In which the pond celebrates invasion day with the reptiles, but fails the onion muncher test ... (but does do Cantarctica edibles) ...

 

This sort of headline shows exactly why the pond disdains the NY Times and its kind.

Videos Appear to Contradict Federal Accounts of Fatal Shooting

Appear? 

Only fascists and those under the Orwellian spell of King Donald would think that these videos "appear". 

Why not just the naked truth? Why not a simple "Videos Contradict Federal Accounts?" Per the Graudian, Video contradicts Trump's claim.

It's that accursed, wimpy, snowflake both siderist routine at work again. Though the pond can access the rag, the pond refuses to bother with this nonsense, even when it's free.

And while in the mood, before beginning this day's reptile survey, the pond would like to note a story in The New Yorker:

Tucker Carlson’s Nationalist Crusade
The pundit’s contrarianism has swerved into openly racist and antisemitic tropes. What does his rise mean for the future of MAGA media? (*archive link)
By Jason Zengerle

It's a long read, and there's no need to go into all the horrifying, sordid and ugly details expertly covered by Zengerie.

The text the pond would like to consider is this ...

...by 2016 Carlson’s thinking had begun to evolve. Part of the change was a result of his usual contrarianism. “On my street in Northwest Washington, D.C., there’s never been anyone as unpopular as Trump,” he wrote in Politico during the campaign. “Idi Amin would get a warmer reception in our dog park.” Carlson believed it was his long-established role in the city’s political and media ecosystem to defy that consensus. But there was a deeper, more substantive reason for the shift in his attitude. Six years earlier, Carlson and Patel, who’d served as a chief policy adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney, had launched the Daily Caller, a news website that they vowed would be the conservative answer to the Huffington Post; instead, in pursuit of clicks, the site found itself competing with Breitbart News to produce increasingly inflammatory takes on immigration, race, and gender. Carlson had immersed himself in the site’s web-traffic metrics, which served as an early-warning system of where the conservative base was headed.
This insight made Carlson unusual at Fox. In 2014, Ivanka Trump had arranged a lunch with her father and Murdoch, according to the journalist Joshua Green’s book “Devil’s Bargain.” “My father has something big to tell you,” she announced at the lunch. “What’s that?” Murdoch asked. “He’s going to run for president,” she replied. Murdoch did not even bother to look up from his soup. “He’s not running for president,” he said. Murdoch and Trump had been friendly for decades, and they travelled in some of the same New York social circles, but Murdoch did not take Trump seriously—not as a person, not as a businessman, and certainly not as a Presidential candidate.
Neither did the pundits at Murdoch’s cable-news channel. “Even among conservatives at Fox, there was the view that Trump’s an idiot, he’s not a serious person, that there wasn’t a chance of him winning,” Ken LaCorte, a former Fox News executive, recalled. This posed a problem for Fox, especially since Ailes knew that covering Trump was good for ratings; to make for compelling television, the channel needed to put people on air who wouldn’t simply dismiss Trump out of hand. “The project at Fox of trying to find normal-seeming, television-camera-ready human beings who would make a sensible case for Donald Trump was no small lift,” a former Fox producer said.
Enter Carlson. Fox producers had taken notice of the heterodox views about Trump that he was offering on “Fox & Friends Weekend.” Soon, he was appearing with increasing regularity on “Special Report,” whose All-Star Panel had become something of a Never Trump redoubt. A few days after Trump officially announced his candidacy, Charles Krauthammer, the panel’s most esteemed member, hailed Jeb Bush’s official campaign announcement as “the biggest news” of the race. Carlson countered that Trump’s entry would significantly complicate Bush’s bid for the Republican nomination. Trump was “filling the role” of the candidate who “has his opinions,” Carlson said. “Some of them are kind of interesting. Some of them are right, by the way. He can say exactly what he wants. I think it could potentially be a problem.”
Going into 2016, Murdoch and Ailes believed that Fox had the power to pick the G.O.P.’s nominee. But as the campaign went on and Trump’s hold on the Republican primary electorate became clear, Murdoch and Ailes recognized that Trump had the power to topple Fox. Before long, O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and even Megyn Kelly—who had famously clashed with Trump during the first G.O.P. debate—were boosting him on their shows. In September, two months before the general election, Hannity filmed a testimonial for Trump that was featured in a campaign video. Carlson never went that far, but Murdoch didn’t forget his prescience. In the summer of 2016, after more than twenty women at Fox News alleged that Ailes had sexually harassed them, Murdoch forced Ailes to resign and took control of the news channel, appointing himself as its interim C.E.O. Murdoch sought to stabilize Fox but also to plot a course for its future—a future that, no matter what happened on Election Day, would have to take into account a viewing audience that had been deeply affected by, and was now extremely loyal to, Donald Trump. In November, five days before the election, Murdoch made his first big move: Fox News announced that its new 7 P.M. show was “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

In short, for the sake of cash in the paw, Chairman Rupert made a devil's bargain and helped make King Donald and Tucker, all for the sake of his bottom line.

There's a lot more - for example, how Tucker turned to anti-Semitism for the views, and Chairman Rupert went along, because think of the bottom line ...

...In 2019, Carlson devoted an eleven-minute monologue to the woes of Sidney, Nebraska, which had once thrived as the headquarters of the sporting-goods chain Cabela’s. After Cabela’s merged with Bass Pro Shops, the headquarters was closed, costing a town of six thousand people more than two thousand jobs. The merger, Carlson explained, was done at the behest of a hedge fund run by the billionaire Republican megadonor and Jewish philanthropist Paul Singer, which had taken an ownership stake in Cabela’s and netted nearly ninety million dollars after the merger drove up the retailer’s short-term share prices. This sort of “vulture capitalism,” Carlson told his viewers, “bears no resemblance whatsoever to the capitalism we were promised in school. It creates nothing. It destroys entire cities. It couldn’t be uglier or more destructive. So why is it still allowed in the United States? The short answer: because people like Paul Singer have tremendous influence over our political process.”
Mike Enoch, a prominent white supremacist, shouted out Carlson’s remarks about Singer on his podcast, “The Daily Shoah,” noting that Carlson had begun the segment by describing how the notoriously antisemitic Henry Ford once raised the wages of his workers. “If you didn’t catch the German-shepherd whistles where he praised Henry Ford and then went into a diatribe of a Jewish financier,” Enoch said approvingly, “I don’t know what universe you’re existing in.”
Blake Neff, the head writer at “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” was responsible for many of the words that came out of Carlson’s mouth. As he once boasted to Dartmouth’s alumni magazine, “Anything he’s reading off the teleprompter, the first draft was written by me.” The anti-immigrant and racist sentiments that dominated the show came naturally to Neff. At the same time that Neff was writing for Carlson—first as a reporter at the Daily Caller and then as a staffer on “Tucker Carlson Tonight”—he was also writing posts on a racist and sexist message board called AutoAdmit. Posting under the username CharlesXII, the eighteenth-century Swedish warrior king who later became an icon for Swedish neo-Nazis, Neff joked about “foodie faggots” and proposed an “Urban business idea: He Didn’t Do Muffin!,” which would sell “Sandra Bland’s Sugar-free Shortbreads!”—a reference to the twenty-eight-year-old Black woman who, in 2015, was taken into custody by a Texas state trooper after a traffic stop and was later found dead in her jail cell, becoming an early symbol of the Black Lives Matter movement.

And so on, and so on to Nick Fuentes, and the pond can't stop chortling at the way that the local reptiles at the lizard Oz have badged the rag as the Australian Daily Zionist News - with its Jewish readers all in on the brand - while the mother ship has helped enable the anti-Semitism which is now a major feature of the extreme right in the United States.

For reptile watchers it's an eye-opening read, part of the ongoing campaign by the Murdochians to ruin at least three countries - Oz, the UK and the USA - though some might find it too painful - the pond's partner decided to take a shower.

As for the locals, they were at it again this Monday ...

Lord Downer strutted around in his high heels with his usual sense of self-importance ...

Bondi is a stain the left can’t wash away
If I were in the opposition these days I would be railing against the behaviour of the left-wing Albanese government over the past two years, saying they are substantially responsible for allowing anti-Jewish sentiment to rise in Australia.
By Alexander Downer
Contributor

Blaming an amorphous "left" is a kind of reflexive action for a particularly stupid politician long out of the game,.

Readers of other rags could turn to Malware (provided their NBN was working):

Partisan politics after Bondi sowed seeds of Coalition’s demise

Right at the heart of the Coalition’s current problems lies the very regrettable partisan approach the Liberal Party’s leaders took following the Bondi terror attacks on December 14. They were joined by several retired politicians and much of the media.
Accusing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of being responsible for the attacks was not just wrong, it was reckless, because it served to divide Australia right at the time we needed to pull together.

And again ...

...The Liberals and Nationals need to be back in coalition to win government. But more importantly they need to be focused on the matters of concern to most Australians – the cost of living, housing affordability, the state of the environment, health and education. They could even talk about how Australia should adapt to the dramatically altered strategic environment where the US president is threatening to annex the territory of NATO allies.
But instead, their constant focus is on culture war issues that “throw red meat to the base” by which is meant the devoted viewers of Sky News and similar right-wing media outlets. This angry, dwindling minority may loom large at party branch meetings but is miles away from the concerns of most Australians.
The Liberals, and Nationals, should realise they cannot “out-Hanson” Pauline Hanson. Australian politics is decided in the centre. That is the great benefit of compulsory preferential voting.
Our democracy needs a strong viable opposition – without that governments get complacent, lazy and worse.
Right now, the chaos in the political rabble formerly known as the Coalition is leaving the Labor Party, alone, unchallenged at the centre of Australian politics.

Lordy, long absent lordy, fancy the pond preferring to quote Malware over Lord Downer.

What a strange, eerie invasion day.

Meanwhile noted Zionist Major Mitchell carried on the now aging jihad

The home truths about Gaza for Abdel-Fattah
A defamation case could expose the truth behind activist claims about Israel if the Palestinian-Australian writer goes ahead with legal action against South Australia’s Premier.
By Chris Mitchell
Columnist

The Major's opening flourish established what a dedicated Zionist he is.

What about Palestinians?

The Major's got that covered. He can distort history the way the Crusaders distorted Xian behaviour ...

Many who call themselves Palestinians today would have once been called Arab Muslims and were themselves settler colonialists from the Arabian peninsular – most in the late 1800s when the land was controlled by the Ottoman Turks. Judaism predates Islam by 2500 years.
And while many Jews who had been driven from their lands by the Romans 2000 years ago did return from Europe after the Holocaust, other Jews stayed on – both in what is today Israel and in the major cities of the Middle East.
While Palestinians today mourn the 1948 Nakbah when some lost their land, UN Resolution 181 had offered them all the land east of the so-called Green Line to Jordan. When the Arabs were defeated after the new Jewish state was invaded by Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, most Jews were expelled from these countries. While 700,000 Muslims became refugees from Israel, neighbouring Arab countries drove out 800,000 Jews.
In Israel, Arabs who stayed, Druze and Christians all get to vote alongside Jews and can elect members to the Knesset.
Just as in 1936-38 when offered their own Muslim territory by the Peel Commission into what was then British Mandate Palestine and in 1994 after Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat shared a Nobel prize for their planned two state solution, Palestine’s Arab leaders could not deliver a deal when offered one by the UN in 1947.
Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, spent much of World War II in Berlin working for Adolph Hitler. A renowned Jew hater and supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, he bequeathed his people a legacy of failure driven by paranoid antisemitism.

If you're going to do history, try the wiki listing for the history of Palestine...

And if you want more bigoted partisan bias, revert to the Major in the intermittent archive.

As the Major had mentioned that legal action, the pond thought it might head off to Crikey for an update on that action ...

The inside story of Randa Abdel-Fattah’s legal action against South Australia’s premier
For all the glorious efforts of the Murdoch media to lay the blame for the destruction of Adelaide Writers’ Week on director Louise Adler and Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah, nobody has bought that narrative.

Sorry, it's behind a paywall, and for the pond the Crikey paywall is a continuing trial, because for each article the pond has to re-enter name and password, a double tap so to speak, which is tedious beyond measure.

All the same, the pond is a sucker for inside stories, even if the pond might pre-empt the closing remarks ...

That brings us up to the minute. For all the glorious efforts of the Murdoch media to lay the blame for the destruction of Adelaide Writers’ Week on Adler and Abdel-Fattah, nobody’s buying that narrative. One man was at the centre of it: Premier Malinauskas. Only he can say why — and whether, for the brownie points or whatever else his actions have bought him with the pro-Israel lobby and Murdoch empire, it was worth it. 

Well yes, any sensible person wouldn't buy a used sock puppet from the Murdochians, or Major Mitchell, Zionist extraordinaire, in particular.

As for Malinauskas, once again, they always disappoint...

What else on this invasion day? 

Well there was a warm-hearted message from comrade chairman Albo to the faithful who had forked over their shekels to the Murdochians..,

It’s the shared bonds that are our nation’s greatest strength
Let us look to the year ahead united by pride in our country, faith in each other and optimism for the future we can build together.

Why do they always think that the hive mind will melt with their honied words, and head off to a honey-laden paradise? 

It's not as if he's facing a hard game in hot weather (sssh, don't mention climate change)...

Off to the intermittent archive for him ...

But perhaps as a result, Joe, lesser member of the Kelly gang, was in an unusual and forgiving mood for a reptile ...

Apolitical clean skin is an inspired choice to consolidate bilateral relationship
Professional public servant Greg Moriarty is one of the strongest, most sensible and safest choices to serve as Australia’s next ambassador to the US.
By Joe Kelly

Only a reptile could want to cuddle up to mad King Donald and his bunch of sociopathic minions, still murdering people in the street?

Why would anyone think that shovelling billions down King Donald's throat would provide a sense of security, let alone a few subs?

With those mysteries not answered, the latest madness continued apace ...

EXCLUSIVE
Family gives Hastie blessing to enter the Liberal leadership race
Andrew Hastie has secured his wife’s backing to challenge Sussan Ley for the Liberal leadership, with conservative powerbrokers suggesting the WA MP has significant support.
By Sarah Ison

It looks like the reptiles are all in for the hastie creationist young earth born and bred pastie, and have given the boofhead from down Goulburn way the flick ...

Just look at the happy family in Sarah's deeply devoted EXCLUSIVE ...

For balance the pond turned to this Commentary by Simon Benson

The pond rarely bothers with the capital, but this foam-flecked rant was a delight ... (also placed in the intermittent archive for those who care).

The header: Coalition with the Greens? Just the latest act of Liberal madness; The ACT Liberals, having lived in the political wilderness for more than two decades, have gone to the other extreme and have been talking seriously about forming a coalition with the local Greens

The caption: Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce soar in a One Nation rocket as Sussan Ley and David Littleproud watch from below. Artwork: Frank Ling

It seems the reptiles so loved Frank's artwork that they decided to give it one more run, but disappointingly the rocket no longer zoomed across the page behind the feuding pair.

Instead there was just a still frame from that illustration which would have made a ten year old doing a class assignment enormously proud. Rockets! At a time when astronauts were also a thing!

Simplistic Simon was conducting war by proxy, and giving those Liberal wets in Cantarctica a good thrashing:

It seems the Liberal Party is looking for brand damage anywhere they can find it. If the federal Coalition split isn’t the first sign of madness for the conservative parties then surely the antics at a provincial level in the ACT must qualify.
The ACT Liberals, having lived in the political wilderness for more than two decades, have gone to the other extreme and have been talking seriously about forming a coalition with the local Greens.
Imagine it: the first Greens-led government in the country.
There has been furious denial publicly from both sides about any such deal, designed primarily to end what many Canberrans think is the tyrannical reign of Labor Chief Minister Andrew Barr. But this column is reliably informed that such discussions have indeed taken place and there are even conservative Liberals who think it’s a good idea. Two Saturdays ago a series of meetings was held, according to one Liberal Party source, between the Liberal members of the ACT Legislative Assembly and those of the Greens. The discussions were about a possible deal to form a Liberals-Greens minority government based on the Irish system. Both parties see this as the only way to get rid of a Labor government that has ruled the capital since 2001.
Barr, Chief Minister since 2014, was re-elected in 2024 but is leading a minority Labor government that must rely on the Greens and a couple of independents.

The reptiles interrupted by showing assorted players whom the pond didn't know, and didn't care about ... ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr speaks at the Labor campaign launch in Canberra in September 2024. Picture: Martin Ollman

Why did the pond go down this road? 

Well there were truly wretched horrors the pond wanted to avoid and there was some fun in watching Simpleton Simon blow his stack ...

You can see the attraction in a deal with the Liberals for Greens leader Shane Rattenbury. He would become chief minister despite his party having only four spots in the unicameral parliament of 25 MLAs.
The Liberals, who have nine seats, get their hands on the levers of power, sort of, for the first time in more than two decades. Their MLAs also get to become ministers, which none of them has ever been, and get paid a lot more money. The motivation for this lot is obvious.
The idea, nutted out at the Saturday meeting, was to put up a motion of no confidence in the Barr government in the first week of February and throw it out in favour of a new coalition that would command 13 seats of the 25.
The deal, as it is understood, is that the Greens would get three ministerial spots and the Liberals five. Considering Rattenbury is the only MLA to have ever served in a ministerial position, having also been the first Greens Speaker of any parliament in Australia, he would get first go at being chief minister.
New Liberal leader Mark Parton then gets a turn. Apparently the Liberals signed off on this. The Greens were ready to but Rattenbury had to iron out some concerns among colleagues. What these are is a mystery.
The latest news is that just as the Coalition was unravelling in Canberra, Rattenbury’s colleagues began to get cold feet. The deal is still on the table, but apparently it’s on ice for the moment.

There came another parochial snap, ACT Liberals leader Mark Parton. Picture: Julia Kanapathippillai

Oh dear, the pond realises it shouldn't judge pollies by gormless, nerdy appearances ...(so that's what a town council leader looks like in the city of little consequences and street mazes?)

“It was definitely on,” one senior Liberal told this column. “Negotiations were well advanced.”
When word first started to leak out last week, both Parton and Rattenbury issued statements that they were involved only in policy discussions. But this is not the first time this sort of thing has been considered in the ACT.
Previous Liberal leader Leanne Castley, who resigned last year, rolled the Liberal leader before her for trying to do a similar thing.
As one Liberal suggested: “Perhaps they just try and win some more seats rather than concern themselves with stupid ideas like this.” Sure, it’s the ACT, and who cares? It’s not like this sort of arrangement would ever be considered at a state level anywhere else, would it?
The ACT is a special case in Australia, owing to the dominance of the Australian Public Service to groupthink outcomes. It is a unique jurisdiction. But that’s not to say that such a deal wouldn’t reverberate nationally.
The broader brand damage for the Liberals, even if it succeeded in Canberra, could be disastrous for it elsewhere. Federal Coalition conservatives who know about it are beside themselves about how it looks when the Liberals are struggling for relevance everywhere.
Considering how hard-line the Greens have become federally, they are unlikely to be too pleased either. Consider this also. Should such a deal ever be realised, the Greens would have a seat at the national cabinet, alongside Anthony Albanese and the premiers. Not that there isn’t some merit to such a deal if you consider the Barr government is one of the most dictatorial hard-left governments in the country.

There came a last snap of a player, Greens leader Shane Rattenbury. Picture: Martin Ollman

That sent simplistic Simon right off ...

The starting point from an ideological position is that such a union is absurd. But when you accept that most of the social policy agendas that the Greens and Labor have pursued in the capital, the most recent being the legalisation of mind-bending drugs for everyone, then there isn’t much left to be done. There isn’t much left to fight over.
This is the justification the Liberals use. And they wouldn’t seek to repeal any of the utopian policies already in place. Presumably the Liberals have said they will leave the social stuff alone as long as the Greens didn’t pursue any more crazy ideas, and the Greens would let the Liberals manage the economic agenda, including easing rates and business taxes for Canberrans who already live in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
At a practical level, could a Liberals-Greens government be any worse? This may sound like lunacy to anyone living outside the ACT and it would be the last thing the federal Liberals would need, considering the optics of its current implosion.
One can only imagine how much fun Albanese would have in parliament with this.

Sheesh, and there ws the pond hoping that edibles for oldies would be a major part of the reptile platform going forward.

But really, why did the pond bother to go there?

Well it was avoiding the worst of the worst, with the pond saving a little of that wurst for last ...

While there had been a lot of the usual guff in the lizard Oz about gong winners this invasion day,  the mad monk was also out and about, and the pond flinched at this opening flourish:

They had to go back to 2015 to show the desperate narcissist, always seeking attention, on parade?

The pond felt inclined to dismiss the outing entirely, and send it off to the intermittent archive.

It’s time for some home truths this Australia Day
Yes, Australia remains as free, fair and prosperous as any comparable country. Yet we are changing fast and not always for the better.
By Tony Abbott

Home truths? How the onion muncher is devoted to his mindless clichés.

Spend time with a devoted fan of authoritarians of the Hungarian kind? What a wretched way to waste invasion day.

The pond confesses it could only take so much of the mad monk at any time, but a rant on invasion day is particularly tough... but ghe pond knew that correspondents would want at least a little red meat ...

...As Monday’s “invasion day” protest will doubtless show, there’s now a toxic alliance between the anti-Israel activists and the anti-Australian ones.
Multiculturalism was originally pitched as a way of making migrants from diverse backgrounds feel welcome but it has become a mechanism for changing our country by stealth.
At its best, multiculturalism has meant reassuring new migrants that they could become Australian in their own way and at their own pace. In its more strident forms, institutionalised through a plethora of grants to ethnic community groups, as Geoffrey Blainey foresaw, it has fostered a “nation of tribes”; or as Noel Pearson has just described it, “plural monoculturalism”.
The vast majority of migrants don’t come to Australia to change us but to join us. It’s hardly a favour to them, therefore, to change the country they’ve joined to make it more resemble the countries they’ve left.
Unsurprisingly, the chief advocates of multiculturalism – other than activists on government grants – have rarely been the most recent migrants themselves, who invariably have been keen to become Australian as quickly as possible.
Multiculturalism’s champions have mostly been left-wing academics with a grudge against our supposedly sterile Anglo-Celtic core culture and our supposedly oppressive Judaeo-Christian ethos.
The problem is not that we are in fact multiethnic, because that has been the case since the beginning of modern Australia. The problem is the ideology of multiculturalism that so emphasises difference that there’s nothing left to bind Australians together other than carrying the same passport and vacuous slogans such as “our strength is our diversity”.
The First Fleet brought to Australia the antagonisms of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales as well as Jews and black people. Yet the need to pull together in a strange land steadily dissolved old distinctions.
When a group of convicts rebelled at Castle Hill, in 1804, it was an Irish Catholic priest who tried to persuade them to stand down. The 12 Eureka rebels put on trial in 1855 included five Irish, two Dutch, a Scot, an Italian, an African American and an Afro-Briton, yet the local jury refused to convict on the grounds of justified grievance against oppressive government.
Plainly, modern Australia has not been free of prejudice and racism, especially against the original inhabitants. Yet there’s no doubt that, as much as anywhere in the world, a fair go has been extended to everyone prepared to have a go in a country that has always sought ways for its people to be more free and for its society to be more fair.
“White Australia” notwithstanding, a Chinese gold digger, Lowe Kong Meng, became one of Melbourne’s most respected businessmen; senator Thomas Bakhap served in our early parliaments; and sniper Billy Sing was one of our most celebrated Great War soldiers.
We were benignly multicultural long before the multiculturalism that has ended up inhibiting the vigorous action that should have been taken against the un-Australian excesses on display since the October 7 atrocity.

What an offensive man he is.

No wonder he gets on well with the likes of Viktor Orbán.

But why did the pond flinch? 

After all, pace the cratering Caterist, it's just another grim Pom denouncing furriners, an example of a sterile Anglo cultural mania at work (as if poor old Faraged England was an inspiration to anyone except Graudian writers seeking another outrage) ...

Here's the real reason.

Just look at the snap the reptiles offered up ... Former prime minister Tony Abbott. Picture: Sky News Australia

It was a flag-waving bridge too far, so pompous, so grim, such a wank, such a yearning for full fascism (they love their blacks and the Riefenstahl up angle), that the pond struggled to make it to the end ...

Harden the f up pond, you can do it ...

It’s a craven multiculturalism, incapable of asserting Australian values, wrongly asserting that all cultures are equal, that’s prevented governments deporting hate preachers, prosecuting hate marchers and banning hate groups; without yet more legislation that could end up being used against everything but the radical Islamism that left 15 innocents dead at Bondi Beach.
It was our best Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke, who declared on our Bicentenary Day, January 26, 1988, that in this country there must be “no hierarchy of descent” and “no privilege of origin”. It’s a deep and abiding instinc­tual commitment to Australia, he said (admittedly easier in the days before cheap international travel and the internet made it possible to operate in two countries at once), that’s “the one thing needful to be a true Australian”.
For decades now, every new Australian has been required to pledge allegiance to “Australia and its people whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey”.
But it’s not enough simply to say the words; they have to be meant and lived.
Our immigration rules should never discriminate on the basis of race but should discriminate on the basis of values if the citizenship pledge is to be more than window-dressing. Apart from substantially scaling back the rate of migration, at least until housing starts and infrastructure can catch up and social cohesion can rebuild, what’s needed are more background checks on long-term entrants to Australia, a more searching citizenship test and a longer pre-citizenship probationary period here in Australia.
This Australia Day, our resolution should be to keep Australia Australian; to rediscover and celebrate what made this country the envy of the earth.
Let’s have less stress on our diversity and far more on our unity so that our wonderful country can remain its best self.

Isn't there some way we can deport him back to the mother country? Or perhaps arrange an extradition treaty with Viktor?

The pond apologises for failing the test, for cutting the onion muncher short, but there's only so much the pond can take on invasion day, and besides, he's there in full in the archive for anyone wanting to inspect him inspecting the troops.

Instead for a closer, how could the pond go past this Graudian headline?

Science teachers from Queensland Open Brethren schools told to teach students about vegetarian dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark
Teachers who attended ‘compulsory’ creationist conference run by US-based fundamentalist group told radiometric dating techniques were flawed

Well done Ben Smee, Queensland state correspondent.

Veggie dinos on the Ark.

The pond rolled that one around on the tongue so much that the pond's partner shrieked for the pond to stop.

The pond would like to think it only applied to the deep north, but in fact the CCM runs a number of schools in the state.

And with thoughts of vegetarian dinosaurs living in harmony on Noah's Ark, time to remember that there are actual flesh eating raptors stalking the earth... no thanks to Chairman Rupert, himself pretty much in the T-Rex class ...