Sadly, the attempt by the UK government and others to acknowledge the ethnic cleansing currently going down in the West Bank (not to mention Gaza or southern Lebanon) is too little, too late - the government of Israel has doomed any notion of a two state solution - and what to make of the complete nihilism and destructiveness of the current tariff-driven trade war, instituted by a mad king rapidly descending into dementia?
The pond woke to a string of lies on the Beeb emanating from the mouth of a Benji hack - it was just a hundred and fifty troubled vulgar youffs - apparently those disturbed younglings were in charge of the open tender for some 1,200 settlement homes.
On and on he whined and moaned - what about all that Palestinian violence the Beeb never talks about? - and that UN court finding is an irrelevance, and so forth and genocidal etc.
Sadly Palestine has never been the same since the days the British empire stuffed it up.
The only thing certain is that if you read the lizard Oz, those sorts of observations are simply not on, most unsporting, wot wot.
The UK's decision was effectively ghosted, piked if you will, and it was Israel's bullying response that was featured way down the page...
Israel’s ambassador to Australia has urged the Albanese government against following Britain in introducing broad export sanctions against Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
By Elizabeth Pike
Bullies and liars, and the task won't be done until there's a greater Israel from the river to the sea.
"Brainwashed?"
Just to make sure the hive mind got the message, that double down was tag teamed with the bromancer's outing ...
The Albanese government has sanctioned Israel’s West Bank settlers while rewarding a Palestinian Authority it once demanded reform from – and Australians are paying the price.
By Greg Sheridan
The work of the Australian Daily Zionist News is never done.
Meanwhile, the crusading, eternally cranky Cranston has returned to the top of the digital page to resume his jihad ...
The pond took one look at those illustrations and knew the reptiles were on song ... those deviants were guilty as hell ...
Secret birth tax revealed in Labor’s trust reforms
Labor’s trust tax reform creates ‘newborn tax’
Families will be forced to choose between including newborns in trusts or a 47 per cent tax penalty.
By Matthew Cranston
How good is this new cranky Cranston angle?
As that's in the archive, a teaser trailer will suffice, because the pond has to note that the tale sent Dame Slap right off, as she came down from her land above the Faraway Tree in a blind, epic fury ...
Labor’s class-war tax plan is an act of blind ideology
For Labor, shooting the messengers is more palatable than admitting the messengers may be on to something.
What's amusing? It's not the stodgy "artwork" by Katie, a descriptor only the reptiles could use (a new name to the pond, with her work true to the sense that interns are the go), but the way that the radically ideological Dame Slap starts off her piece: "Radical ideologues can rarely hide their zeal."
Oh sainted aunt of projection, how little these reptiles know themselves.
Oh sublime god of mirthless irony.
The pond saved her offering to the archive and so only proffers a teaser trailer...
It was the invocation of Edmund Burke that got the pond.
All it did was remind the pond of Hegelian wisdom:
Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, and readers of lizard Oz hacks of the Dame Slap kind, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this, - that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone. Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help. It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the Past. The pallid shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and freedom of the Present. Looked at in this light, nothing can be shallower than the oft-repeated appeal to Greek and Roman examples during the French Revolution. Nothing is more diverse than the genius of those nations and that of our times.
Why, when reading this kind of Dame Slap jihad drivel, is the pond reminded of those ancient lyrics - a day old at least - to that haunting tune Hotel Vomitoria?
Such an ugly place - such a loathsome space
Making up news at the Reptile Vomitoria
That is why we’re here - spewing lies and fear!”
Welcome indeed, with the full lyrics at the bottom of the page...
Enough already with Dame Slap, off to the archive with her.
Who else is putting out the 'welcome to the vomitoria' mat today?
It would remiss of the pond not to note the other jihad that's out and about, and featured a whole team, a veritable horde of reptiles, getting down and dirty on One Nation ...
One Nation’s liar for hire: aspiring premier now admits drug use past
One Nation’s Victorian leader Warren Pickering has admitted to past amphetamine use, drink driving and ‘sexual deviance’ but will remain the party’s state election frontman.
By Jamie Walker, Lily McCaffrey, Liam Mendes and Anthony Galloway
The archived version is a little stale, and was saved under the header One Nation leader Warren Pickering’s drink-driving record revealed, The man leading One Nation into Victoria’s November election has faced courts in two states over drink-driving, careless driving and two orders of imprisonment in lieu of unpaid fines.
Perforce the pond had to pick up the archive slack by cherry picking a little
The reptile jihadists had a victory, forcing a confession ...
Dirt got the splash treatment ...
Dirt got deep ...
Dirt got Barners and Gina's pampered pet dragged into the scandal du jour ...
Will he survive? Will the reptiles give up on their jihad? Especially when there's lots of salacious juice, and the reptiles can rediscover their tabloid souls?
The pond fancies this horse will gallop on to election day, and regrets that this distraction waylaid coverage of other reptiles ...but on the other hand, Rowan had to be ruled out on the basis of the headline ...
Those organisations seeking consensus on every major issue before proceeding are vulnerable to Beijing’s formula for success.
By Rowan Callick
Contributor
The pond is already filthy rich from earning a shilling each time the reptiles mention "the long march through the institutions", and adding "multilateral" isn't a clever enough variation to warrant attention outside the archive ...
Sadly the old routine about Beijing violating UN conventions - as if Israel cared about UN conventions or courts - has been made doubly redundant by the behaviour of the mad king, as he eyes off Greenland and sends in an oil drilling team...
Speaking of the mad king, the bouffant one was out and about, also subbing for the bromancer ...
Although the US-Australia alliance still lives and grows under the AUKUS nuclear submarine program, there is a host of new threats and uncertainties a quarter century after 9/11.
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor
The bouffant one managed just a morsel, a two minute read, which by this point was all the pond felt like ...
The reptiles must have felt indifferent, judging by that excruciating collage deployed at the top of the yarn ... and things got worse from there, as the bouffant one went full on anniversary ...
An unending war of terror and an unending war on terror began.
Coincidentally on the ground in Washington within sight of the stricken Pentagon, John Howard forged a unique bond with George W. Bush, which in turn founded a new, revived era for the US-Australia alliance and relationship.
Over the next three years the Australian prime minister and the US president would commit troops to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, seal a momentous US-Australia free-trade agreement eliminating most tariffs and commit to a joint venture to welcome China into the international order.
The reptiles shoved a couple of snaps in, much as you might stuff a chook with bread crumbs, in the hope of making it look like there was some substance to the yarn ... Then Chinese president Hu Jintao after addressing a joint sitting at Parliament House in Canberra in 2003. Picture: AP; A different geopolitical climate now with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Picture: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
Twenty-five later that world order has turned again: the Middle East is in conflict again with Australian support for the US in the Straits of Hormuz; Donald Trump has reintroduced tariffs, even on his closest ally; and a more aggressive, more repressive China asserts its power in the Pacific.
Although the US-Australia alliance still lives and grows under the AUKUS nuclear submarine program, the privileges of close alliance are being shunned, Trump’s erratic tariffs damage trade and create uncertainty, while Chinese influence and security threats grow in the Pacific.
Now desperate for a boost, the reptiles flung in a snap of the lying rodent, co-joined with a snap of 9/11: Former prime minister John Howard talks to News24 about his recollection of the 9/11 terrorist attack.
He's well on the way to mythical Ming the Merciless status in the hive mind.
The bouffant one hesitantly noted that the mad king might be a bit of a worry ...
Certainly the two ambassadorial point men at the time of the 9/11 attacks, Tom Schieffer in Washington and Michael Thawley in Canberra, are both concerned the alliance high point, post-2001, has passed and is under threat from Trump’s leadership style, and frayed defence and economic links, despite underlying strengths, and an unrestrained China which is becoming hostile towards Japan.
Thawley warns that the real strategic threat in the Pacific now is not the obvious pressure on Taiwan from China but the involvement of Japan in the support or defence of Taiwan.
“Then the issue for the United States won’t be does it abandon Taiwan. But, it’s going to be is it going to support Japan or not?” he told The Australian.
For Schieffer the change has been the change of direction under Xi Jinping after the decline of Hu.
As the focus returns to the 9/11 terror attacks 25 years on, there is a host of new threats and uncertainties in the US-Australia alliance.
True enough ...
The only droll touch came at the very bottom, as the reptiles hastily tried to make things good ...
The comedy?
That was a link to an ancient Killer Creighton yarn from way back in 2020...
Former ambassador to the US Michael Thawley has rejected ‘hysterical talk’ of a crisis in American democracy.
By Adam Creighton
That's what "full coverage" gets you? That's getting the "full story"?
Ancient Hegelian history from 2020, when there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then ... though it does prove the piquant stupidity of reptile hagiography.
So many detours, but eventually the pond had to get around to the "Ned" Everest ...
The header: Pauline Hanson’s super gambit is loaded with dangers; Pauline Hanson has eaten the Liberals lunch, yet again.
No credit for the cornball collage: Angus Taylor and Pauline Hanson.
"Ned" was mired in deep gloom, which might explain why he could only manage a five minute read, base camp to his usual Everest climbs...
With this decision Hanson defines the contest between One Nation and Albanese Labor – this is short-term financial populism versus a long-run, compulsory saving, retirement policy. For every young voter Hanson wins she will lose other voters who distrust “robbing the future” by tampering with the system.
Hanson’s model is danger zone central. It is the last thing the Liberals wanted to see at this point: Hanson running policy on the right. Contrary to her claims, One Nation’s position will accentuate inflation, increase pressures for higher interest rates and diminish the value of retirement incomes. That’s a troika of losses.
She perpetuates the economic folly of putting more money into people’s pockets, bidding up demand when housing supply remains too weak. It is riddled with implementation and anomaly problems from tax to eligibility.
But Hanson and her Treasury spokesman, Barnaby Joyce, will offer a seductive bargain in a climate where cost-of-living pressures are set to intensify. The more people feel household financial pain, the more they will be attracted by Hanson’s “cash now” offer, a pitch that is simple and, to many people, too good to resist. Hanson says seven million people will be eligible, the criteria being mortgage holders and renters.
Superannuation is now guaranteed to become a frontline contested policy at the 2028 election. Both One Nation and the Labor government have willed this battle. Hanson has acted as predicted, seeing the pool of locked-up super funds as too enticing not to raid while Jim Chalmers has almost provoked the contest, declaring Hanson seeks “to end superannuation as we know it”, that she will leave workers with “less economic security, lower wages and less super” – and that the next election will be a referendum on super.
Sorry, "Ned", it's simple enough ...
There came a snap of Barners, Tamworth's never-ending shame, showing how to measure it out ... Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce during a press conference in the Senate courtyard. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
"Ned" took fresh fright ...
With the super contribution rate now at 12 per cent of income, Hanson and Joyce propose that workers be eligible to have up to 3 per cent redirected by their super fund to their bank account over the next three years, but taxed not at the marginal rate but at the concessional 15 per cent rate. That is surely a dubious proposition.
They say for a couple earning $168,000 the policy could deliver $4300 a year after tax and for an individual on $90,000 the benefit could be an extra $2300 annually after tax. Joyce summarised the selling point saying people won’t be better off in retirement if they can’t afford the mortgage or the rent. Chalmers replies that for every $1 taken out of super now, that means $3 less at retirement.
If Labor persuades a majority of people that Hanson wants to undermine or wreck the super system the government wins this contest big time. That is why the government is likely to announce another round of personal income tax cuts in the prelude to the election, the purpose being to show it cares about workers now and about their retirement income in the future.
Where are the Liberals? Hanson has eaten their lunch, yet again. Hanson recently beat the Liberals to the punch by announcing a 75 per cent cut in the tobacco excise, with Angus Taylor then announcing an 80 per cent cut to break criminal control of the illegal market in cigarettes. The Liberals have suspected a leak from their own ranks to Hanson’s party. Those fears are now deepened because the party under Taylor and former leader Sussan Ley has been considering its own opt-out from super.
The Liberals should have been leading this contest. For months they have boasted their economic credentials against Hanson. Yet reports in the Financial Review and The Australian reveal that the Liberals and the Coalition had an ambitious policy under Ley that involved allowing uncapped access to 3 per cent of superannuation annually with higher wages taxed at the marginal rate and the extra revenue being used to finance a personal income tax cut package.
Hang on "Ned", it's simple enough ...
Speak of beefy boofhead himself, who should turn up in the next snap? Angus Taylor during Question Time. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
By golly, even by the reptile rule of selecting off snaps, that makes him look like a gormless mug of the first water ...
The pond plunged back into the "Ned" gloom pool ...
They can’t bring down a withdrawal policy weaker than Hanson’s because that surrenders the contest to Hanson, but if they bring down a more ambitious policy that contains its own political risks in an intensified attack from Labor.
The apparent certainty is that Anthony Albanese and Chalmers have their political onslaught sorted out – they lump One Nation and the Liberals together as constituting the right-wing assault on compulsory superannuation, even though the Liberals haven’t yet announced a policy.
Branding the One Nation policy “completely bonkers”, Chalmers told parliament on Tuesday of the Liberals: “They don’t want to reject it, they want to replicate it.”
Seeing the Liberals are being traduced for their unannounced position, logic would suggest sorting it and releasing it.
Prolonged silence seems a guaranteed negative. While there are similarities between One Nation’s policy and the reported Liberal position, there are also significant differences.
In public the Liberal response to Hanson’s policy has been equivocal. Taylor lamented its lack of detail. Housing spokesman Andrew Bragg called Hanson’s policy “a start” but a “sugar hit”. He said a “long-term” approach was needed and the task was to “best calibrate the retirement system and the housing system”. His implication: the Liberals must get more ambitious in redesigning super policy.
The Liberals badly need a breakout tactic.
They cannot allow Hanson to drive the narrative. That gives her more political oxygen as principal opponent to Albanese.
What? Pinching Pauline's "smoke more fags and die" policy, and her "burn a dinkum flag and die" policy isn't enough?
And is Bill, looking way the worse for wear, any solution? Former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty.
Perhaps lay off the long lunches Bill?
In his final gobbet, "Ned" was forced into an awkward admission ...
Superannuation is one of Labor’s deepest commitments and would be defended in an election campaign by the government, the union movement, the industry super funds and much of the economic establishment, let alone retirees.
But Labor needs to be wary of political overkill. The populist pitch hinges on the “your money” slogan that, by itself, opens the door to potentially bigger changes. Labor is vulnerable when it talks about super as a “national asset” that it can redirect, the rhetoric that can fuel a populist drive.
The pond will settle for that line: they have singularly failed to devise a tenable revision.
Until they revise the singular notion that the beefy boofhead is a leader, they'll wallow in Barners' - Tamworth's enduring shame - and Pauline's wake ...
As for the full lyrics to that ancient song ...
Reptile Vomitoria (*copyright to Kez)
Foul wind in my hair
Raw smell of vomítus
Contaminating the air
Up ahead in the distance
Appears a sickening sight
I feel unsteady as the lights grow dim
I want to stop out of fright
And press the ringer bell
I am wondering to myself
If I will ever come out of this well
As I turn the doorhandle
And step inside the hallway
All the lizards at their terminals
Look up at me and say…
Such an ugly place - such a loathsome space
Making up news at the Reptile Vomitoria
That is why we’re here - spewing lies and fear!”
It tickled the pond's fancy, even if it means that the tune for Hotel California has been stuck in the old noggin for hours. (Actually make that decades).
And now this, a double barrelled 'toon closer, on a matter studiously ignored by the lizard Oz..
"...a mad king rapidly descending into dementia?"
ReplyDeleteNo, he arrived at that state quite a while ago.
"...how little these reptiles know themselves."
ReplyDeleteAnd hasn't that been bleedin' bloody obvious for a very long while. For every act or action, claim the best for themselves and the worst for everybody else even when they're all doing the very same thing.
"It tickled the pond's fancy, even if it means that the tune for Hotel California has been stuck in the old noggin for hours."
ReplyDeleteIs that any worse than having watched a rather ungreat performance of Hoagy Carmichael's 'Stardust' on the ABC Breakfast show ? Which in many and varied renditions has been stuck in my noggin on and off for many decades.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2fbOAyNOpM
And maybe this one:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjU6ZjrQulc&list=RDj2fbOAyNOpM&start_radio=1
Or this one if you really prefer:
Deletehttps://www.facebook.com/breakfastnews/videos/paul-kelly-performs-stardust-in-the-news-breakfast-studio-abcnewsbreakfast-paulk/27866782929659195/
Or this one if you really prefer:
Deletehttps://www.facebook.com/breakfastnews/videos/paul-kelly-performs-stardust-in-the-news-breakfast-studio-abcnewsbreakfast-paulk/27866782929659195/
EXCLUSIVE wot wot...
ReplyDeleteSecret birth tax revealed in Labor’s trust reforms
Labor’s trust tax reform creates ‘newborn tax’
Families will be forced to choose between including newborns in trusts or a 47 per cent tax penalty.
By Matthew Cranston
Public tax dodging via newborns fixed by Labour. Families will get better services by removing Silver Spoons from greedy unTRUSTworthy parents.
Silver Spoon Lease Prices, hoarding and interventions... wow, who knew.
"The Silver Turnstile Illusion: Tracking the 330 Million Invisible OZ that Prevent Delivery Failure
Silver Market Squeeze Atlas
Craig Tindale
Sep 07, 2026
https://ctindale.substack.com/p/the-silver-turnstile-illusion-tracking
"Many of them believed themselves to be part of a “superior” group that ought to rule the world"
ReplyDelete~ Isaac Azimov
How to we cease this "Israeli ambassador warns broad sanctions on settlements would be a ‘deep mistake’", NOT Diplomat from proving Asimov?
And "It was Philip Klass alias William Tennwho was disturbed when John Campbell Jr. told him that “I’ve always believed that the Jews are Homo Superior.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tenn
"Klass had seen a Nazi concentration camp during his wartime service and was upset. “It’s racism. And at the moment I don’t want to hear any- I can’t live with any kind of racist formulation.” (Nevala-Lee, Astounding, p. 366).
"In his debate with Elie Wiesel, Asimov made very clear that he thought racial or religious nationalism was folly, and just lead to the persecutors and persecuted switching places.
"I miss Isaac Asimov, and I miss the America that created him.
Azimov; "I became uncomfortably aware that Mensans, however high their paper IQ might be, were likely to be as irrational as anyone else. Many of them believed themselves to be part of a “superior” group that ought to rule the world, and despised non-Mensans as inferiors. Naturally, they tended to be right-wing conservatives, and I generally feel terribly out of sympathy with such views.
Isaac Asimov, I, Asimov: Memoir (Doubleday, 1994) pp. 379-381
https://www.bookandsword.com/2026/08/25/a-citation-to-asimov/
Yes, sad isn't it: a high IQ score (to be precise, because it is just a score) is just not a guarantee of possessing any sense or sensibility whereas a low IQ score (if it's genuine) is pretty much a guarantee of very limited thinking skills and little genuine knowledge.
DeleteBut yes, Asimov was a good read and I enjoyed his work.
Despite being a pioneering editor who did more than anyone else to bring about “the Golden Age of Science Fiction”, in the Late 1930s-40s, Campbell was both racist by any modern definition and an enthusiast for many crackpot ideas. Amongst many others, he was an early advocate of Scientology’s predecessor, Dianetics - L Ron Hubbard was one of his regular writers, and the magazine he edited, “Astounding” published Hubbard’s initial article promoting his “new science”. The Nevala-Lee book is excellent.
DeleteAnyone know an editor who might... "use it sink some papers and promote others"?
ReplyDeleteScientific papers.
Yet I'd bet on Newscorpse editors, as is their self, like Narcisus, see their own paper reflection...
Grigori avramidi
Aug 3
"Yes, it is easily misused (or abused) this way. I recently learned through the grapevine that an editor uses chatgpt to self-write and justify quick opinions on papers, and knowing this person I would not be at all surprised if they use it sink some papers and promote others. If you want to feel depressed, just think of what the worst person you know will do with ai..."
https://thezvi.substack.com/p/openais-unreleased-model-astra-solves/comment/307608355
Kez says...
Delete"Welcome to the Reptile Vomitoria
Such an ugly place - such a loathsome space
Making up news at the Reptile Vomitoria
That is why we’re here - spewing lies and fear!”
~ (*copyright to Kez)
Y'r h'mbl took another Fotherington-Tomas day - the birds, trees and sky more appropriate for greetings than the key tapping of reptiles, and it does allow the F-Ts of this life to pity the reptiles who seem not to have time to renew their experience of the world outside. Kez has placed them for us, forever.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, the tune does tend to be what we used to think of as an 'ear worm', but that is now better associated with an extant Robert Kennedy, so will prefer reference to the more poetic (?) 'noggin'.
GBs chart of versions of 'Stardust' (personal preference very high for the Nat King Cole) had me replaying the Y-tube of The Eagles performance at the Capital Centre in Landover, Maryland. One of my offspring pointed me to that one, for Don Henley to do vocal and drum. The offspring played around with some musos, and figured the best way to manage a performance was to do vocal and drum = which may have been significant in the quality of all the instrumentals in that performance.