It's finally a meditative Sunday, so the pond can be more expansive and indulgent.
Monday will be time enough to get back to standard lizard Oz lentils and beans, with the pond wanting to have a little variation in its diet.
Why not start by referencing a compelling read in the Financial Times?
Israeli forces have systematically destroyed homes, roads, farmland and forests despite ceasefire with Hizbollah
Raya Jalabi in Beirut and Aditi Bhandari in London
An excerpt will serve as a teaser trailer ...
Analysis of satellite imagery, open-source data and verified footage shows that much of the damage occurred after Israeli forces established control over emptied villages in mid-April. It has rendered large areas uninhabitable, destroying systems needed for civilian life, from water and energy infrastructure to medical care, a tactic rights groups and legal experts say appears designed to prevent residents’ return.
“It’s an extensive, long-lasting and organised attack on the people of southern Lebanon,” said Kristine Beckerle, a deputy director at rights group Amnesty International. “If you raze everything to the ground, critical infrastructure and healthcare, if you scorch the earth, you are creating effective wastelands that are unliveable and making it very difficult for people to return to southern Lebanon.”
Southern Lebanon has long borne the brunt of Israeli bombings and invasions, including before the rise of Shia militant group Hizbollah and the threat it posed to Israel’s northern communities.
But weeks into the latest conflict, defence minister Israel Katz invoked a different approach, one used with devastating consequences after Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack: the “Rafah and Beit Hanoun model”, a reference to Israel’s wholesale levelling of cities in Gaza. “All homes in Lebanese villages near the border will be destroyed,” Katz said.
By July, Katz claimed his threat had been carried out. “Twenty-four Lebanese villages, hundreds of years old, we destroyed all the buildings,” he said, boasting that up to 20,000 homes had been demolished. “Not house by house, but entire villages.”
And again ...
Under this, an occupying power may destroy civilian property only where required by “imperative military necessity”. A general claim that Hizbollah might return and use civilian structures in the future would not be enough, Dill said: “It’s deeply implausible that imperative military necessity applies to every house in a particular village.”
Preventing the return of civilians who have been forcibly displaced would also amount to a war crime, said Amnesty’s Beckerle. More than 400,000 displaced people have returned south, according to Lebanon’s government, but many remain displaced and others were “staying with friends, family or in damaged structures with lacking services”, Beckerle said.
For months, Lebanon and Israel have been engaged in US-brokered talks, with an ostensible goal of IDF withdrawal and eventual peace. But these have made little difference on the ground, as Israeli forces continue to demolish villages and set orchards ablaze, unfettered.
The negotiations have also enraged many Lebanese, who feel the state is helpless to stop the destruction of their homes. Bazzi, meanwhile, is still waiting to learn how much remains of hers.
“Our people used to say long ago: ‘If only a bird would bring me news,’” she said. But “even the birds are no longer there above the south and above Bint Jbeil. There is no one left to bring us news.”
Speaking of birds not bringing any useful news, Polonius was out and flapping about this weekend, and in his usual way, meandering down ancient history:
The header: The 1996 Parliament House riot: The violent attack on Australian democracy we choose to ignore; While the January 6 Capitol Building attack dominates global memory, Australia’s own parliament was stormed three decades ago and history has largely forgotten it.
The caption for a collage best left uncredited, and only useful because Bill will appear way down this page: The Capitol Building riot in Washington DC on January 6, 2021; ACTU secretary Bill Kelty, inset left, and prime minister John Howard, right, in 1996. Pictures: AFP, Suzanna Clarke, Michael Jones
Polonius wasted four minutes of the pond's time on a trip which might appeal to a certain hive mind demographic, though the pond hasn't the foggiest idea why.
Please join Polonius in his time machine, and remember this isn't H.G. Wells:
Many Australians are aware of the riot that took place on January 6, 2021, in Washington DC. Supporters of President Donald J. Trump stormed the US Capitol Building to express their view that Trump was “robbed” of victory in the November 2020 US presidential election.
It was a dangerous affair – as most riots (whether indoors or outside) invariably are. However, the most serious casualty occurred when a Capitol Hill police officer shot and killed an unarmed female protester who happened to be a returned veteran.
As is known, congress was sitting as it was about to authorise the election of Joe Biden as US president to come into effect on January 20. The event is reported in The New York Times’ published book The January 6 Report, consisting of the findings of the select committee set up to investigate what it called “the attack on the US Capitol”.
And now back to Australia. The John Howard-led Coalition government came to office in March 1996, having defeated the Paul Keating-led Labor government in a landslide. Prime minister Howard’s first budget was set down for August 19.
The Howard government was elected on a platform of bringing the budget back into surplus, reducing Australia’s net debt, industrial relations reform and more besides. This upset the Australian labour movement.
There is very little written on this event, presumably because the trade union movement was involved in the protest that became a riot. It is my experience that most commentators on Australian history are on the left – as are most of those who write about industrial relations in their capacity as journalists or academics.
Oh dear, and even worse the reptiles wheeled out the lying rodent, Former Prime Minister John Howard remembers Australia's waterfront dispute, 20 years later.
At this point Polonius turned to an unexpected source, a certain Luke Deer:
Unexpectedly, I have found an online article by Luke Deer titled “The Parliament House Riot of 1996” (which is based on an honours thesis at the Australian National University in 1998) to be the best contemporary account. Unexpected, since his work presents as something written from a left-wing perspective. The key point being that it is based on facts – and not driven by theory.
What's a classic reptile ploy with this? They didn't provide a link, though the essence of it could be found here. (Yes, it's a Marxist Interventions site!)
The reptiles never want any punter to leave the hive mind. They want them trapped in some kind of alternative reptile universe from which they can never leave.
What's a typical example of this? Well the reptiles did provide a link in the next paragraph to matters deemed relevant to Bill Kelty:
Before the 1996 election, Bill Kelty, the ACTU secretary, had threatened an “industrial war” if a Coalition government was elected and, as prime minister, Howard was intent on breaking the power of the trade union movement.
Some mug punters - not hardened pond herpetologists experience in the ways of the reptiles - might have clicked on that link, only to have discovered it was just another way of discovering they could never leave...
What's interesting about that? Well it shows what happens when ancient lefties get a taste of billionaire lettuce leafs.
Suddenly Bill is pretty much okay in the reptile universe because he's a Fox man:
Liberal Party MP Bob Halverson was Speaker of the House of Representatives in August 1996. Halverson was a strong Howard supporter who acted with professionalism.
Halverson reported that “the protest started peacefully enough” but soon after “a separate group of marchers entered parliamentary precincts”. This group refused to accept directions from police. They were supported by some participants in the main rally.
Both groups of protesters, some fired up by alcohol, charged at the main door of Parliament House. After a time, they both broke through and got inside.
As Deer described the occasion: “Once inside the area, demonstrators used weapons including a large hammer, wheel brace, steel trolley and stanchion torn from the internal doors to break down the internal doors.” Another group broke into the Parliament House shop and looted it.
The demonstrators dispersed within a couple of hours but not before some police were injured. Deer described the occasion as “the most forceful physical attack on the federal parliament in Australia’s history”.
Where would we be without a sign of another old unionist who's developed climate change denialist syndrome, and so has also become part of the reptile Valhalla ... Jennie George at her official appointment as ACTU President elect with then-ACTU Secretary Bill Kelty in 1995.
Two turncoats, two rats in the reptile ranks, in the one fell swoop or snap... as Polonius developed signs of the disease that the pond noted yesterday.
It was a catastrophe, of a kind ...
The current Parliament House opened in 1988. What is now called Old Parliament House, or the Museum of Australian Democracy, operated in Canberra between 1927 and 1988.
It, too, was the subject of an extreme left attack. On December 30, 2021, a fire was lit at the front of the historic building, which was severely damaged. There were staff members and visitors inside at the time.
Scott Morrison, then prime minister, and Anthony Albanese, the opposition leader, condemned the attack. But senator Lidia Thorpe, then a Green, who identifies as Indigenous, put out this message: “Seems like the colonial system is burning down. Happy New Year everyone.” Fortunately, the fire was extinguished without casualties.
Both the extreme left and the extreme right have been involved in acts of violence since the creation of the commonwealth in 1901. However, it has been slight compared with many other democracies.
Then came an AV distraction designed to terrify the hive mind ... younglings in the street, trying to do a Modi ... Sydney school-aged students were seen protesting Pauline Hanson, One Nation and the party head's policy stances.
Shocking stuff ...and naturally Polonius bolted, and provided a little nugget entirely lacking in data or substance.
The main culprit has been the extreme left. During World War I the radical Industrial Workers of the World engaged in acts of arson and murder.
Actually to be fair to right wing thugs, they've managed a pretty fair share of violence, from the glory days when Captain Francis de Groot charged up on a horse to try to slash the ribbon at the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge to the cavortings of the NFA and the likes of Ross "the skull" May to the recent carry on of assorted neo-Nazis, such that the 47th parliament felt the need to issue a briefing paper on Right-wing extremism in Australia.
But don't let actual data get in the way of a single Polonial experience:
I remember a violent demonstration in Melbourne in July 1968 against Australia’s commitment to defend non-communist South Vietnam in its conflict with North Vietnam. The target was the US consulate-general in Melbourne. Journalist Jack Darmody reported that “demonstrators fought savage street battles with police”.
And don't let actual data in the way of Polonius doing a free association routine and downplaying the neo-Nazis:
In recent times Victorian Police is investigating an arson attack on a Melbourne defence manufacturer as a possible “act of terrorism”. Similar concerns have been expressed by ASIO director-general Mike Burgess in his 2026 annual threat assessment with respect to what he described as “antisemitic arsons”.
It is fashionable among the left intelligentsia to focus on alleged fascists or those claimed to be “neo-Nazis”. Certainly neo-Nazis in our midst are threatening and at times dangerous.
But concern about violence and terrorism should focus on the extreme left. For the moment at least.
It’s time to remember that the one specific attack on Australian democracy took place at the hands of the extreme left at the seat of government in Canberra three decades ago.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.
Polonius can focus on the extreme left all he likes, but the pond will remain focused on the biggest ratbag in the business, prone to violence on a daily basis:
Meanwhile, other catastrophists were out making melongate hay, just like the ones noted yesterday ...
Garrulous Gemma, in her grating way, joined the hive mind throng ...
What he did was sexist, crude and juvenile. If a man did that in front of me, I’d walk away after possibly first baptising him with whatever beverage I had handy.
By Gemma Tognini
Columnist
The pond didn't want to go there, if only because it would have meant leaking a Leak Jr. cartoon out into the blogosphere.
Luckily the immortal Rowe was handy to evoke the sort of peril that plucky Gemma offered Albo ...
Between garrulous Gemma, safely tucked away in the archive, and the dog botherer, the pond decided his carry on should be given preference:
The caption for the AV distraction that started proceedings, here reduced to screen cap: Source: Nikki Osborne on YouTube
As a catastrophist of the first water, the dog botherer took yet another reptile deep dive into the affair:
It seemed inconceivable that the leader of a significant country such as ours would voluntarily diminish himself and his office in such a tawdry way, so I figured he must have been caught by surprise to some degree.
Checking out the podcast, it did not take me long to ascertain that apart from its crass sexual reference the title was oxymoronic. It was oddly deflating to discover that our Prime Minister was so needy or pathetic that he had offered up himself and his office, and even the official residence, to such a platform. The first episode that came up in my search had been published only weeks before Albanese’s – it was his warm-up act, if you like, or should have been his warning sign.
Osborne interviewed Annie Knight, who has made a small fortune by bedding large numbers of strangers, including barely legal schoolies, and publicising her antics. Minutes into the podcast Osborne was discussing Knight’s session with 583 men (using the term loosely) over six hours.
Lying across a couch, legs akimbo, Osborne was re-enacting the action under instruction from Knight, who explained how she would have “one guy inside me while I was getting other people ready with my hands and my mouth”.
A few weeks later Osborne was on a couch in the Lodge interviewing our Prime Minister.
Albanese has not merely been reckless with his own standing but with the dignity of his office. We have all cringed and wondered how a married man could think it was OK to discuss his own sex life in public – most husbands and wives I have spoken with agree this would be seen as disrespectful, triggering instant discord.
Yet the Prime Minister then went on to canvass a puerile game of “shag, marry, date” involving three accomplished Australian women. Inexplicably, he capped it off by engaging in a conversation about “crap gifts” and offering up his now infamous melon story involving the first female Prime Minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi.
Gaslighting the public
Since then, he has spent considerable time and political capital denying what we all have seen, effectively gaslighting the public. His inability to be frank and contrite has led to the excruciating spectacle of his leading female cabinet ministers – the strong women helping to run the country – sacrificing their honour on the altar of Albanese’s idiocy, defending his actions and denying any disrespect or insult.
These are the same political players who ran a false and vicious campaign wrongly accusing Coalition women such as Linda Reynolds and Fiona Brown of a political cover-up over the Brittany Higgins rape allegations.
This version of the #MeToo movement, now practised by Penny Wong, Katy Gallagher and Tanya Plibersek, seems to include a shared commitment to denying disrespect against women if it is delivered by your male superior.
Oh dear, not the Lehrmann matter for the umpteenth time.
The reptiles are still calling them "allegations"? But billy goat butt, the matter went all the way up to the High Court, where an appeal was dismissed.
Justice Michael Lee said that Mr Lehrmann was "so intent upon gratification to be indifferent to Ms Higgins's consent".
In their ruling more than a year later, the appeal judges went even further than Justice Lee over the question of whether Mr Lehrmann had knowledge of Ms Higgins's lack of consent.
During the 2024 defamation trial, Justice Lee found Mr Lehrmann's conduct amounted to "non-advertent recklessness".
But the appeal judges accepted a contention from Network Ten and Ms Wilkinson that the primary judge ought to have found Mr Lehrmann had "actual knowledge" that Ms Higgins did not consent to sex.
You don't have to be interested in the behaviour of Liberal staffers - the pond's tends to nil - to see that the matter went beyond the allegation phase, partially because of Lehrmann's behaviour.
But that's a long time reptile ploy, all the more ironical for berating Albo for an inability to be frank and contrite, when the reptiles resolutely refuse to name Lehrmann, while reducing the matter to Higgins' "allegations".
There was doubled up dog botherer with the AV distraction:
News24 host Chris Kenny reacts to Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek providing cover for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s comments on Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s diplomatic gift. “Anthony Albanese is getting smaller every day,” Mr Kenny said. “Sadly for his colleagues, they now diminish themselves providing cover for him. "You only had to see the minister for social services on television this morning, defending what any self-respecting feminist might call indefensible."
The dog botherer followed up that with an infinite jest:
To be fair? Such an excellent fancy, as if the current melongate jihad was in any way fair, with reptiles piling on in a way that makes many of their other jihads seem like kindergarten affairs.
Yet it's such a one note saga that inevitably the dog botherer got tired of the game, and like other reptile catastrophists, began searching for other matters with which to develop a litany:
On the night he first took office he surprised the nation with his first grand promise: to deliver an Indigenous voice to parliament. He took a detailed proposal built on years of hard-won consensus and trashed it through political arrogance.
His hubris manifests time and again as denial. Whenever reality does not suit this Prime Minister, he confects another version of events.
When he fell awkwardly off a stage during last year’s election campaign, apparently the eyes and cameras of the nation had deceived us. “I stepped back one step, I didn’t fall off the stage, just one leg went down,” Albanese said, “but I was sweet.”
You see? From a moment of silliness to national disgrace, with Dania wheeled in to repeat her "falling off the stage routine: Sky News host Danica De Giorgio has taken aim at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for attempting to downplay his fall of a stage in Cessnock. The Prime Minister told ABC Radio that he did not fall, but instead ‘stepped back one step’. “He fell off the stage, then lied about it,” Ms De Giorgio said. “This is the guy who wants us to trust him?”
From there it was just a matter of expanding the litany into a catastrophic recitation of sundry dooms:
In March this year during a visit to Lakemba Mosque in southwestern Sydney, Albanese was heckled vigorously by men inside and others yelled abuse outside when he was escorted to his car under heavy security. Later he said reports of this strife were “simply not accurate” and that “overwhelmingly the reception was incredibly positive” as he dismissed the negative reaction to “a couple of hecklers inside”.
Each time he denies the obvious it is like putting the woollens through the wash; the Prime Minister shrinks. His pretence at infallibility exposes his judgment and character.
And then there is his reliability. His honesty.
Albanese promised not to meddle with the legislated tax cuts he inherited from the Morrison Coalition government. Then he changed them, undoing the cuts at the top marginal rate.
He promised not to fiddle with negative gearing or adjust capital gains tax. But he has done both, increasing the tax burden on everyone except those, like him, who had already taken advantage of the rules.
Repeatedly Albanese promised to cut electricity prices – by $275 a year. Instead, they have gone up by about three times that amount and he sheeted home responsibility not to his broken promise but to RepuTex’s failed modelling.
Last year the Prime Minister attended the Garma Indigenous festival in northeast Arnhem Land and vowed to attend “every single year that I have the great honour to be Australia’s Prime Minister”. This year, the first year after making the promise, he did not go – he had a week off instead.
Every thought crime in the reptile playbook came tumbling out ... Anthony Albanese at Garma in 2024. Picture: Yothu Yindi Foundation/Leicolhn McKellar via NewsWire
And so to the final bout of catastrophism:
I am conscious that what I am saying amounts to a personal attack, a detailed assault on the political character of our leader.
Yet this is warranted, is borne out by the examples I cite, and it matters.
The policy failings are clear: record spending, record debt, record public sector growth, high inflation, low growth, disappearing productivity, self-imposed energy harm, weak on antisemitism and Islamist extremism, expanding union power and diminished standing in global affairs.
To right all this demands leadership credentials, sound policy instincts and a capacity to level with the public to take them with you on your chosen course of action.
It is all unfolding at a time of worrisome strategic circumstances in eastern Europe, the Middle East and the East Asian hemisphere. And the social and economic impacts of the digital age and artificial intelligence continue to confound us.
Bob Hawke, Paul Keating, John Howard and Peter Costello showed the gravitas and built the trust to tackle imposing tasks. Albanese gets smaller every day, juggling melons and double entendres on a couch in the Lodge.
To mangle Sam Johnson, "A quibble poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra melon for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it."
And now, this being a Sunday meditation, to hell with length.
What's torturing the soul of the lizard Oz editorialist, heart of reptile darkness?
There was the tragedy of white men ...
Um, cancel that. They need a reptile perspective.
Of course. It's all about climate change, and the reef in splendid shape, and never anyone mind all that talk of Europe on fire, and sundry other countries ablaze.
If you live in bizarro world, none of that's happening.
And finally there was a bleat worthy of Dame Groan herself ...
Hope and indignation springs eternal in the hearts of Lord Haw Haws ...
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