The pond would have liked to have spent time with the mad man child, well into his second childhood, and his enormous sulk about not getting that peace prize, as if his war mongering, boastful ways should have been rewarded.
His Mussolini style preening - Greenland! - surely put its it out of his reach for the rest of his reign, but not out reach of his never-ending delusions, with the latest his epic betrayal of Ukraine to Vlad the sociopath, all for a little diesel to fill up the gap created by the mango monster himself, all in a desperate bid to avoid a midterm blow out. If a president ever needed to go at once, right now, it isn't Zelensky.
Or perhaps the pond could have brooded about little Marco - 2028 pretender - and his shameful assault on the ICC, pandering to his senile master, or have spent its Sunday time wishing the cockroaches every success in their battles with the notoriously corrupt Modi regime.
But life isn't easy for herpetology students, and instead the pond got lumbered with its usual Sunday duty, wasting valuable time and space dealing with Polonius and his prattle, as he goes even more Zionist each week (almost an essential qualification these days for contributors to the Australian Daily Zionist News).
Louise Adler’s free speech double standard exposed
7 min
The caption for the uncredited collage forcing another victim into a lizard Oz jihad: Former Adelaide Writers Week director Louise Adler says the Bondi massacre had no impact on antisemitism ‘other than the shocking and tragic loss of the lives of 15 individuals’. Pictures: News Corp/Supplied
The begging for the mighty G: Make us preferred on Google
Correspondents will by now know the pond's drill as soon as this topic hovers into view.
Rather than pay attention to Polonius, this week shouting in an addled way at Adler, the pond likes to provide some alternative reading.
This might be as simple a strategy as referencing Steve Bloomfield's outing in the Graudian, In three years, Israel’s war on Gaza hasn’t just changed the Middle East, it’s changed the world
...The before-and-after pictures tell part of the story. An update to Google Maps, released last week, underscores just what three years of relentless Israeli military onslaught has done to Gaza. Satellite images show how entire towns have been reduced to rubble. Mosques and hospitals, visible three years ago, have now disappeared. Meanwhile the once-empty shoreline is now crammed with tents. This is what it looks like when an attempt has been made to destroy a people.
But the pond is deeply perverse.
Only an excerpt from an interesting story to match every Polonial visual distraction would suffice.
This story in Haaretz caught the pond's eye as a way of coping:
The Israeli military also arrested nine Palestinians in Hebron, including the director of the Tomb of the Patriarchs' Ibrahimi Mosque, the Palestine News Agency reported (*intermittent archive link).
Here's a starter gobbet:
That'll serve the purpose.
Now, having shown how to provide a little balance, it's time for a case study in Polonial denial, and let the Polonial photos and matching excerpts begin.:
It is widely known the Melbourne-based Adler is a Jewish critic of Israel. Not just the nation under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu but of the very existence of the Jewish state, which was created by the United Nations in 1948.
Adler is by no means the only anti-Zionist among Jewish Australians. So is Antony Loewenstein, who was sympathetically profiled by the ABC Compass program in May 2024. Adler received a remarkably soft interview from ABC TV 7.30 reporter Laura Tingle on December 4, 2023, in which she claimed to have been silenced. Loewenstein is mentioned with approval in Adler’s royal commission submission.
The reptiles produced a snap of the man who aroused Polonial ire: Journalist, writer and blogger Antony Loewenstein.
Early on, Adler criticises South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas for decisions he supported concerning the 2026 Adelaide Writers Week, of which she was director before resigning the position. Malinauskas is quoted as having said, with respect to this decision, that “Bondi changed everything”. The reference is to the terrorist attack at Bondi Beach on December 14 last year in which 15 people were killed (including 13 Jews) and numerous individuals injured.
In her submission, Adler wrote: “Antisemitism, like all forms of racism, has long been a scourge in Australia and Bondi changed nothing, other than the shocking and tragic loss of the lives of 15 individuals.”
This is absolute tosh. Sure, during much of the previous century, Jewish Australians were excluded from gentlemen’s clubs in Australian capital cities and the like. But such antisemitism bears no relationship to the Bondi massacre.
Moreover, in the early 20th century, Australian politicians appointed General John Monash as head of the First Australian Imperial Force. Not long after, Sir Isaac Isaacs was made the first Australian governor-general. This is not the behaviour of a racist nation that allegedly discriminates against Jewish citizens.
In the usual way, Polonius spends his time adjudicating ancient matters, involving parochial dropkicks of the great Adelaide aunt on the verandah kind ... Dr Abdel-Fattah accused SA Premier Peter Malinauskas of using he (sic, so and thus) Bondi attack as an excuse to intervene in the Adelaide Writers’ Festival. Picture: Emma Brasier
So it was with Adler’s AWW over the years. In 2023, for example, Adler invited seven Palestinians to talk at the AWW but not one Israeli. It was much the same the following year when Caroline Overington commented in these pages that all speakers on the Middle East were critics of Israel.
It was the same in 2025 when the AWW was, once again, a leftist stack virtually bereft of politically conservative voices. Then, in 2026, a controversy broke out when Adler invited political activist/writer Randa Abdel-Fattah to address the AWW. She is a fierce critic of Israel and had once posted on social media, “If you are a Zionist you have no claim or right to cultural safety”.
At a time of widespread antisemitism in Australia, including violence, this was, at the very least, an unprofessional act. It led to the decision of the AWW board to withdraw her invitation, a decision that was revoked by a replacement board. And so it came to pass that Abdel-Fattah will be a guest at the AWW next year. But Adler resigned in protest at the original decision.
This dusting off of ancient feuds is a typical reptile strategy ...Louise Adler appearing on 7.30 following her resignation from Adelaide Writers' Week. Picture: ABC
Or how about another wiki?
...Since 2011, Israeli nationalists have made anti-Palestinian chants such as "death to Arabs" (Israeli Hebrew: מָוֶת לָעֲרָבִים, romanized: Mávet la'Aravím) in parades on Jerusalem Day. Other chants include "May Your Village Burn," "Muhammad is dead,""a Jew is a soul, an Arab is a son of a whore," "burn Shu'afat" or "Shu'afat is on fire" in reference to the Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem where a Palestinian boy was kidnapped and set on fire, as well as the Hebrew curse with Biblical origins for enemies of the Jewish people "may their name be erased." According to Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, the Jerusalem Day parade is a "spatialized enactment of power," and in 2015, "over 30,000 young religious and nationalist Israeli Jews rampaged throughout the Old City of OEJ chanting 'Death to Arabs', 'Muhammad is Dead' and other racist slogans, restructuring the sensory experiences of Palestinians in the space.
It might be different if that was just the odd bigot doing the rounds, but those attitudes infest the highest levels of the government of Israel.
Water off a duck's back to Polonius ...
This suggests that Adler lacks self-awareness. She seems blissfully unaware that her taxpayer-funded AWWs are all but devoid of supporters of Israel.
For example, Adler personally declined an offer by Michael Gawenda, of left-wing background and a one-time editor of The Age, to appear at the AWW. Gawenda is the author of My Life as a Jew (Scribe 2023) and a one-time friend of Adler. Adler identifies as a pluralist who supports debate and discussion, but who does not practise what she preaches.
On January 14, The Australian Financial Review reported that businessman Tony Berg, who resigned from the Adelaide Festival board that presides over the AWW, had accused Adler of “hypocrisy in defending free speech”. Berg revealed that Adler, along with Abdel-Fattah and others, had called for New York Times journalist Tom Friedman to be disinvited from the 2024 AWW.
At this point the reptiles decided to feature a photo of a drop kick, embedded in the text ...Tony Berg was on the Adelaide Festival Board.
The pond thought this was the best way to illustrate it ...
And that left just a few Polonial last words ...
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.
The pond can think of another movie that's been cancelled in the lizard Oz, with Polonius in denial about its reality:
Troubling documentary ‘NAZA’ details Israel’s AI-assisted airstrikes in Gaza
...Wherever you fall regarding the continued destruction of Gaza, what the filmmakers of “NAZA” make disturbingly clear is that the simplest machinery to spread dehumanization and death is happening now, easing its users into acceptance and rewriting everything about the moral cost of conflict. It’s stone-cold frightening.
But not to the stone-cold devotees in the lizard Oz of the ethnic cleansing killing fields.
How about another story to offer a little more balance, also from Haaretz ...
Thousands Are Held in Israeli Torture Camps. This Is What Happens Inside (*intermittent archive link)
Take a squiz at this and you'll get the idea. The hive mind is an ugly, pulsating reality ...
Worse than an episode of the X-Files, or perhaps they're all pod people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, so united are they in their conformity.
Here, have a break with another cult ...
What to do for a bonus?
One thing's certain.
After all that Polonial kerfuffle, there was no room at the pond inn for grating Gemma...
What October 7 taught me about silence and evil
Australia is facing a crisis of courage. Nothing has changed, and I fear we will simply forget.
By Gemma Tognini
Columnist
Instead the pond took the easy way out ... a serve of climate science denialism from the unreformed seminarian known as the Ughmann ...
Chris Uhlmann
12 min
The cause of all the problems? Deluded folk who think the sun has some kind of free energy on offer: Which country’s energy policy do you prefer? One based on economics and physics or one based on targets and ideology? Picture: Getty Images
A call for punters to be trapped in the paywall by Murdochian spiders: Make us preferred on Google
Always with the projection.
As soon as the Ughmann talked of climate science and possible solutions to the climate crisis as "ideology", the pond was immediately plunged back into the world of the unreformed seminarian's approach to science.
There's really no need to carry on at length. The sub-text of any Ughmann outing is that we should never have abandoned dinkum, sweet, virginal, clean Oz coal, and the sooner we get back to using same, the better off we, and the world, will be, because what climate science?
In Ughmann argot, talk of climate science is to enter a cult, a theology full of "greenwishers" ...
In the eyes of the world’s greenwishers, China is the energy transition poster child. This much is true: Beijing has spent more money, built more wind turbines, erected more solar panels and manufactured more batteries than any nation on earth. As at the end of last year, China had almost half of the world’s installed wind and solar fleet.
Curiously the reptiles decided to insert an AV distraction which offered a Xi vision ...
Xi: China to cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 10% by 2035
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday (September 24) told the United Nations that by 2035, his country plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 7%-10% below its peak emissions, and called out "some countries" for moving against the global clean energy transition.
Not surprising then that China produces almost a third of the world’s carbon emissions. China also produces almost one third of the world’s hydro-electricity, has 64 nuclear reactors and another 39 under construction. China does China. It builds more of everything than everybody.
But given the Middle Kingdom’s dominance of wind, solar and battery deployment, it is worth paying close attention to how its world-leading energy planners rate the value of that generation on their grids and how they see it evolving.
We know what they think because, in July, Beijing released the detailed renewable-energy plan that sits under its latest Five-Year Plan, and it contains a remarkable set of numbers.
Here is the one that makes headlines in places like Australia: by 2030, Beijing plans to have more than 2800 gigawatts of wind and solar installed. That is roughly 38 times the combined generating power of our National Electricity Market. So, big. And worthy of a headline. But there is a much deeper story.
And yet each interrupting reptile snap hinted at an alternative universe ... Clockwise from top: Solar photovoltaic panels at a wind solar heat storage project in Golmud City; water is released from the Three Gorges Dam; a wind farm in Xinjiang; Shichengzi photovoltaic industrial park in Hami. Picture montage: News Corp
The rabid ranting about renewables continued apace ...
So, despite wind and solar accounting for more than half of installed capacity by 2030, China’s planners anticipate they will produce only about 30 per cent of the country’s electricity.
But averages are deceiving: they conceal the feast and famine of weather-dependent generation. What about the times when demand peaks and reliable electricity is desperately needed? What value do you place on wind and solar to deliver on that third cold, cloudy, still day when the batteries have run flat and your system is running flat out?
China’s planners have put a number on how much wind and solar power they believe they can actually rely on when the electricity system is under stress. They call it “confidence output” and they set the bar high: a measure of average available energy across 95 per cent of periods of peak demand.
Their answer is a risible 8 per cent.
Put bluntly, for every 100GW of wind and solar capacity, China’s planners reckon they can confidently rely on just 8GW at critical times. And that calculation includes wind and solar farms with on-site battery storage.
What would the Ughmann embrace?
At last the reptiles provided a visual answer, a rough equivalent go Gollum's precious ... The coal-powered Datang International Zhangjiakou Power Station. China has more than half of the world’s coal-fired generating capacity, and it is growing. Picture: AFP
China’s planners clearly understand this. They boast about the enormous amount of wind, solar and batteries they are building, but when it comes to keeping the lights on, quality trumps quantity.
Beijing has now put a price on that distinction. In January, China introduced reforms to reward generators for the power they can reliably supply when demand peaks. Coal and gas are being paid for their dependable generating capacity, while batteries are valued according to how long they can keep delivering. The message to the gatherers of sunshine and wind is unmistakeable: not all gigawatts are created equal.
Close observers of China’s wind and solar build-out have noticed something else. Beneath the bewilderingly large numbers, the breakneck pace of renewable expansion has begun to slow. China added roughly 1300GW of renewable capacity during its 14th Five-Year Plan. Its target for the 15th is about 960GW.
Reuters reported in July that China’s new solar installations had fallen 66 per cent in the first half of 2026 compared with a year earlier. Wind installations also fell, by almost 25 per cent. Together, China installed roughly 56 per cent less new wind and solar capacity than over that same time in 2025. Part of that dramatic slowdown reflected a rush to commission projects before Beijing’s new market-based electricity pricing regime took effect last year.
In that context, this snap illustrates a notion terrifying to the Ughmann and the reptile kind ... This solar farm in China’s central Anhui province was the world's largest floating solar power plant in 2017. It has since been overtaken by multiple projects in China.
More saucy doubts and fears tumbled out into the hive mind ether ...
In June, China’s State Council Information Office described a “major shift” in its energy transition strategy, with the focus moving “from expanding new energy capacity to building an energy system capable of integrating it”.
That is a revealing change of emphasis. China has spent years building wind and solar at a scale no other nation can approach. Now its planners are increasingly concerned with what happens after all that capacity is connected to the grid: how much electricity it actually produces, how much the grid can absorb, what it does to prices and system security, and how much power can be counted on when the system is under stress.
Or, in the words of the energy analysts at Doomberg: “At what point does the forced introduction of intermittent wind and solar power on to an existing grid begin to break things?
“A simple but highly effective rule of thumb is to inspect the proportion of highly dispatchable power capacity contributed to that grid by natural gas and impoundment hydro-electricity. Once intermittency swamps dispatchability, the pain can become overwhelming.”
Valiant dissidents fell into line behind the Ughmann ...
Farmers fined thousands as Labor sizes up their land for renewables
Furious farmers in Western Victoria say they won't give in to Labor's plan to build transmission lines across their prime agricultural land.
China’s planners are now explicitly grappling with all these problems and, believe it or not, once upon a time, Australian energy planners were doing some of the same work. Before the 2022 election, the Energy Security Board was developing a capacity mechanism. The idea was pretty straightforward: in a system becoming more dependent on unpredictable power, Australia’s eastern grid needed to develop a market to put a value on predictable power.
The board proposed assessing generators according to how much power they could actually be relied upon to provide when the system was under stress. It determined that a megawatt of wind or solar should not be treated as equivalent to a megawatt of coal, gas or hydro. The technical term is de-rating.
The board concluded that wind and solar might make only a “minimal contribution” to the dependable capacity needed to keep the system running. So the planned market would reward generators for their ability to keep the lights on.
And what became of that expert advice? It was junked because the lion’s share of what could sensibly be supported was coal and gas generation.
The reptiles produced collage designed to terrify the hive mind ... After the 2022 election, the government began underwriting more wind, solar and batteries, instead of paying for dependable power.
That sent the Ughmann into an even greater frenzy of denialism ...
When Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen assumed his role at the head of the table of the nation’s energy ministers, a capacity market was abandoned and its zombie child the Capacity Investment Scheme emerged. Instead of paying for dependable power, the government began underwriting more wind, solar and batteries.
The minister now boasts this scheme will deliver 40GW of new capacity by 2030 – 26GW of wind and solar and 14GW of “clean dispatchable capacity”, principally batteries. Apply China’s 8 per cent reliability benchmark to the wind and solar, assume four-hour batteries and a prolonged generation drought, and that advertised 40GW shrinks to something in the order of 4GW of dependable power.
In an exercise of magical thinking, Australia built the world’s only capacity mechanism with next to no capacity in it.
Our experts are aware of the fragility of the system under construction. Buried in the blizzard of technical data accompanying the Australian Energy Market Operator’s 2026 Integrated System Plan is a spreadsheet estimating their contribution to reliable supply at times of peak demand. In some cases, it rates that contribution at less than 10 per cent of installed capacity.
All the evidence a sensible government needs to urge caution when putting almost all your chips on weather-dependent generation is available. So Australia is not sleepwalking into a catastrophe, we are striding there with our eyes wide shut.
The reptiles offered a final AV distraction ...
Australia stands alone on energy policy as Bowen calls coal an ‘unreliable asset’
News24 host Jaimee Rogers rips into Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen's renewable energy transition. “You keep saying the renewable transition will deliver cheaper power, but bills continue to go up,” Ms Rogers said. “You say coal is now an ‘unreliable asset’, so why did coal still provide more than half the electricity generated in parts of the country last year? “Perhaps Australia isn't leading the world on energy policy as you claim, and instead is increasingly standing alone.”
Now ask yourself this chilling question. If the planet follows the Ughmann's thinking, what then? Will climate science and the observable effects of climate. change just go away?
Now ask yourself this chilling question. Who do you trust? The central planners of the Chinese Communist Party or Australia’s energy ministers? Which country’s energy policy do you prefer? One based on economics and physics or one based on targets and ideology?
Goodhart’s Law warns that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Australia is in the process of discovering that meeting an electricity generation target is not the same thing as building a functioning electricity system.
Given that there is no prospect of the Albanese government admitting error and making a course correction, this is going to be a long, painful and expensive journey. But, eventually, it only ends one way. To borrow again from Doomberg, in the battle between physics and politics, physics is undefeated.
Maybe there is one thing we can salvage from the rubble. I suggest we set up a de-rating system for politicians based on performance. On this measure, some of our political class would struggle to keep a light bulb burning.
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