In which we'll all be rooned with Dame Groan, Geoff chambering a round, and the bromancer doing Australian Daily Zionist News duties ...

 

Sheesh, is Alt for Norge the new talking point for the week? What with the foul-mouthed mad king launching yet another attack on Norway ...

Relax, Norwegians, you're in good company: Canada, Greenland, Denmark, the sh*thole countries of Africa, Mexico, most of Europe and hapless, done down Ukraine ...and that's just for starters.

And speaking of Ukraine, who'd have guessed that Vlad the Sociopath would be accused of war crimes?Ukraine: Investigators find Russia committed war crimes by targeting civilians

And while mired in the excrement of state Russian TV, this opening to a yarn struck a chord with the pond:

There’s this old joke about a guy’s first day in hell. He’s being given the orientation: Here’s where we keep the pitchforks. Here’s where we make the printers. Then the time comes to pick his eternal punishment. The first room is fire and brimstone, eternal agony. “That’s not for me,” the man says. The second is full of people being eaten by animals. “Pass,” he says. In the third room, he finds people sipping coffee while waist deep in excrement. “I think I can handle that,” he says. The door closes behind him as a demon yells, “Coffee break’s over! Back on your heads!”

Alex Galbraith in Salon used that as a way into the cesspit that is Faux Noise host Jesse Watters' cesspit, Even Jesse Watters seems tired of pushing Fox News’ culture war.

But the pond thinks it's just as good an introduction to the daily inversion the pond experiences in the land of the lizard Oz reptiles...

For years now, the pond has done a running joke about Dame Groan living in the land of Said Hanrahan ...

And so around the chorus ran
"It's keepin' dry, no doubt."
"We'll all be rooned," said Hanrahan,
"Before the year is out.

Knock the pond down with a feather, the reptiles ran with the gag and stuck it in the header...with the Groaner taking us on yet one more road to roon (she has so many roads)...

Think? The pond should think?

Luckily this road to roon only ran to two more gobbets ...

So much fuss about something not going to happen? 

But that's what happens when you travel the road to roon ...and are likely to bump into all sorts of odd bedfellows or fellow travellers, including Walshie, because strangely the road to roon always leads back to some golden age ...

Speaking of the road to roon ...

 

Unfortunately the intermittent archive was having one of its hissy fits, so the pond was unable to find (or save) this featured yarn in the archive...

Bosses answer Jim Chalmers’ calls to nominate where he should cut
By Matthew Cranston and Thomas Henry

This might, or might not come in handy later ...

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation%2Fpolitics%2Fbosses-answer-chalmers-calls-to-nominate-where-he-should-cut%2Fnews-story%2Fc23dfe0c36ae3f2250050149c333d801

The canny Cranston and his mate assembled some grand suggestions, but the pond liked this one the best ...

Graham Bradley, the former president of the Business Council of Australia and former chairman of EnergyAustralia, HSBC, Stockland and GrainCorp, had a long list of spending cut ideas for Dr Chalmers.
“The government needs to reseize federal departments by eliminating duplication with state government agencies in areas such as planning, education, environmental approvals and licensing generally,” Mr Bradley said.
“The government needs to have the courage to impose means tests on many welfare payments, including NDIS (and) child care subsidies.
“It needs to reduce or eliminate federal subsidies for renewable energy projects even if this slows the energy transition and requires further life extension of coal generators. Unrealistic federal time targets are driving up costs.

Well played Gra Gra, another excuse for a toon while on the road to roon...

With the archive (briefly?) on the blink, the pond thought it might indulge Geoff chambering his round in just a couple of gobbets ... what with him being in condescending Dame Groan mode ...

The pond sometimes wonders what rags like The Daily Beast will do if they run out of mad king fodder - currently King Donald and his comical minions are an inexhaustible trove of treasures - but just as pressing is the question, what would the reptiles of lizard Oz do for kicks if they didn't have Jimbo to kick around?

Go on, Geoff, send him a condescending memo ... and make sure the graphics department helps out with a kinda blue snap of a man caught in a grimace ...

The hive mind preaching self-awareness?

The comedy never ends.

Now drum roll maestro, wheel in the immortal Rowe to set the tone for this issue of the Australian Daily Zionist News ...

Hat tip to that portrait on the shelf...

The immortal Rowe rarely misses a trick. Per Haaretz, sorry no archive listing ...

Netanyahu Lawyer's Firm Received $1.25 Million From Key Trial Witness James Packer

Australian billionaire James Packer reportedly paid Netanyahu's lawyer's firm $50,000 a month for two years. Saying the payments were unrelated to the trial, Packer denied the claim, saying the firm represents him in 'personal and business affairs'

Australian billionaire James Packer paid at least $1.25 million – 1.78 million Australian dollars or 3.85 million shekels – to the law firm of Amit Hadad, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's attorney, the Australian newspaper The Age reported Monday.

The investigation, published on the eve of Israel's election, uncovered a trail of monthly bank transfers of $50,000 over the past two years, from a bank account controlled by Packer's company to the account of the law firm representing Netanyahu.

On the same day the investigation was published, Hadad filed a motion on behalf of Netanyahu's defense team requesting that Packer and two of his employees be allowed to testify from abroad, with their testimony broadcast by video link to the judges in Israel.

According to the investigation, the first monthly payment was made on September 23, 2024, from a Citibank account belonging to Packer's legal firm to an account held by Hadad, Roth, Shenhar at Mizrahi Tefahot Bank. A source familiar with the details reportedly said the payments urgently needed to be investigated to determine whether Netanyahu had received an undisclosed benefit from Packer.

acker insisted that the bank transfers to Netanyahu's lawyers were payments for work carried out on his behalf, including "deal finding" in Israel, where he has business interests, and that they were unrelated to Netanyahu's trial.

The Australian newspaper also reported that a Netanyahu spokesperson asked for comment replied: "I couldn't give a monkey's about your questions. We are very busy. We have an election on right now."

Packer did not deny making the monthly payments but declined to comment. Hadad also declined to comment.

Packer's representatives responded that the law firm represents him in his "personal and business affairs." "Any claim that I paid even a single cent toward the legal defense of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is false. Anyone who claims otherwise risks being sued."

Packer was expected to testify as a key prosecution witness in Netanyahu's corruption trial in Case 1000, in which he and businessman Arnon Milchan are alleged to have provided Netanyahu and his wife with gifts and other benefits worth hundreds of thousands of shekels.

But the pond digresses. On with business, because it was the bromancer's turn this day to set the pace for the Australian Daily Zionist News ...

Splendid stuff, and as usual, that provided the pond with an excuse to head off to Haaretz to answer as to what Israel is for. The mall!

As Long as the Mall Stays Open, Israelis Can Live With War Crimes
Israel's liberal public wants to continue with its comfortable routines and consumerist lifestyle. Maybe sanctions that disrupt their vacations, binge-watching and shopping outings will force it to face reality?
Ofra Rodner

The pond would usually provide a link in the archive but this will have to do ...

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/culture/2026-10-23/ty-article-opinion/.highlight/as-long-as-the-mall-stays-open-israelis-can-live-with-war-crimes/000001a1-4024-de23-a5fb-deb5ac3e0000 

Meanwhile, the bromancer was lathering himself into his usual frenzy ...

Stop right there.

The pond could overlook the spineless attempts at a little both siderism designed to downplay the current ethnic cleansing and genocide going down in Gaza and the West Bank, but the pond couldn't stand by while the bromancer tried to cleanse the Catholic church ...

At best the Catholic church for centuries had a deeply ambivalent relationship to Jews, as exhaustively laid out in the wiki Catholic Church and Judaism

For many centuries the church was the prime source of anti-Semitism and bigotry, and when the church got around to denouncing it in the strongest terms, what they were doing was denouncing their own wretched history.

Just a sample:

A few years later, within the responding Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church begun a process of self-definition in the face of the various heterodoxies and heresies and in this context also reopened the question on the status of the Jews. While Jews would be still tolerated, the justification was now the expectation that they soon converted and thus initiate the Second Coming of Christ. In 1553, following the Bragadin-Giustiniani dispute, the Inquisition confiscated the Talmud and burned it first in Rome, then in many other Italian cities in 1553, as it perceived the Talmud as a hindrance to Jewish conversion. Two years later, Cardinal Caraffa, a Grand inquisitor and hardliner against heretics, dissidents and Jews, became pope and ended the more tolerant policies of his predecessors. In 1555, he issued the bull Cum nimis absurdum, in which he ordered the construction of the Roman Ghetto and imposed restrictions on the Jews, such as prohibiting them to engage in most professions outside of moneylending, owning real estate and limit them to one synagogue per city. Pius V went a step further and expelled the Jews from all cities of the Papal States except for Rome and Anconca.In 1593 Pope Clement VIII expelled the Jews from the Papal States with the bull Caeca et Obdurata. At the same time, the new Tridentine Catechism, result of the Council of Trent, acknowledged that the Jews had historically crucified Jesus...

Back to the bromancer, pinning the blame on the Islamics and trotting out the Nazi card... while skipping over the roles of the church, the Crusaders, the Inquisition, the pogroms and the like (as outlined in The Times of Israel, too long to quote here)

Actually the leaders of the current government of Israel have managed all the demonisation of Israel by themselves, wanton cruelty, and a level of vengeful destruction that has seen Gaza virtually obliterated, a kind of collective punishment that has led to many charges of war crimes ... and for what? So that mall life can carry on ...

Was it just a casual coincidence that writer Ofra Rodner referenced binge-watching in the land of the lotos eaters?

Possibly not, because the bromancer's solution was a little binge watching ...

And so the wanton cruelty, the immensely destructive collective punishment and the war crimes continue.

Speaking of war crimes, there's another criminal still out and about ...

Take it away Jamelle Bouie ... (though the pond humbly proposes it's not just Republicans who should have to answer for the mad king and the ketamine-fuelled Uncle Leon) ...