In which the pond makes it through Polonius's prattle, but can only stomach so much of the Australian Daily Zionist News, and so settles for the lizard Oz editorialist ...

 

Dear sweet long absent lord, does the pond have to?

Polonius yet again for the Sunday meditation? And even worse, blathering about the teals?

Isn't there something more interesting to hand?

Well yes ...the pond is of an age, and yet has to confess that it hadn't heard this form of heresy until it read Erin Maglaque in the NYRB ... (the pond has had to * certain words for fear the google bot might swoop):

Their Own Private Genesis
What if Augustine’s idea of original sin was wrong? Testimony from the Inquisition reveals freethinkers using their sexual experience to dispute the reign of shame and otherwise critique Church doctrine. (*intermittent archive link)

They were debating the nature of original sin in an apotheca in Naples. “We discussed a lot of things,” Giovanni Casaburo told the inquisitors in 1598 when they asked him what exactly was said in the apothecary’s shop. “Among them that if Adam hadn’t sinned, eating the forbidden fruit, we wouldn’t have sinned as well.” So far, so orthodox. But then the apothecary Marcello Impicciato joined in. “What apple?” he asked. “Adam and Eve f*cked in the ass, and that’s why they were rejected from Paradise.”
What apple? In 1588 Violante Scaglione testified: “Adam’s apple was Eve’s butt, not the pit of the fruit that got stuck in his throat when he was called by God.” They debated it in a tobacconist’s shop in Tuscany in 1702. Did Adam eat an apple, or was it a fig, or a pear? Giuseppe Cinatti said it was no fruit at all—Adam’s sin was “sticking it [his p*nis] into her *ss” instead of “putting it into her c*nt,” as God had commanded. One French philosopher phrased it more delicately: “The apple which tempted our first father was the symbol of the rear parts of woman, which very well represents an apple split in half.” An anonymous seventeenth-century student’s notebook records his lecturer’s conclusions: “There were two trees in paradise. Eve ate from one, i.e., was f*cked by it, i.e., by Adam’s d*ck, which was the forbidden fruit.” Italian peasants, apothecaries, friars; French libertines, Dutch philosophers—all believed that Adam sodomized Eve in the Garden of Eden.
This was the true act of original sin—anal sex not as a generic taboo but as an act so intensely pleasurable as to be literally divine. God jealously guarded sodomy, and Adam presumed that highest pleasure for his own. The friar Giovan Battista d’Antrodoco was put on trial in 1662 and declared anal sex so exquisite that God “wanted to keep [it] for himself.” When the inquisitors collected witness testimonies about the unorthodox beliefs of Marcello Impicciato, one remembered the apothecary recounting his own theology of original sin: “Christ was a b*gger, and he wanted to b*gger, and this was the reason why he put Adam in the terrestrial paradise, and that the fruit was the *ss, and Christ wanted to b*gger Adam.” According to some heretics, God created Adam in order to sodomize him.
It was Augustine, in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, who had first introduced sexuality into the story of original sin. As an adolescent, he had felt intense shame at his own arousal. “In the sixteenth year of the age of my flesh,” he recalled in his Confessions, “the madness of raging lust exercised its supreme dominion over me.” He was a slave to desire. “A very hard bondage had me enthralled.” Until Augustine, most early Christians held that Adam’s sin was disobeying God’s command not to eat the apple. There was nothing particularly sexual about it; the Genesis story, in the biblical scholar Elaine Pagels’s words, was for early Christians a parable “of moral freedom and moral responsibility.” But Augustine’s shame changed all of that. Adam and Eve had been disobedient, but in Augustine’s view, the punishment for disobedience was further disobedience—of the body: arousal, an erection, lust. The body defied the soul. The rest of us inherited this damaged nature from Adam (quite literally, Augustine thought: it was transmitted in sperm, which is why Christ, immaculately conceived, wasn’t stained by desire). This was concupiscentia, carnal desire, and it was the fate of all humans after the Fall to be enchained by it...

And so on, and dearie me, bless the pond five ways to sundown, is that why the pond has been enchained to the reptiles in the lizard Oz? A form of deeply weird and perverse concupiscentia?

Alternately, for distilled essence of entertainment, you could indulge in Marina marinating Nige ...

One thought on the Clacton contenders: the ‘establishment’ looks a bit different these days, doesn’t it? (The Graudian was doing its "email or register or else, with menaces" routine again, so that's an intermittent archive link)

...Wow. Girls, I hope it’s not getting you too hot when I tell you that the future of British politics is a load of public-school guys pointing at each other and going: “No, YOU’RE the establishment!” Personally, I’m breathless. After all, I spent a significant part of my teenage years in field observations of this tendency. I want you to think of me as the Jane Goodall of guys with Betty Blue posters and some ethnic drape that their housemaster’s going to get them to take down because it’s a fire risk. If anyone can solve the deep structural problems the UK faces, it’s definitely someone who thinks a picture of the pope smoking a spliff is funny and that the Led Zep Houses of the Holy album cover is cool. (Having said that, I do believe that there should be a special tribunal at The Hague solely dedicated to bringing to justice anyone who owned a Sting Englishman in New York poster. Those individuals simply cannot be allowed to have melted back into civilian life.)
But back to Farage. Hilarious that he seems to regard going to war with Rupert Murdoch as a strategic masterstroke, devoting whole sections of his mad diva address to attacking the Times and the Sunday Times and their editors and journalists. Definitely mug Rupert off a bit more, Nigel – no doubt it’s a genius move.

Okay, enough already,  enough Tootling around, the pond knows its duty ...

The header: Teals discover path to power – it’s in the Senate; Despite choosing a forgettable party name, Community Strong Australia, Allegra Spender and Zali Steggall understand democratic politics.
The caption for a collage not credited to human hands, but to a corporation of dubious honour and hideous parentage: Allegra Spender and Zali Steggall are ‘out in front’. Picture montage: News Corp

Polonius started out lamely, and to his credit, he stayed determinedly lame throughout ...

There have been many small political parties in Australia over the years, a few of them of considerable significance. Despite this, the two-party system remains in place for the time being at least. But no party has had a name so hard to remember as the Community Strong Australia party.
Interviewed by Melissa Clarke on ABC Radio National Breakfast on June 29, the teal independent for Kooyong in Melbourne, Monique Ryan, was asked: “What do you think of the name Community Strong Australia?” She replied: “I thought Competent Australian Sheilas, which is what the Betoota Advocate suggested, was a great alternative.” Quite so – at least it can easily be remembered.

Quite indeed (said with prim, pursed lips).

It is a little known fact that "quite" is used some 79 times in The Diary of a Nobody ... available at Project Gutenberg... and brimming with good jokes ...

May 26.—Left the shirts to be repaired at Trillip’s. I said to him: “I’m ’fraid they are frayed.” He said, without a smile: “They’re bound to do that, sir.” Some people seem to be quite destitute of a sense of humour.
June 1.—The last week has been like old times, Carrie being back, and Gowing and Cummings calling every evening nearly. Twice we sat out in the garden quite late. This evening we were like a pack of children, and played “consequences.” It is a good game.
June 2.—“Consequences” again this evening. Not quite so successful as last night; Gowing having several times overstepped the limits of good taste.

Quite so, such a lovely word, as quite a line up of shameless hussies parading to shock the lizard Oz hive mind appeared in quite a row, From left, teals MPs Allegra Spender, Kate Chaney, Monique Ryan, Sophie Scamps, Nicolette Boele and Zali Steggall at the Midwinter Ball at Parliament House.

Polonius was quite beside himself at the notion that the Senate held the key ...

It was a clever point by Ryan, but no more than that. In terms of political awareness, Allegra Spender and Zali Steggall are out in front. For they have finally realised that independents have scant political clout or even influence unless they are in a balance-of-power position in the House of Representatives, where the prime minister sits. This rarely happens.
The likes of Spender and Steggall in Wentworth and Warringah, respectively – along with Kate Chaney (Curtin), Ryan and Sophie Scamps (Mackellar) – continue to receive favourable coverage on the ABC and in Nine Entertainment newspapers (The Australian Financial Review, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age).
But their high profiles have not resulted in policy outcomes, for the obvious reason that Labor, under Anthony Albanese’s leadership, has had comfortable majorities in the House of Representatives since being elected in May 2022.
The latest teal independent to win a seat – Nicolette Boele in Bradfield – has yet to make an impact. Zoe Daniel, who was defeated by the Liberal Party’s Tim Wilson at the May 2025 election, had a high profile but achieved little in terms of policy outcomes during her three years in parliament.
For the truth is that it is only when minor parties and independents have representatives in the Senate that they matter. In recent times this has been true of the Democratic Labor Party and the Australian Democrats – both now extinct. And now the Greens.
Currently the Labor Party has 30 out of 76 senators. It needs votes to get legislation through the upper house. Meaning it requires 39 votes from a combination of the Coalition (27), the Greens (10), One Nation (four) and others (five). Right now, all the non-government senators have influence on legislation to a greater or lesser extent. Not so the teals in the House of Representatives.

Then there came quite the AV interruption and distraction... Flinders University Associate Lecturer Josh Sunman says the formation of Community Strong Australia “comes with risk” for teal independents Zali Steggall and Allegra Spender.​“It is really interesting, we have often seen the Teal independents described as having party-like structures, in that they are Independents, but at the same time they are affiliated,” Mr Sunman told Sky News Australia.​“Part of their brand is that they're seen as staunchly independent advocates for their community, and by becoming a bit more party-like, I think it could potentially hurt their independent brand.”

Still no rebrand for Sky Noise down under? And worse still no understanding from this Josh that appearing on Sky Noise down under might hurt his academic brand?

Never mind, Polonius was to hand to refute his thinking, and show the Senate way forward ...

By forming the Community Strong Australia party, Spender and Steggall have recognised that the CSA will attain real importance if it achieves Senate representation. In a normal Senate election this will require a vote after preferences of 14.3 per cent
Chaney and Ryan seem determined to remain independent and to refrain from joining CSA. However, Chaney understood her problem shortly after she entered the House of Representatives. Interviewed on ABC Four Corners on August 15, 2022, the member for Curtin had this to say: “I certainly am copping it from people in my electorate who said: ‘And now you’re powerless … you didn’t hold the balance of power so therefore you can’t do anything.’ ”
Chaney added: “You can only nudge things in the right direction and it takes a lot of nudges to actually make any change.” That’s correct. And that’s why the excessive coverage of the teals on the ABC and Nine has been unwarranted.
One example illustrates the point. Chaney was interviewed by Clarke on RN Breakfast on July 2.

Groan. Not the ABC again. Why does Polonius keep watching and listening to them and referencing them? It's as if the cardigan wearers provided a different and informative take on the world.

Doesn't Polonius realise that there hasn't been a conservative voice on the ABC ever since they kicked him off The Insiders?

When asked about whether the eSafety Commissioner is “the right body” to oversee a digital duty of care, Chaney replied: “Look I think it can be.” That was the voice of a politician with limited influence.
It’s a long way to the next election. But it seems likely that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party will have strong representation in the upper house, irrespective of the outcome of the House of Representatives election. Three of One Nation’s sitting senators are not due for re-election until 2031 and only Hanson goes to the polls in two years.

The reptiles made Polonius pause for a snap of Pauline, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Then it was on to slagging off Malware - the current national sport at the lizard Oz - and that bloody Senate thingie again ...

It is said by many, myself included, that the Liberal Party’s current problems began after Malcolm Turnbull replaced Tony Abbott in a partyroom ballot in September 2015.
Turnbull decided to call a double-dissolution election for July 2, 2016. The campaign was disastrously long – almost eight weeks – and Turnbull campaigned poorly. In the event, the Liberal Party lost 14 seats to Labor and scraped back into government with a one-seat majority. But there was more. The double dissolution meant the quota to win a Senate seat dropped from 14.3 per cent (after preferences) to 7.7 per cent in a double dissolution (after preferences).
Hanson took full advantage of Turnbull’s lack of political skills. In 2013 she had run for a Senate seat in NSW, obtaining a mere 1.2 per cent of the vote. However, One Nation revived itself as the Turnbull-led Liberal Party lost support.
In July 2016, One Nation obtained 9.2 per cent of the primary vote in Queensland, winning Hanson a six-year term and getting another One Nation senator across the line. Hanson’s party also won a Senate seat in NSW and Western Australia. One Nation became a significant minor party after its newly elected senators took their seats in July 2016.
The evidence suggests that Hanson’s revival – after many years in the political wilderness – took off after Turnbull’s poor performance in mid-2016. He was replaced, in a partyroom ballot in August 2018, by Scott Morrison, who led the Coalition to an unexpected election victory over the Bill Shorten-led Labor Party in May 2019.
Currently One Nation is leading Labor and the Coalition on the primary vote in some polls. This by no means suggests One Nation can attain government. But it is near certain that it will become more influential in the Senate after the next election and probably win seats in the House of Representatives. This is an example of a political party making an initial impact in the Senate.
The Community Strong Australia may have an unrelatable name but Spender and Steggall understand democratic politics.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

Splendidly tedious stuff, and it seems that the teals must ignore the other reptiles and follow Polonius's Senate advice.

Now here's a question for Polonius to ponder ...

Those bloody cartoonists always contrive to sound like filthy Commie swine...but the pond hadn't quite nodded off, and felt the need to look a little bit further for Sunday entertainment, only to discover that the Australian Daily Zionist News was at it again...

There was the dog botherer, given quite a big splash ...

How ABC spin captured the ‘narrative’ for Hamas
Anti-Israel propaganda is widespread, but with a little effort people can discover the facts, and with some critical thinking expose the lies.
By Chris Kenny
Associate Editor (National Affairs)

The pond is well and truly over lizard Oz Zionism, and palmed him off to the intermittent archive, because it was just the dog botherer in Zionist mode, mixed in with a standard lizard Oz jihad attacking the cardigan wearers...

A teaser trailer would surely suffice ...

Bile comes from a good place? Is that some kind of justification for your own patented brand of bilious abuse?

The pond will only note this bold claim:

...How do we push back against the false zeitgeist?
I tell you what, you can hand them this article and make them an offer. If they can correct any assertions or demonstrate errors of fact, I will update the record in a future column.

Here's a suggestion. 

You truly have to be a dickhead of the first water to think that Palestinian children will get a future of freedom and prosperity, or their own state if the current government of Israel and its fundamentalist Greater Israel theocrats have anything to do with it.

And the notion that it's all the fault of the Palestinians is just regurgitating an old slur and lie.

And then there was this ...

Someone told me the other day, accusingly, that I was “taking sides”. If you do not take a side between the Islamist extremist terrorists who deliberately killed and defiled innocent men, women and children to trigger a war, and the targets of their aggression who fought back against this threat, then you must be incapable of rational or ethical thought.
This is not a mere matter of competing perspectives. This is civilisation versus barbaric intolerance.

You want some barbarism? An example of barbaric intolerance?

IDF accused of ‘field execution’ of Palestinian driver bringing aid into Gaza

Sadly it's just one example amongst many ... there'll be a promise of an investigation, another cover-up, and even if anything is confirmed, a slap on the wrist with a moist lettuce leaf.

And how's this for a lie?

How can Israel be involved in a genocide when the growth of the Palestinian population has outstripped Israel’s? Given the military might of Israel and the urban density of Gaza, how could the population in Gaza have fallen by only 100,000 people – equivalent to the number of people who have been able to flee the territory – during two years of intense warfare?

So many things to unpack, not least this variation on the Great Replacement Theory, whereby they all breed like rabbits and they're swamping the world.

And as for that blather about grow outstripping Israel's population, let's check the total on the tape.

Israel has an estimated population of c. 10 million, including two million Arab/Palestinian citizens. The Palestinian population in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem is c. 5.5 million. So at the moment they're some 2.5 million shy, meaning there's a lot more breeding to be done, or a lot more killing.

And by way of this contrived form of maths, it seems there's been no deaths at all in Gaza?

Perhaps you might check the maths, unless you want to sound like a stooge for theocratic fundamentalists of a different stripe...

Gaza population falls 6 percent since start of war, statistics agency says
Population has declined by about 160,000 since Israel’s assault on Gaza began, official Palestinian statistics agency says.

And that was at the start of 2025. 

There's been more than a few deaths on the killing fields since then (see above), and in other places too, because you should remember, it was Benji who helped mad King Donald into that war on Iran, and what good did it do anybody, except the mad Mullahs that it empowered? (It certainly didn't help a bunch of butchered schoolgirls).

There was no relief for the pond, because the Australian Daily Zionist News also offered this ...

Labor dumps its support for Mid-East security
How Labor’s draft platform abandons key checks on Palestinian statehood
By dropping demands for Hamas and Palestinian, Labor’s national conference threatens to gut Australia’s regional foreign policy credibility.
By Colin Rubenstein
Contributor

Anybody who read the venerable Meade's most recent and most excellent Weekly Beast would realise they play it really hard ...

Australian Jewish News removes article criticising treatment of Jewish Council’s Sarah Schwartz (The Graudian was still doing its "email or register or else with menaces" routine again, so that's an intermittent archive link)

Why should the pond indulge players in that game? 

Working it all out is very Monty Python, what with Col being executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, which is different to the Jewish Council of Australia, though if you can tell the difference between the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea, you should feel right at home.

Again the pond couldn't be bothered going all the way with Col and instead sent him to the intermittent archive, pausing only to do a spoiler by running the final gobbet ...

...How can there be a credible pathway to peace while Hamas remains armed and committed to Israel’s destruction and without major reforms to the PA, which is corrupt, still continues to fund pay-for-slay terror salaries, incites violence and remains incapable of asserting control even on the streets in some West Bank cities?
The draft platform also supports the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court. This is clearly a reference to the farcical South African ICJ case accusing Israel of genocide and the ICC’s equally farcical warrant against Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s former defence minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes. The genocide charge is ludicrous. Genocide is the intention to exterminate a people in whole or in part. Countries committing genocide don’t continually warn and evacuate the civilian population for their own safety or bring in millions of tonnes of food and other aid, as Israel did.
South Africa received an 18-month extension to respond to Israel’s detailed defence, meaning the case will be heard in 2029 or 2030 at the earliest. Surely the ICJ would be acting with more urgency if genocide was occurring?
If the ALP national conference adopts these paragraphs, and especially if it removes the essential preconditions for Palestinian statehood, which the government previously has affirmed repeatedly, it will not only undermine Australia’s longstanding bipartisan policy on the Middle East but also badly damage Australia’s national interests in seeking regional stability and security.
Colin Rubenstein is executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. Previously he taught Middle East politics at Monash University for many years.

Here's the thing Col, and the pond isn't talking about the way that Benji bolstered Hamas and keeps Hamas in play even now so he has boogeymen under the bed to help with his Greater Israel project. 

Nor is the pond troubled by the convenient way that "genocide" can be used as a convenient talking point, what with definitional issues and the Holocaust producing a fine old filibuster.

It's the shameless ethnic cleansing, the tent cities and the dismal treatment of those living in Gaza and the West Bank that turns heads.

Think of all those displaced people as the land grab goes down ...

There's a lot more here Col, the physical destruction and the cost of fixing up the mess, not to mention the damage to the economy, nor to mention the current desire of fundamentalists to export Palestinians to Egypt, or to anywhere else they can be dumped.

The thing is Col, even the supine Democrats have had to do a bit of rethinking, as with Rahm Emanuel, doing a tour to Israel ...

He appeared in Haaretz in "remorseful ... just a little bit" mode...

Rahm Emanuel Wants to Save Israel. But Are Israelis Listening? (*intermittent archive link)
Rahm Emanuel, a potential Democratic presidential candidate and longtime defender of Israel speaks in Tel Aviv University on Wednesday.
Rahm Emanuel, making a strong play for being the kishkes U.S. presidential Democratic candidate, came to Israel with some home truths about the disaster that Netanyahu has led the country into. But his mission is for America's sake as much as Israel's
By Esther Solomon.

Inter alia ...

He really is trying to help in his own peculiar Democrat way, but you're not listening Col, you're not helping, and nor is the government of Israel ... but rest assured, they get the message, Gun-Toting Israeli Forces Detain Ro Khanna in Dramatic Video.

As for the "two state solution", not in the pond's lifetime, and not if it doesn't sustain the current apartheid system, and not because the Palestinians are dead against it.

That's called projection Col, or perhaps it's from too much imbibing during a hydration break ...

Or a loon wanting to spend a Weekend At Mitch's (Bernie went missing)...

In the end the pond gave up on the Zionist News, and decided it would instead feature the lizard Oz editorialist, and waddya kno, there was more relentless flogging of "Ned's" tome.

It only appeared incidentally in that one, what with the lizard Oz being a full time life coach for the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, but in this outing it was full ABF (Always Be Flogging, a close cousin to Always Be Closing) ...

They want to turn this county into full exceptionalist, just like the United States. Go suck on a raw prawn, and then shove the shell up the *rse of News Corp, in the manner of ancient Xian heretics.

It was a relief to turn to the final outing, and see that the reptiles were once again blathering on about the urgent need to nuke the country to save the planet, except of course the planet doesn't need saving, at least if you've caught up with the lizard Oz in climate science denialist mode ...

Much will depend? And climate science is an ideology? And the economics better not consider, compare and contrast the cost of doing nothing as climate change ravages a heated-up planet?

Here, have a few 'toons, always a better guide to the insanity than the reptiles and the best way to wrap up a Sunday meditation ...

And doesn't this all seem so very long ago, but leaving so many memories to treasure?

Speaking of last week's fun ...