

Come on bromancer, where's your sense of entertainment? 

Even Colbear (as YouTube's CCs call him, the money to improve the bot having been sent to King Donald) could see the light side ...

In which the pond passes up many lizard Oz opportunities and so has to settle for the Lynch mob ...

Thursday is the most dismal day of the week for the lizard Oz, and this Thursday was no different ... 

This was briefly top of the "news" section ...

Motoring
‘Hybrids to cost more’ in EV chase
Honda Australia is warning the price of hybrids will increase under the Albanese government’s aggresive pursuit of electric vehicles.
By Greg Brown

The archived version made even clearer the special pleading for a company which notoriously missed the EV boat...

Hybrids to cost more under Labor’s aggressive pursuit of electric vehicles, Honda says

Talk about a Nesssann Honda failed merger, failed EV strategy mess ...

You have to be enormously stupid to prefer a hybrid to an EV - okay, okay the pond has an EV bias - and that's why Chinese manufacturers are currently cleaning Honda's clock. No wonder they're bleating to the lizard Oz.

Moving right along, there was a variant on the war with China, but by the time the pond got to it, it had dropped well down the page ...

IRON ORE WAR
China’s iron ore ban a bid to drive down prices, BHP told Labor
BHP has privately briefed the Treasurer that China’s iron ore ban is merely a pricing negotiation tactic, as Beijing makes its strongest push in a decade to reset market rates.
By Brad Thompson, Will Glasgow and Greg Brown

The current main reptile jihad seems to be the war on pesky, difficult furriners, what with the reptiles claiming an EXCLUSIVE, meaning they've somehow beat themselves to the punch, what with there already having been a reptile EXCLUSIVE on the matter ...

EXCLUSIVE
Foreign students fill lecture rooms as elite universities rely on fees
Which Australian universities are the most popular with international students? Official data reveals the universities with the highest concentration of foreign students. See the list.
By Natasha Bita and Joanna Panagopoulos

So boring, and again the pond will only note that those names attached to the piece are not really in the WASP category, and so the pond looks forward to the revelation that the lizard Oz is being filled with filings by suspect names ...

Over on the extreme far right there was also much to ignore ...

There was petulant Peta, top of the world ma, blathering on about the green agenda ...

Follow the money: plot to sabotage nation’s prosperity
The green agenda in this country has never been about the planet; it’s all about a funding stream to destabilise capitalist economies and finance the broader left agenda.
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

There's the usual rabbiting on about the "turncoat" Matt Kean, the urgent need to join the Canavan caravan,  with "Orwellian" getting yet another outing... amidst this form of paranoid hysteria...

Rarely, if ever, have I met an advocate for renewables who doesn’t stand to benefit financially from the expansion of the green industry in this country, including some in the parliament.
They’re either big investors in wind and solar or part of the 30-year ecosystem that has grown up around the global green energy push to use taxpayer largesse to fund a hard-left activist army.

So if put solar panels on your roof and get a decent battery set-up you're part of a hard-left activist army?

Nah, even for a deeply masochistic pond, that's a petulance too far ...

Ironic really that the reptiles should make a big splash about the departure of Jane Goodall ...

Jane Goodall, who studied chimpanzee behaviour for decades in Africa, dies at 91
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the conservationist renowned for her groundbreaking chimpanzee field research and globe-spanning environmental advocacy, travelled more than 300 days a year.
By Robert Lee Hotz

Eek, the WSJ obit mentioned that she was apparently part of that hard-left activist army ...

In recent years, she devoted much of her time to activism and charity work surrounding conservation issues, animal rights and endangered primates and climate change. 

Climate change? What on earth is that?

Ah, so in petulant Peta's rhetorical Orwellian eyes, she was deeply delusional, in it for the cash in the chimp paw ...

Moving quickly along, Will gave the iron ore matter another prod ...

Australia had better hope that China remains a paper tiger on iron ore
The $100bn question is this: can the Chinese giant win in its shakedown of BHP? If it can, Beijing will have triumphed over market economics.
By Will Glasgow
North Asia Correspondent

The pond thought that the Ruskis were the new paper tigers, but never mind, there was also a generous serve trans bashing, another outing in the latest reptile jihad...

Jacinta Allan’s trans activism is a betrayal of women
To those of us in the UK who have been vigorously – and effectively – fighting back against the harms of transgender ideology, Australia is a laughing stock.
By Julie Bindel

Bigots gotta do what bigots gotta do, but playing the sneering Pom card - fiddle-de-dee, how we laugh at you ignorant, dumb colonials - seemed like a tactical error, a bit of Pom foot in mouth syndrome.

And after that, all that was left for the pond was the Lynch mob, Melbourne University's shame ...

The header: Peace board can’t be worse than the mullah coddlers, The precedent for Tony Blair as new viceroy to Palestine is not a good one. But no finger-wagging from a progressive leader has brought peace this close, least of all from Penny Wong.

The caption for the authoritarian pointy image: President Donald Trump points to a reporter in the Oval Office of the White House. Picture: AP

The Lynch mob had five minutes, so the reptiles said, to do his best and turn a sow's ear into a mighty set of pearls ...

The pond wasn't happy being made to go down this wayward road, but at least the reputation of the University of Melbourne could be shredded a bit more ...

Unfortunately, all the Lynch mob's opening thrust did was set the nerves jangling ...

Who would you rather have run Australia for the next six months, Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump or Tony Blair? It’s a toss-up, isn’t it?

Sheesh, suddenly a game of two up looks like its worthy of a Melbourne uni course.

Bibi would help us restore a sense of national self-confidence and purpose.

Or perhaps return us to the genocidal elimination of Aboriginal people, what with a few of them having survived the first invasion. Talk about renewed confidence and purpose in slaughter ...

Trump would give us back our energy sanity, return us to a commonsense position on gender. Maybe our acknowledgments of country would get shorter.

Oh, he did an Aboriginal joke, in the spirit of the original genocide, and luckily there's a Luckovich to hand for that King Donald line ...

That reminds the pond of a droll piece by Alexandra Petri in The Atlantic, Is Trump's TV Lying to Him?

And so on, but sadly the pond couldn't go a 'toon or a distraction every time for every line ... even as the Lynch mob tried to sell his sow's ear with his utterly unique sensa huma ...

Blair would invade Iraq. Again. As I say, it’s a toss-up.

But the pond could celebrate Bleagh one more time ...

Even the Lynch mob flinched a little at that sight, but he carried on regardless...

How will they each fare in Gaza?
They are its new overlords.
Could they be any worse than the dark theocracy of Hamas?
A generation of Palestinians has grown up knowing only tunnelling and anti-Semitism. Trump at least promises them “eternal peace”.
Will his plan deliver it?
Hard to defend Blair’s Middle East strategy when he was British prime minister (1997-2007).

That scribbled and printed even as the genocide, the mass starvation and the ethnic cleansing continues apace.

At this point the reptiles decided to interrupt with a lengthy audio distraction, and the pond was exceptionally pleased to reduce it to a screen cap ...

Inspired, the Lynch mob tried a little rehabilitation of the Iraq war, but had to confess to a colonial clanger ...

He was the catalyst of George W Bush’s attempted reformation of the region. He gave it the moral purpose the Texan was looking for.
This toppled bad regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the bad dudes came back.
Kabul is again run by the Taliban. Baghdad fell into Iran’s orbit.
So, the precedent for Blair as new viceroy to Palestine is not a good one.
His critics will heap further scorn on the whole venture as an exercise in neocolonialism. Others will observe the apparent incompatibility between Trumpism and Blairism, that MAGA is a reaction against the world view of Blair.
The former prime minister is a Catholic missionary.

At this point the reptiles produced a cheerful snap of the two jolly slaughterers, gaily laughing at their genocidal ways, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Picture: AP

If the pond was going to have an interrupting image, it would have preferred something like an infallible Pope ...

That's a much better portrait of the King, not to mention that lap dog sticking out of the handbag, barking in the way irritating lap dogs are wont to do ...

September 11, 2001, was the opportunity to redeem mankind: “The kaleidoscope has been shaken,” he declared. “The pieces are in flux. Soon they will settle again. Before they do, let us reorder this world around us.”
Trump ain’t that.

As University of Birmingham international security professor Patrick Porter argues, Trump wants “domination without (or with less) commitment”. The world is to be exploited for wealth and prestige.
Blair’s godly humanitarian interventionism is anathema to this.
That the Middle East should now be subject to some sort of Blair-Trump axis seems remarkable.
That is until we remember how Blair has this charm to win US presidents to his cause – something even John Howard could not approximate.
Bush wanted a humbler foreign policy. After 9/11, Blair helped him make a 180 on that. Blair has this uncanny ability to fuse his moral fervour with American realism. Trump is his next target.
As in Iraq, this latest Anglo-American venture may not work. But again, I ask: what is the alternative?

Um, end the genocidal killing fields? 

Show there's an actual alternative to Hamas that would allow Palestinians a life instead of remorseless death?

Nah, instead settle for another snap, Yasser Arafat is greeted by Tony Blair before their talks at 10 Downing Street in 1998. Picture: AFP

The pond can match that one ...

The Lynch mob then settled on a time honoured strategy, a reliable favourite, an evergreen.

Blame it all on Obama, and after that, blame it all on Biden ... and perhaps round it out with laughable Kamala

Works every time ...

Barack Obama never got this close to something better. His 2011 intervention “from behind” in Libya ruined that nation. His ambivalence towards Syria locked its people into a civil war. The great hope for regional peace, the first president with an Arab Muslim name, left the Middle East worse than he found it.
Joe Biden never recovered from his 2021 surrender in Afghanistan. He signed no meaningful peace deal while in office. Trump is now on his second. The Abraham Accords in 2020 did more for regional stability than any Arab-Israeli treaty since Camp David in 1978. His war on Iran a few months ago did not change that benighted regime. But neither did the mullah-coddling of his Democrat predecessors.
Biden was impotent as Hamas rape gangs rolled into southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Kamala Harris laughably made Israel’s response to this horror a litmus test of its legitimacy. The rise of global anti-Semitism happened under the Biden-Harris watch.

And what of King Donald's first reign, and the good people on both sides and Jews not replacing them?

Shush, focus on the strategy, take a sideswipe at Western moralisers and progressives, those silly types who seem to think genocide might be a tad reprehensible ...

Why not the Trump plan? His Board of Peace (on which Blair will sit) can hardly do a worse job than Western moralising under a progressive mandate has already done.
Anthony Albanese will be a long time waiting for an invitation to join it. He has consistently refused to recognise the civilisational stakes of Israel’s multi-sided war. At every turn he has chastised the region’s only liberal democracy while unwittingly appeasing its enemies at home and abroad.
Turns out Trump has a plan that does not involve the building of a regressive Islamist autocracy on Israel’s border – the almost certain consequence of Albanese’s misplaced recognition. Do the Queers for Palestine brigade imagine any Palestinian state won’t resemble a demi-hell for LGBTQI+ people?

Sorry, the pond thought the demi-hell for TG folk was the lizard Oz carrying out daily demonising jihads, ...

What the heck, have a photo celebrating the genocidal triumph, People walk past damaged buildings along a street in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. Picture: AFP

The Lynch mob bravely pushed on past the devastation ...

It is less the leftism of Canberra, Paris and London, and more the realism of the Arab world that makes this new peace plan so intriguing. Eight Arab and Muslim tates (sic, perhaps a typo for 'taters?) including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey, backed Trump’s plan, saying in a statement they “welcome the role of the American President and his sincere efforts aimed at ending the war in Gaza”.
No finger-wagging from a progressive leader has brought peace this close; Penny Wongism freed not a single hostage.
Even Arab leaders who, for decades, used the plight of Palestinians to conceal their own dodgy human rights records have recognised how fundamentally Israel has rewritten the region’s geopolitics. Bibi did them all a favour by attacking Iran and its proxies. Us too – though most of our cultural elite refuse to admit it.
When Woodrow Wilson announced his Fourteen Points, to bring world peace in 1918, the French prime minister exclaimed: “Meme le Bon Dieu n’en avait que dix!” (“Even the Good Lord only had 10!”) Trump has 20. That may be over-ambitious.
However, they are more thoroughly grounded in a hard-nosed realism than anything coming from the progressives at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Trump will not cajole Hamas out of the Gaza Strip. Rather, if it doesn’t down tools, free the 48 remaining hostages (living and dead), “Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas”.

Ah yes, back to the wanton destruction, performed under the baton of the very stable genius ...

Actually the reptiles had decided to drag comrade Albo into the folly with a very big snap ...Anthony Albanese. Picture: AP

The Lynch mob warmed to polishing the apple and kissing the bum and tugging the forelock ...

The US President’s Nobel Peace Prize may not be as distant as his detractors imagine.

Who could possibly argue with that one?

Already forgotten the Obama strategy?

Please remember, it never gets old ...

Recall how the massed ranks of Euro-liberals gave Obama his prize in 2009 before he’d got within a whiff of any peace – and just before he condemned Libya and Syria to civil war.
Obama, the great cosmopolitan-in-chief, gave us none of the peace that the allegedly amoral isolationist, Trump, seems on the verge of. While Obama toured the Middle East apologising for Western colonialism, Trump, armed with little scholarly grasp and only an instinctive feel, has more effectively knocked heads together.

Hang on, hang on, the great cosmopolitan-in-chief?

The pond had thought he was a Kenyan socialist, but it turns out that he's a rootless cosmopolitan of the Jewish kind?

And King Donald as chairman of the board is a winner?

And so, having disgraced Melbourne University yet again, on with the final Lynch mob flourish ...

We can reflect on the irony that the President who last week was mocked by the left for criticising the UN is this week the leader who brought peace closer in Israel-Palestine than a thousand UN resolutions have done. The New York Times headlined this as “Trump and Netanyahu Tell Hamas to Accept Their Peace Plan, or Else”. But it is the “or else” that may make all the difference. We’ll see.
Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne.

Unfortunately, there are many ironies to reflect on ... and the pond suspects that what we'll see is another elephant in the room ...