In which the pond sends its herpetology students to the archive, and finds non-Ophidian ways to fill the page ...

This is where the reptile jihad has led the country, or more particularly the Adelaide Festival, especially now that the 'Tiser is just a wretched outpost of the Murdochian empire in a one rag town (where are you now Don Riddell? Long gone).

As the Board responsible for the Adelaide Festival organisation and all Adelaide Writers’ Week events, staff, volunteers and participants, we have today advised scheduled writer Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah that the Board has formed the judgment that we do not wish to proceed with her scheduled appearance at next month’s Writers’ Week.

Whilst we do not suggest in any way that Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah’s or her writings have any connection with the tragedy at Bondi, given her past statements we have formed the view that it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time so soon after Bondi.

And:

We understand these Board decisions will likely be disappointing to many in our community. We also recognise our request to Dr Abdel-Fattah will be labelled and will cause discomfort and pressure to other participants. These decisions have not been taken lightly.

And:

We hope to see you at Adelaide Writers’ Week.

The Adelaide Festival Board

Good luck with that Jake. 

You know some think there should be more to Chinatown than jihads?

Adelaide Writers Week in disarray as more than 40 writers boycott over Board’s ‘censorship’ of Randa Abdel-Fattah

Helen Garner, Melissa Lucashenko and Zadie Smith are among the more than 40 writers to have withdrawn from Adelaide Writers Week in the last 24 hours.

Actually after that story the total on the tape of withdrawing writers climbed to well over 50. 

And there was this:

Abdel-Fattah responded with a strongly worded statement condemning the Adelaide Festival Board’s decision, calling it, ‘a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship and a despicable attempt to associate me with the Bondi massacre. What makes this so egregiously racist is that the Adelaide Writers Festival Board has stripped me of my humanity and agency, reducing me to an object onto which others can project their racist fears and smears.

‘The Board’s reasoning suggests that my mere presence is “culturally insensitive”; that I, a Palestinian who had nothing to do with the Bondi atrocity, am somehow a trigger for those in mourning and that I should therefore be persona non grata in cultural circles because my very presence as a Palestinian is threatening and “unsafe”.’

Well yes, astonishing bigotry and hatred, or possibly abject cowering fear that the Zionist lobby would swim into action.

Poor old Louise Adler. How did she end up in that diabolical pigs breakfast?

Back in the day she was scribbling for the Graudian:

The special envoy’s plan is the latest push to weaponise antisemitism in Australia, as a relentless campaign pays off

The omissions are as important as the inclusions in Jillian Segal’s plan, which is guilty of overreach

... and copping heaps for it from the Zionist lobby, intolerant of wayward Jews.

Those eggs are now shattered, and there's no putting that lumpy Humpty Dumpty back together again.

Oh Adelaide, oh Adelaide, what a miserable, wretched small-minded town you are. You always talk the talk, but it's the great aunts on the verandah that walk the walk, sitting in the same bigoted chairs they were sitting in last year.

Well, it's not the pond's business model to further the lizard Oz hive mind hysteria, and notably the matter wasn't featured at all in the hive mind.

The only note came well down the page in Mass author exodus throws Adelaide Writers' Week into crisis. (that's an archive link).

Perhaps the reptiles were too sheepish at seeing their jihad in action, so they had to disappear the story way down the page.

And there'll be nothing else from the Australian Daily Zionist News this day, especially when the jihad  decides to call in King Donald for help:

EXCLUSIVE

Trump ‘watching’ Albanese amid concerns over PM’s pro-Palestine history

The US will be watching amid concerns about the Australia Prime Minister’s impartiality and years of government ‘apathy’ towards the fears and concerns of the Jewish community.

by Elizabeth Pike

Oooh, scary stuff, King Donald watching us, perhaps ready to give us a Venezuela burn. 

But aren't we too busy planning to invade New Zealand, which after all was once proposed as an Australian state, and badly needs help eradicating that accent, and replacing it with a politically dinkum correct one?

And isn't he too busy watching his minions murder US citizens in the streets, and then making up porkies about it?

Please permit the pond to pike that story and sent it to the archive.

At the same time, it's not the pond's business to focus on what goes down in King Donald's kingdom.

Yet that's what's happening as a result of the current Australian Daily Zionist News jihad.

The rag has become unreadable and unreproducible, and so the pond turns to The Atlantic to read a story of ICE murder...

First the Shooting. Then the Lies.

The Trump administration has perfected the smear campaign. (that's an archive link)

Spoiler alert:

...The blatant lies about Minneapolis serve several purposes. They perpetuate the false narrative that federal agents are in constant peril and therefore justified in using lethal force at the slightest hint of danger. They assure federal agents that they can harm or even kill American citizens with impunity, and warn those who might be moved to protest Trump’s immigration policies of the same thing. Perhaps most grim, they communicate to the public that if you happen to be killed by a federal agent, your government will bear false witness to the world that you were a terrorist.

This approach, of course, is quite familiar to communities that have been dealing with police abuses for as long as there have been professional police forces. In 2000, then–New York City Mayor and future Trump adviser Rudy Giuliani justified the killing of the Haitian American Patrick Dorismond by police by quipping that he was “no altar boy.” Embarrassingly for Giuliani, whose capacity for shame was overestimated even then, it turned out that Dorismond had literally been an altar boy. Dorismond’s mother responded to the campaign to justify her son’s killing with an observation that continues to haunt me decades later.

“They kill,” Dorismond said, “and after that, they kill him the other way—with the mouth.”

Taking Good’s life wasn’t enough. The moment she died, it became imperative for the administration to also destroy her memory.

It didn't take long for the killer to get outed, and for there to be a flood of other stories, but by then the pond had moved to The New Yorker ...

Aftershock; In the wake of his assault on Venezuela, Trump sounds like he wants to launch a blitz across the Western Hemisphere. Robin Wright writes about what the aggressive ambitions of his "Donroe Doctrine" mean for U.S. foreign policy and the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. (that's an archive link)

Spoiler alert:

...In his Inaugural Address a year ago, Trump pledged that his Administration would “measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end—and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.” His proudest legacy, Trump said, would be “peacemaker and unifier.” He has already blown that goal.

Heck, with the pond reduced to a few pigeon droppings from the reptiles at the lizard Oz, how could they compete with the news from a declining, decadent empire, the emperor in the last stages of senility and dementia, and all the more dangerous because of that, as minions of the Miller, JD and Kennedy kind jostle for influence and increasingly extremist policies?

It's all so weird, so remote, and yet so present.

The pond was reminded of the sense of distance explored in a Kafka story about the building of the great wall of China ... (here in 11 parts)

Against whom was the great wall to provide protection? Against the people of the north. I come from south-east China. No northern people can threaten us there. We read about them in the books of the ancients. The atrocities which their nature prompts them to commit make us heave a sigh on our peaceful porches. In the faithfully accurate pictures of artists we see the faces of this damnation, with their mouths flung open, the sharp pointed teeth stuck in their jaws, their straining eyes, which seem to be squinting for someone to seize, whom their jaws will crush and rip to pieces. When children are naughty, we hold up these pictures in front of them, and they immediately burst into tears and run into our arms.

But we know nothing else about these northern lands. We have never seen them, and if we remain in our village, we never will see them, even if they charge straight at us and hunt us on their wild horses. The land is so huge, it would not permit them to reach us, and they would lose themselves in empty air.

And again, a little amended ...

....Our land is so huge, that no fairy tale can adequately deal with its size. Heaven hardly covers it all. And Washington DC is only a point, the imperial palace only a tiny dot. It’s true that, by contrast, throughout all the different levels of the world the emperor, as emperor, is great. But the living emperor, a man like us, lies on a peaceful bed, just as we do. It is, no doubt, of ample proportions, but it could be merely narrow and short. Like us, he sometime stretches out his limbs and, if he is very tired, yawns with his delicately delineated mouth. But how are we to know about that thousands of miles to the south, where we almost border on the Mexican drug cartels? Besides, any report which came, even if it reached us, would get there much too late and would be long out of date. Around the emperor the glittering and yet mysterious court throngs—malice and enmity clothed as servants and friends, the counterbalance to the imperial power, with their poisoned arrows always trying to shoot the emperor down from his side of the balance scales. The empire is immortal, but the individual emperor falls and collapses. Even entire dynasties finally sink down and breathe their one last death rattle. The people will never know anything about these struggles and sufferings. Like those who have come too late, like strangers to the city, they stand at the end of the thickly populated side alleyways, quietly living off the provisions they have brought with them, while far off in the market place right in the middle foreground the execution of their master is taking place.

There is a legend which expresses this relationship well.

The Emperor—so they say—has sent a message, directly from his death bed, to you alone, his pathetic subject, a tiny shadow which has taken refuge at the furthest distance from the imperial sun. He ordered the herald to kneel down beside his bed and whispered the message into his ear. He thought it was so important that he had the herald repeat it back to him. He confirmed the accuracy of the verbal message by nodding his head. And in front of the entire crowd of those who’ve come to witness his death—all the obstructing walls have been broken down and all the great ones of his empire are standing in a circle on the broad and high soaring flights of stairs—in front of all of them he dispatched his herald. The messenger started off at once, a powerful, tireless man. Sticking one arm out and then another, he makes his way through the crowd. If he runs into resistance, he points to his breast where there is a sign of the sun. So he moves forward easily, unlike anyone else. But the crowd is so huge; its dwelling places are infinite. If there were an open field, how he would fly along, and soon you would hear the marvelous pounding of his fist on your door. But instead of that, how futile are all his efforts. He is still forcing his way through the private rooms of the innermost palace. He will never he win his way through. And if he did manage that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to fight his way down the steps, and, if he managed to do that, nothing would have been achieved. He would have to stride through the courtyards, and after the courtyards the second palace encircling the first, and, then again, stairs and courtyards, and then, once again, a palace, and so on for thousands of years. And if he finally did burst through the outermost door—but that can never, never happen—the royal capital city, the centre of the world, is still there in front of him, piled high and full of sediment. No one pushes his way through here, certainly not with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window and dream of that message when evening comes.

That’s exactly how our people look at the emperor, hopelessly and full of hope. They don’t know which emperor is on the throne, and there are even doubts about the name of the dynasty. In the schools they learn a great deal about things like the succession, but the common uncertainty in this respect is so great that even the best pupils are drawn into it. In our villages emperors long since dead are set on the throne, and one of them who still lives on only in songs had one of his announcements issued a little while ago, which the priest read out from the altar. Battles from our most ancient history are now fought for the first time, and with a glowing face your neighbour charges into your house with the report. The imperial wife, over indulged on silk cushions, alienated from noble customs by shrewd courtiers, swollen with thirst for power, driven by greed, excessive in her lust, donated $40 million by Amazon, is always committing her evil acts over again. (Damn you Jeff Bezos, damn you Amazon, the pond won't even pirate it)

And so on... and the pond is left in this remote portion of the empire, left nibbling at the leftovers in the lizard Oz, while the current jihad continues at a frenzied pace.

The bromancer has been MIA since 27th December, but when he returns no doubt he'll be part of the ongoing jihad.

Nattering "Ned" was last seen on 19th December, in that outing making sure that a terror tragedy would be treated as a political battle. 

Presumably they're only away to rest and gather strength before rejoining the jihad.

But in the meantime, what's left for the pond?

B*gger all (*google bot friendly).

To be fair, the reptiles started the Saturday with a recognition of another world by having this story atop the digital edition ...

One dead, three missing in 46C heat as fire rains down hell on tourism towns

Jacinta Allan has declared a disaster as three people remain missing, one person died and entire towns were wiped out by devastating bushfires tearing across central Victoria at unprecedented speeds.

By John Ferguson, Euan Kennedy, Anthony Galloway and Lydia Lynch

The pond drove through some of those disaster areas just a week or so ago, and can't help brooding about the suffering caught up in that horror, but what's this talk of "unprecedented speeds"?

There's a whiff of climate change in that wording, and yet once again the usual reptile brigade of climate science denialists were MIA.

Still, hat tip to that quadrella of reptiles doing the story. Not one mention of "climate", a singular feat.

Instead of any of tthat there was yet more of the jihad, though they also brought in a Pom to add to and diversify the fear and the loathing with a new angle...

Hijabophobia draws a veil over criticism of Iran

One writer defines it as ‘hostility to the hijab’. The Oxford Handbook of European Islam defines it as ‘rejection of the hijab’.

By Brendan O'Neill

Columnist

Give that man a gig with the English cricket team.

The pond simply can't stomach it, can't go there, but recognises its duty to diligent herpetology students, so here's a couple more sent to the to the archive, where they can be studied at leisure ...

Resolute PM meets the popular will – and backs down

Anthony Albanese’s authority and leadership have been injured and he may bear the political scars for the rest of his term.

By Simon Benson

Political analyst

The stench of the gloating was stupefying, while garrulous Gemma was decidedly grating ...

Saddle up for another year of galloping hypocrisy

Australia is facing a reckoning of the heart and soul. We have conflated freedom of speech with freedom from consequences. Since when did we allow hypocrisy to go unchallenged? It feels like the stench of it is everywhere.

By Gemma Tognini

Columnist

The Adelaide Writers' Festival has found out where blind adherence to the reptile jihad can lead, but the pond has done its duty. The archive links are there for anyone wanting to frolic with fear and loathing ... and the pond will do its best to get back in the reptile saddle tomorrow for a Sunday meditation.

Instead of all that, yesterday the pond the pond was only touching the surface of potential ways to waste time on YouTube. 

Speaking of hamster posters, always churning to keep hits and revenue burning, there's always Meidas Touch, though some will find the incessant braying a tad wearying. 

And if you want a late arvo time waste opportunity, that's when Colbert, Kimmel and the rest of the gang kick in.

 

The pond usually finds something to watch on The Daily Show, even if it's just a send-up of a nonentity of the Benny Johnson kind ... 

                           

 Then there's The Good Liars, who've been around for yonks ... 

                            

 On a more solemn level there's Pod Save America ...

                           

Once you go down these rabbit holes, the logarithms are determined to make sure you never leave. 

Almost every major news brand offers clips, thereby making the original lamestream redundant.

France 24, MS NOW, the WSJ, the ABCs here and there, CNN, PBS, Al Jazeera, CBC, The Independent, the Graudian, the Beeb, 7, 9, 10, on and on and on, a mindless field of endless distractions. 

Heck, even the lizard Oz occasionally tries, only to be singularly inept and out of place, trapped behind an ancient, increasingly irrelevant paywall model. 

And once you start wandering you can end up in strange places. 

The pond long ago stopped gaming, and finds tats a turn off, and yet somehow ended up watching penguinzO, a channel which boasts 17.6 million subscribers and routinely scores up to a million hits.  

As well as flogging soap for a living and having an early life crisis about turning 30, he offers all kinds of bait to maintain the churn.

      

He's an influencer, don't ya know.

 

You can also see old laggards like Don Lemon, still struggling for relevance and a spot in the sun.

The pond never thought anything of Lemon in his prime, but he's got over a million subscribers and regularly scores over a half million hits ... helped by recycling other content, in this case taken from Freedomnews.TV, and in this case worth watching because of the way one man talks to a bunch of bewildered ICE goons ...

   

Oh more than enough already. 

The main problem of course is that if you link to one offering, it will be immediately supplanted by a new offering. 

Hamsters gotta do what hamsters do, and people with too much time on their hands gotta watch the hamsters do their thing.

Hamsters gotta keep that wheel turning, clicks gotta keep coming ...

Hits generate revenue, eyeballs gotta stay fixated ... 

The pond is doing its best to shake the addiction, though it's a bit like crack and hard to shake. 

Just give the pond an old-fashioned 'toon, and the pond will call this day done...