In which Polonius does a far left Tootle, while the dog botherer joins yesterday's catastrophists ...

 

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?

Israel’s campaign to make southern Lebanon ‘unliveable’
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 ...

An FT visual investigation with journalism non-profit Lighthouse Reports found systematic destruction across Israeli-occupied southern Lebanon, including tens of thousands of homes, schools, farmland and forests.
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 ...

In Lebanon, the wreckage extends beyond combat damage or sites Israel claims are Hizbollah infrastructure to the broad clearance of villages under Israel’s effective control. This type of destruction would be governed by the more restrictive law of occupation, said Janina Dill, an Oxford university expert on the law and ethics of war.
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:

Next Wednesday is a day to remember – if not a memorable day. It is the 30th anniversary of what has been called the Parliament House riot of 1996.
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.

Now please stand by for that bee hive which keeps on buzzing in the old Polonial noggin:

So do not expect to find much in the left-of-centre mainstream media (Nine newspapers, the ABC, SBS, Guardian Australia) covering the event. It was, after all, a public relations disaster for the organisers.

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:

Kelty was a responsible and talented trade union leader but inclined to militant hyperbole at times. As it turned out the protest was counter-productive.
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 ...

Initially, Kelty supported the demonstration – apparently unaware of the violence that had occurred at Parliament House. Jennie George, the ACTU president, was reported to have looked devastated at the outcome. Some CFMEU members played a prominent part in this riot.
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:

And now there is some evidence of a link between radical Islamists and the traditional extreme left.
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 ...

Albo’s refusal to own Melongate proves the denial is worse than the sin
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 header: DJ Albo’s latest spin can’t hide the rot at the top; Anthony Albanese’s pretence at infallibility exposes his judgment and character; Whenever reality does not suit this Prime Minister, he confects another version of events.

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:

Until Anthony Albanese humiliated himself, his wife Jodie Haydon, Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman, Rhonda Burchmore, Sanae Takaichi, Japan and Australia, I had never heard of Nikki Osborne and the Bush Deep podcast.
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.

...In his judgment, Justice Lee said he was satisfied that it was "more likely than not" that Mr Lehrmann was "so intent upon gratification to be indifferent to Ms Higgins's consent and hence went ahead with sexual intercourse without caring whether she consented".
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 to Albanese, he will always be regarded as a Labor hero. That is a status earned for keeps by taking power from opposition and then winning a landslide re-election.

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:

Yet across the country now he is a greatly diminished figure. Albanese has become our incredible shrinking Prime Minister.
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?”

Still with ancient history? That's what you need when doing a reptile jihad by way of litany.

From there it was just a matter of expanding the litany into a catastrophic recitation of sundry dooms:

Playing a name association game, he responded to the name Grace Tame with “um, difficult”. But when Tame suggested this answer conjured sexism, the Prime Minister said, “She has had a difficult life and that was what I was referring to.”
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:

Rinse and repeat. Our incredible shrinking Prime Minister is no longer fit for purpose – it is like they have discovered an Ozempic for character.
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.

So much suffering, but yet came more because the lizard Oz editorialist felt the need to help out the Canavan caravan ...

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 ...

We'll all be rooned by Xmas, please allow the beefy boofhead from Goulburn to show the way. Why with treaties abandoned, we'll soon be able to build substandard homes and send furriners packing, and won't that be a fine thing.

In the interim, perhaps the reptiles could show the way by sacking the lizard Oz editorialist, because the pond can't understand how the three outings above in any way enhanced the nation's productivity.

On the other hand, it could be worse, at least if you look at a country where its unhinged ruler is cultivated by Faux Noise:

Hope and indignation springs eternal in the hearts of Lord Haw Haws ...

Quelle catastrophe. The bromancer and the Ughmann provide most excellent examples of the lizard Oz's catastrophic ways ...

 

As well as being professional jihadists, the reptiles at the lizard Oz are professional catastrophists ... and all hands were on deck this day to do their duty ...

Top of the digital "news" page ma came this ...

It’s official: Albanese has hit rock bottom
The crown of Labor’s modern-day emperor is slipping as he approaches a moment of reckoning.

The pond regrets that it was quickly dropped down to second place by the news of Jason Arday's death - didn't that jihad produce a satisfyingly catastrophic result? - but still that image of the skulking ratbags will haunt in the hive mind...

What a disaster, quelle catastrophe, but what made it "official"?

Geoff Chambers had deemed it so, and if Geoff says it, it must be true, but when you read the full piece, not once was "official" actually mentioned...

The actual heading? Albanese’s moment of reckoning will define Labor’s long term direction.

So it's official, the art of the reptile sub-editor as jihadist has defined the lizard Oz's long term direction.

With the Chambered round safely in the intermittent archive, the pond could quickly move past an offering by a boiling over Rice ...

EXCLUSIVE
Trial of Bornstein and Labor: ‘secret, unfathomable betrayal of whistleblower’
A botched Labor plan to sideline a whistleblower has entangled some of its most influential figures – and high-profile lawyer Josh Bornstein – in claims of betrayal and cover-up.
By Stephen Rice

Want stories of the ICAC follies?

Sorry, that's only to be found outside the lizard Oz's top "news".

Car park chaos and Dallas’ dictionary of lost words: Two days of ‘iterations’ at ICAC

Want stories about the world on fire? There's an abundance of them out in the real world ...

How did you get lost and land here?

Any of those other places will do for signs of genuine catastrophe ...

Counting the cost of Europe’s summer of fire, drought and lost harvests

Back to the professional catastrophists, and today the pond turned to just two of the lizard Oz's best exponents of the art (some say it's a science)...

This required walking past snappy Tom, who in a moment of reptile madness, pretended he wasn't in the catastrophist game ...

Get a grip, people, mini hit to house prices not the ‘main game’
Buying and selling property is not the country’s path to prosperity
It’s time to get over this collective mania with the up-escalator of residential property and focus on the real changes and sacrifices needed to deal with our economic funk.
By Tom Dusevic
Columnist

You need the occasional heretic to confirm even more deeply the catastrophist faith, and there is no better exponent of that faith than the bromancer ...

The header: Albanese fails to learn the key apology lesson mastered by Hawke and Howard; Anthony Albanese’s stubborn refusal to apologise over the Bush Deep podcast scandal has turned a simple mistake into a self-inflicted political catastrophe.

The caption for a man looking completely bewildered and in urgent need of a correctional homily straight from the bromancer: Anthony Albanese will look to revive his standing as PM as parliament enters a new sitting period. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

The bromancer began his piece with an impeccable quotation up there with Our Henry's devotion to Thucydides:

“Oh, it seems to me that sorry seems to be the hardest word.”
– Elton John, 1976

There followed a six minute or so exposition on the theme.

The pond makes only a few preliminary observations on the art of the professional catastrophist.

First, keep on making a mountain out of a molehill.

Sure, the discreet Japanese had attempted to go minor key, as reported in the Graudian.

Japanese ambassador to Australia downplays Albanese melon gaffe as Taylor claims PM has ‘stuffed up’; Coalition demands police investigate apparent leaking of diplomatic cable to newspaper but Labor calls it a ‘silly political stunt’

Ignore the farcical quality of the melongate jihad. Keep on pushing that wheelbarrow.

Second, remember that these are the worst of times. There has always been a golden age, just not now. Drag in as many examples of long lost golden ages as you can find, and no matter if it features Bob Hawke, once the victim of many reptile jihads, or John Howard, the man who lost his seat and government all in one go. 

You can't go on a catastrophistclubbing day without a golden age club or three.

Third, make sure you dig through the art of the apology, perhaps even turning to the likes of Jane Austen. You yourself might never have apologised for the many stupidities, contradictions and rampant hypocrisies in your own pieces, but never mind, righteous indignation is your stock in trade and you must maintain the rage.

Say what? Jane Austen? Surely not? Ah, the pond sees, grasshopper, that you still have much to learn about the ways of the professional catastrophist, the astonishing range of references they bring to their task.

With that in mind, let's see how the bromancer performs ... and remember, it helps to have "catastrophe" in the headline and in the opening sentence, even if the catastrophic abuse of the English language and any sensible definition of "catastrophe" must be apparent to anyone standing outside this current catastrophegate...

Everyone makes mistakes, including prime ministers like Anthony Albanese. Stubbornly refusing to apologise for them, as Albanese is doing, turns mere mistakes into epic catastrophes, morally and politically.
Albanese’s bizarre refusal to apologise over his frankly incomprehensible remarks about Japan’s Prime Minister, in the smutty, crass, juvenile and utterly wretched Bush Deep podcast he did, in which he also chose Kylie Minogue from a list as one he’d like to “shag, marry or date”, casts grave doubt over his judgment.

Quick, shift any disqualifying disclaimers into the small print in the attached AV offering ... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says he apologised for “elements of the podcast” and insists he doesn’t do interviews with his arms folded. “That characterisation is not right, and if you look at any interviews I’ve done, I don’t do them with my arms folded,” Mr Albanese told News24. “I apologised for elements of the podcast; I gave an unequivocal apology. “But there is nothing I have done with the Japanese prime minister, importantly, whose visit was a really warm one … we got to know each other and build a really strong relationship through that.”

Did the man hint that he'd given an unequivocal apology? Strike that out at once ...

If as PM you can’t navigate a smutty podcast, how can you navigate war and peace? Albanese has embarrassed not only himself but the nation, as well as the leader of our closest friend in Asia, but also all his sad female ministerial colleagues who have had, one after another, to immolate their credibility and integrity on the funeral pyre of his insecure political ego.
Whereas a simple apology early on would have been clean, clear and, given how forgiving Australians are, probably politically effective. Albanese seems astonishingly stubborn about not apologising, and stubborn in the dumbest possible way. (I have adult sons and advised each at their wedding to master seven words: Yes dear, I was wrong, you’re right. If seven was too many, two could also do the trick: I’m sorry.)

After that touchingly silly personal touch, time for the golden age mantra, with a list of those who might - or might not - be a part of a golden age parade ...

Apologies are a big deal for successful political leaders. Two politicians Albanese has thought a lot about, Gough Whitlam and Donald Trump, famously didn’t apologise. It’s a pathology in both men, two of the most arrogant figures democratic politics has known.
The most successful democratic politicians master apology. Bob Hawke, John Howard, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Peter Beattie, Bob Carr – all immensely successful government leaders who used apology strategically and tactically, which is not to say their apologies were insincere.
Albanese has described Hawke as Australia’s greatest prime minister. That might be overstating things but Hawke was certainly very good. If Albanese thinks Hawke the greatest, it’s strange that it’s Whitlam’s policies Albanese implements while rejecting pro-market deregulation, supply-side reforms and balanced budgets as Hawke produced.

Cue a once reviled bloke, now elevated to golden age pantheon, at least if he can be used to club the current incumbent ... Former Australian prime minister Bob Hawke in 1990.

Once you've established a golden age hero, mine it for all its worth and more ...

Until near the end, Hawke’s approval ratings were mostly stratospheric. Albanese’s are disastrous. Hawke was the supreme master of apology, in small things as well as big. Once, in the 1980s, he imitated and lampooned the upper-class accent of John Spender (Allegra’s father), then a Liberal frontbencher. Hawke realised that was crass and wrong. He came back to the House of Representatives and apologised. Spender accepted and said the apology did Hawke nothing but credit.
Hawke apologised over big things, too. As he prepared for national leadership, he told the Australian people he’d drunk too much. But he intended to do better.
Across the board, Australians admired him for this. I remember my father, an instinctive supporter of the anti-communist Democratic Labor Party, who became very conservative, deeply respected Hawke for just those honest admissions.

Drag in an example of the golden age god as a family man ... Hawke with daughter Rosslyn Dillon in 2013. Picture: AAP

Weep along with your golden age hero ...

Like all national leaders, like all human beings, Hawke was a complex, contradictory mix. He publicly wept over his daughter’s drug situation and his failures as a parent. In his memoirs he wrote of learning of Rosslyn’s heroin addiction: “I felt numb with guilt now as I wondered whether she would have exposed herself to the dangers of the drug culture if I had been more available.”
That’s not a humble-brag. That’s genuine regret. Hawke had a quality Albanese seems to lack – tremendous psychological security. To apologise is not an act of weakness but an act of courage. Hawke had courage.
Albanese’s backers sometimes try to promote him as a Labor version of Howard, the underestimated everyman. The political comparison is misplaced because Howard, unlike Albanese, enacted economic reform that made Australia wealthier and stronger. Howard had the courage to take controversial tax changes to an election rather than simply reverse all his previous commitments.
The comparison falls down in another way, too. One of Howard’s great strengths was that he spoke directly, in plain language. Albanese these days barely manages a straight answer to even the most mildly disobliging questions.

You see? There's simply no way he can match up to those golden age warriors, even if the plainly spoken lying rodent managed to lose both seat and government, a tad careless in the Oscar Wilde sense.

Now quick, offer an AV distraction ... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has detailed what was discussed in his recent call with US President Donald Trump.

Now use mad king Donald, Faux Noise's favourite, to berate the local ...

Albanese certainly doesn’t model himself on Trump but he or his minders seem to have taken two very bad political technique lessons from the US President. The first is to seek out low-engagement voters through edgy, sometimes strange podcasts and the like. This has been central to Trump’s success, but that’s because voting isn’t compulsory in the US. Getting people to the polls who don’t usually vote is a big part of Trump’s winning formula. In a parliamentary system, such behaviour can easily make a prime minister look shabby and duplicitous.
And don’t forget even Trump won once, then lost decisively, before winning again. His approval rating now is about 34 per cent.
The other lesson Albanese takes from Trump is to shape endless content for social media. It’s likely some of what seems a neurotic, if not manic, unwillingness by Albanese to answer questions is a deliberate decision not to furnish certain images and sounds that could be used against him on social media. Thus his office issued a one-line apology to Minogue, but Albanese never spoke the apology in front of cameras.

Mined mad king Donald enough? Return to that other ancient hero, and remember never to practise what you might preach ...

His social media advisers are no doubt telling him not to furnish a moment of weakness for the cameras. That’s strikingly bad advice. Apologies that are straightforward, personal, unambiguous, take responsibility and promise better in the future are often extremely effective.
In Howard’s first, unsuccessful leadership stint he too was stubborn and hated admitting mistakes. But he grew in leadership. He made a silly remark in 1988 suggesting Asian immigration was too high. Among many others, I was critical of his remarks. Howard recognised the mistake straight away but was reluctant to correct his position. It played a role in his losing the Liberal leadership. By 1994, Howard was preparing to come back as leader and defeat Paul Keating at an election.

Throw in some nonsense about the lying rodent being sensible, an abuse of the English language, unless you think that "sensible" actually means bigoted ...‘I can’t for the life of me see why we can’t have a sensible debate about the level of immigration’ … John Howard in his Sydney office. Picture: Adam Taylor

Throw in another personal touch, and remember to cite Bill as an exemplar ...

He wanted to put the 1988 incident to bed. He got in touch with me and, at his suggestion, we did a big interview. It was a huge front-page story under the banner headline: “I was wrong on Asians, says Howard.” In his memoirs Howard recounts all this and says he’d gone the whole distance to erase hurt feelings over “my (Howard’s) serious error of judgment back in 1988”.
Incidentally, Howard handles all this with supreme graciousness, and frank self-criticism, in his memoirs. The dynamic is that Howard recognised his own mistake and far from running from it, hiding, getting others to take the flak, he came and dealt with it directly by apologising and learning the episode’s lessons.
Clinton apologised profusely for lying about the Monica Lewinsky episode. Earlier in his career he apologised for his unsuccessful first term as Arkansas governor. Having lost office he didn’t defend a poor record but said he’d learnt from his mistakes. He then won back the governorship and never lost again.

This is how it's done ... score a blow job and become a reptile hero ... Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky.

And so to quiet the noise emanating from all those sceptics and disbelievers.

Why did you doubt the bromancer's ability to wangle Jane Austen into this tale of a "catastrophe"?

Not all apologies work. They’re not effective if forced out of someone at the last minute. Apologising for someone else’s historic crimes is just patting yourself on the back. Apologising “if anyone took offence” is also pathetic. You’re apologising for other people’s hypersensitivity.
It’s difficult for Albanese to apologise now because so many of his ministers have defended him. But as long as footage of the grotesque podcast continues to be shown, the sheer ridiculousness of his position will remain unresolved. Better if he now said something like: “I’ve thought a lot about this episode and I now see that doing that podcast was a serious error of judgment. I meant to convey no innuendo in my remarks about the gracious gift of the Japanese Prime Minister. But I now see my words were clumsy, ambiguous and easily open to misinterpretation. The fault was mine and I take full responsibility for it.”
The greatest literary apology came from Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen so enjoyed the spectacle of a powerful man apologising over his treatment of a woman that she has Darcy apologise by letter, as well as in person, and repeatedly. Darcy says at one point: “I am sorry, exceedingly sorry …” He doesn’t let himself off lightly: “My behaviour to you at the time had merited the severest reproof. It was unpardonable. I cannot think of it without abhorrence.”
Darcy won Elizabeth with his apology. Everybody loves him now. Imagine if he’d begun instead: “I don’t accept the assertion …”

Quelle catastrophe ... and for those who don't understand, AI will explain ...

Put it another ways, that AI might better understand catastrophes d'origine reptilian ...

For the second example of a professional jihadist at work, the pond will turn to the Ughmann ...

Early this weekend the Ughmann was out and about co-authoring an EXCLUSIVE, second from the top in the "news" section ...

EXCLUSIVE
Wong’s edict to universities: axe China research links
Just weeks after the Pentagon blacklisted Shandong University, the Foreign Minister has axed the Australian National University’s joint venture with the Chinese institution on national security grounds.
By Natasha Bita and Chris Uhlmann

Again you actually had to read the real headline to get the context...

Penny Wong axes ANU joint venture with Chinese university linked to nuclear weapons

But having a bit of Bita in that beat up ruined the art of the professional catastrophist.

To admire the Ughmann in his native habitat, he must be studied alone ... and sorry, it's melongate again that's the springboard...

The header: Albanese’s melons joke risks $160bn Japanese investment — and opens a path for Canada; As Anthony Albanese puts his foot in his mouth, Canada is poised to eat our lunch.

Just in any case anyone in the hive mind had forgotten the saga, the reptiles thoughtfully provided a reminder: Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi gifted Anthony Albanese Japanese melons and it’s been a diplomatic disaster ever since. Picture: X / @takaichi_sanae

The Ughmann also managed to wring some six minutes of hysteria out of the notion that Canucks were a dire and immediate predator threat.

"Poised", so to catastrophist speak.

Elbows up Canada, you've got your problems with mad king Donald, but apparently they're minor up against the dire threat you pose to us (or so the Ughmann says).

The pond should have added a fourth item to the art of the skilled catastrophist.

That's the litany.

You take a simple affair, such as "melongate", and wring it until the pips squeak, but you also use it as a trigger for a litany of disasters ...

Travel is a great leveller and one of the things it levels is any notion that most of the world gives much of a toss about what goes on in Australia.
Last year the two stories that really resonated worldwide were the shocking massacre atBondi Beach and the social media ban for those under 16. The Albanese government’s stab at trying to unplug children’s brains from online toxins is the one domestic policy that other nations are copying or monitoring. Beyond that our dangerous wildlife usually gets more coverage than our politics. Shark and crocodile attacks almost always make news overseas.
At the time of writing the local story that appears to have travelled most widely this year is Queensland’s proposal to host the 2032 Olympic rowing events in the “crocodile-infested” Fitzroy River. By luck or design this move is a stroke of genius as it has raised the profile of Rockhampton in a way no tourism campaign ever could. The story was picked up by international newswires and sprayed around the globe.
Hopefully there is a team tasked with ensuring there are semi-regular updates about the development of the course and baroque plans to keep the rowers safe. Maybe float the idea of building crocodile fences, release pictures of surf lifesavers armed with crocodile stun guns, provoke a fight over crocodile culls and then parade our green energy superpower credentials by announcing plans for a solar-powered submersible drone fleet steered by artificial intelligence to safely herd the creatures away from the athletes.
Or maybe lean into the danger. Given there are already kayaking events that include rapids and numerous obstacles, someone should pitch the notion of inserting a crocodile pool just before the finish line. There are years of stories here.
Beyond that, in several weeks travelling Europe in July, I can report only two Australian stories ran prominently in the offshore media: Barnaby Joyce yelling at his dog during a TV interview and the Prime Minister saying he would shag, marry and date Kylie Minogue.

Again make sure that any talk of an actual apology only appears in the small print accompanying the AV distraction ... Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has apologised for comments he made about wanting to “shag” pop star Kylie Minogue during a podcast last week. Mr Albanese took part in a game called “shag, marry, date” on the programme alongside comedian Nikki Osborne. His office later issued a statement saying: “I apologise unequivocally for the comments.”

Now do your best to turn common gossip and fleeting headlines into a catastrophe, and to help out the reptiles will strip you of any illustrations ... quelle ennui ...

This is obviously not a scientific study given I was reading only the news in English but it’s a fair bet there was little talk of Australia in Europe’s many tongues. That these two stories did echo overseas is a poor reflection on both the state of our politics and what animates the media, and the public, worldwide.
The Joyce dog story falls into the curiosity category of international media interest in our affairs. It fits the stereotype of Australia being a remote, quaint and often bemusing outpost of quasi-civilisation. And the shagging story got a run only because Britain has an abiding interest in all things Kylie. If Albanese had confessed a secret desire to bed some obscure domestic starlet the story would have sunk at Sydney Heads.
Are we being served, Australia?
Intrigued at how Albanese came to disclose this nugget, I rummaged through Australian news sites to find the source of the revelation. As everyone now knows it was on a videocast with comedian Nikki Osborne titled Bush Deep. A cursory glance at the content of pre-Albanese interviews was enough to discern that this show’s DNA is drawn from the Mrs Slocombe “my pussy” school of comedy.
Trapped in a show he should never have been on, Albanese was asked what was the “most crap” gift he had ever received on an overseas jaunt. Scrounging for an amusing anecdote, his mind clutched at the “pretty strange” offering of perfect Shizuoka Crown melons from Sanae Takaichi. Endearingly, Osborne did not seem to know that the Japanese Prime Minister was a woman. “She brought two, as you do,” Albanese rhymed, juggling imaginary melons, channelling his inner Benny Hill and nailing the ethos of the podcast.
Just in case some innocent missed the dubious double entendre, Osborne underlined it, “She just came in looking like Pamela Anderson”, as the whole experience went tits up for the Prime Minister.
Let’s pause here and consider mitigating circumstances. It is perfectly understandable that any modern leader would seek to engage with all manner of new media because the old ones have been bleeding audience share for nearly two decades. If you want to speak to young Australians it is not on conventional news programs.
But in making a decision about where the Prime Minister should spend his precious time surely the first consideration is risk and reward. Respect for the dignity of the office should also be somewhere high up on the list. Maybe taste? These are matters of judgment and everyone makes mistakes. Albanese admitted to one by issuing an unequivocal apology to Minogue.

At this point, the reptiles broke into italic print for this insight ...

What’s galling about his endless equivocation on the Japanese gift gag is not just the original sin but the litany of lies and hypocrisy that followed.

So it was just a venial sin, and now it's become an immortal sin? That's a fine example of the unreformed seminarian at work, and meanwhile you've avoided all mention of actual catastrophes ...

Remember, we're dealing with the art of the catastrophic litany. 

How many catastrophes would you like?

The Labor Party closed ranks to back the Prime Minister’s claim that any smut seen was entirely in the eyes of the beholder. This is an insult to the intelligence of anyone who has watched it and yet more evidence of a government assuming we are mugs.
Apply this simple test: what would Labor’s panzer division of female MPs have said if Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison or Peter Dutton had uttered anything approaching what Albanese said about Minogue or Takaichi? How would the taxpayer-funded discrimination industry have responded? What would the earnest evangelists in the progressive media have done with the story?
Labor has pioneered weaponising any real or perceived slights against women by conservative men. Remember how Tony Abbott’s wink during a talkback call with a phone sex worker was interpreted? Or the storm that followed the puerile “meow” uttered by Tasmanian senator David Bushby at Penny Wong during a Senate hearing?
So spare us the whining about getting flak over this far more substantial lapse of judgment.
Japan has demonstrated how much store it sets in the relationship with Australia by throwing Albanese a lifeline, but the wording of the first paragraph of its official statement on the incident speaks volumes: “We have been informed by the Australian side that Prime Minister Albanese did not make the comments in the way that has been reported.”
This shows a commendable mastery of English and diplomacy: we will take the Prime Minister at his word.
The dinner that helped make us rich
Words and deeds matter and Tokyo’s list of concerns about the kind of friend it has in Canberra is piling up. It also has noted Albanese’s decision to prefer a gig with Spotify over a gala dinner in Parliament House to honour the 50th anniversary of an Australia-Japan treaty that transformed the relationship between the two nations.
That relationship helped make us rich. The latest figures show Japan was the second largest direct foreign investor in Australia ($159.5bn) in 2024. Japanese money and Japanese customers helped build Australia’s liquefied natural gas export industry. It is also a major customer for our black coal exports. Albanese leveraged these supplies when he toured the region to shore up our liquid fuel supplies when the third Gulf war flared.
When a cash-strapped Queensland raised its top royalty rate on coal from 15 per cent to 40 per cent without consultation, a shock wave ripped through corporate Japan.
For the first time Tokyo began to wonder about sovereign risk in Australia and the move brought a rare rebuke from the then Japanese ambassador, Shingo Yamagami. Now, the plan for a domestic gas reservation and talk of a federal gas tax has Japan wondering about whether it should hedge its bets. Other markets beckon. The Australian Financial Review reported this week that Australia “risks missing out on lucrative new gas contracts with Japan as uncertainty over Canberra’s energy policy and pressure from Washington to buy more American LNG reshape the competition for Japan’s future energy supply”.
Australia is the largest supplier of LNG to Japan but across the next 15 years the contracts that underpinned that relationship will expire.
This column has reported before that after he spoke in Australia’s parliament in March Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney flew to Tokyo, where he pledged that “Canada is in a position where we can double our LNG exports by the end of this decade, and double again by the end of the following decade.”
Carney was feted here for his leadership on middle-power diplomacy as the world deals with the growing military might of China and the trashing of alliances by Donald Trump. He said Australia and Canada should work together as “strategic cousins”. But our Canadian cousin wants to pick the Japanese fruit Australia spent a half-century cultivating. And there are only so many melons to go around.

And there you go. Expiring contracts and LNG, and never mind the genuine catastrophe, a world in fire.

Want other examples of bamboozling the hive mind by suggesting catastrophe when it's actually a kind of distilled essence of performative comedy?

Easy ...

Want an example of a catastrophe working its way through the system, as shown by the pond's cheerful use of AI?

Easy ...

Remember, all this is as easy as brain surgery to a reptile expert in the art of catastrophe ...

No hole in bucket man this day, with just Killer Creighton and the Canavan caravan to fill the gap, hide the tragic loss ...

 

Europe is still ablaze with heat, mad king Donald gets madder by the day, a Senator goes rogue on the beefy boofhead, an ICAC investigation provides endless juice, and yet those who dwell with the reptiles remain entombed in melongate.

Take it away bouffant one ...

How did podcaster catch question-avoidant PM over melons?
If Anthony Albanese is so clever at deflection, why didn’t he avoid the dumb, degrading questions in the first place?
By Dennis Shanahan
National Editor

Just two minutes? No wonder the pond turned it over to the intermittent archive ...

Meanwhile over at the top of the digital "news" ma ...

EXCLUSIVE
Falling house prices: the tipping point that sparks a recession
Australia has not seen a national home price crash exceeding 10 per cent in more than 50 years – economists say that record could be broken.

There isn't an actual recession at the moment, but when has a reptile gone wrong with portents of disaster, and saucy doubts and fears?

It's doom and gloom all the way, but much more importantly, the pond was suffering its own crisis. 

No Our Henry! 

No Friday foray into Thucydides!

Sure the pond could have stepped back in time to 8th August ... IBAC inquiry exposes the rot at heart of government, but the pond always never looks back, you can never look back ... except perhaps if the pond was travelling and missed yesterday's serve of the infallible Pope ...

Don't get the pond started on how it loathes monster trucks.

The canny Cranston was on on hand to show a deep concern for the working class, as only servile slaves to the billionaire class can do ...

ECONOMY
Same job, less real pay: workers’ earnings going backwards
Australians’ real wages go backwards as falling productivity hits economy
Official figures show Australians’ real earnings have fallen up to 5 per cent since Labor came to office, with public servants largely protected by inflation-adjusted union pay deals.
By Matthew Cranston

But he's just Dame Groan lite with his talk of roonation, and he soon got swept away by news of Albo and mad king Donald having a chat, and what do you know? Still more melons! Trump, Albanese talk in phone call; PM doubles down on melons episode, as you'd expect when chatting with a man who loved to go the grope, and so endeared himself to Faux Noise...

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has again rejected calls to apologise to Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi over his comments about the “melons” she gave him in a comedy podcast.
Mr Albanese told News24 he has already said sorry for “elements of the podcast” but has nothing to apologise for in relation to the diplomatic incident.
Speaking to News24, Mr Albanese said he respected Ms Takaichi and Japan, while arguing his comments were misrepresented.
“I do respect the Japanese Prime Minister,” Mr Albanese told News24 when asked about his controversial comments.

But where's the hair shirt, the grovelling and the mortification, perhaps with a hundred lashes with a pine branch, Percy Grainger style...

Somehow Killer Creighton managed to tag team himself with whatever was happening, and so stayed near the top of the "news",  and that's where the pond began ...

The header: Socialism set to rot New York, as it’s doing in Australia; New York is repeating a government grocery experiment Queensland tried – and abandoned – more than a century ago.

The caption for a piquant snap of bananas in play: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks at an announcement event of a discounted grocery plan for city-run municipal grocery stores. Picture: AP

It turns out that Killer was outraged by the Mayor's socialism, but what about mad King Donald?

It was Forbes that recently ran a piece by James K. Glassman, Our First Socialist President:

Forget Mamdani, AOC or El Sayed. It’s Donald Trump who can lay a strong claim to being America’s first socialist president.
The hallmark of socialism is control of the means of production. In a manner unprecedented in U.S. history, the federal government under Trump has been gaining direct ownership of American corporations – some of them historic icons.
The government a year ago bought 433 million shares of Intel Corp., the semiconductor manufacturer. Donald Trump (“Trump sees the government as himself,” says Brooke Masters, the U.S. managing editor of the Financial Times in discussing the deal) becomes the largest shareholder in Intel, a half-trillion-dollar corporation, at 10%.
When a Japanese company wanted to purchase U.S. Steel, Trump approved the deal only if the government received a first-ever “golden share”, giving Washington veto power over major corporate decisions. In November, the government made a deal to own up to 20% of Westinghouse Electric. In July, the U.S. took an equity stake in Global Foundries, a profitable chipmaker spun off from AMD, for $300 million.
In the past, the government intervened in a crisis to keep a critical company afloat; the bailout of General Motors and Chrysler in 2008 is the best example. Loans, grants and commitments to purchase products to promote federal priorities have been a regular feature of industrial policy. Those subsidies lean toward socialism. But what the Trump Administration is doing is qualitatively different – a full-on embrace of socialist principles.
“They’re converting loan and grant programs into equity stakes,” said Brent Cebul, an associate professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania who researches business-state interactions. He called the Westinghouse deal “an important precedent-setting disjuncture.”
The Council on Foreign Relations has a deal tracker that lists two dozen businesses in which the Trump Administration has announced or closed an equity investment. One of them is IBM, a 115-year-old company that will receive a $1 billion infusion. IBM has a market capitalization of $223 billion and a stock that’s roughly doubled in the past four years.
Another example of a company that doesn’t need the money is SandboxAQ, an artificial-intelligence start-up backed by Nividia, the most valuable U.S. company, and Alphabet, which ranks third. The U.S. government on June 17 signed a definitive agreement to acquire an equity stake in SandboxAQ, plus royalty payments on sales.

And so on, and what an inspiration, but Killer seemed not to have caught up on the trend as he embarked on his rant, because how could he forget the Mayor (he's Islamic, don't ya kno) ...

In a week when the government announced a $2.5bn bailout of an aluminium smelter that its own “renewable” energy policies had deliberately made unviable, it’s hard to believe there’s competition for the most stupid economic policy around.
But self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist” New York mayor Zohran Mamdani has proved a strong contender with his plan for a government-owned grocery store in each of the city’s five boroughs from late next year, as part of his “affordability” push.
NYC Groceries, as they are to be known, will sell a “core basket” of staples including meat, milk, eggs and bread at yet to be established locations.
The city council will tip $US70m ($100m) into construction and fit-outs, waive rent and taxes, and hand the day-to-day running to private operators who will receive “affordability payments” on the condition they can sell the produce at a 30 per cent discount to market prices.
Mamdani’s administration says the stores will save New Yorkers $US1000 a year, failing to specify which New Yorkers. Use of the store won’t be means-tested. And with only five outlets in a city of 8.5 million people, the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers will never receive a cent. But they will be paying higher taxes so the time-rich retirees and unemployed living just north of Central Park (one of the first planned locations) can take a stroll to buy subsidised salmon.
But it’s doubtful even those lucky few will benefit.

Naturally the melongate man was inked into the yarn, Anthony Albanese announces the bailout of the Tomago smelter on Thursday. Picture: Thomas Lisson

But Glassman wasn't the only one to note the Mayor's real inspiration.

Over in Foreign Policy, Keith Johnson offered Trump Has His Own Communist Manifesto

At a time when U.S. President Donald Trump and the Republican Party are warning about the threat of “communism,” the Trump administration itself has taken over much of the means of production.
If Trump’s foray into state capitalism last year seemed alarming—and it did—it has only gotten worse. 
The U.S. government now holds equity stakes in as many as 30 companies across a gamut of industries. What started with a “golden share” in U.S. Steel has morphed into a government takeover of vast swathes of the economy. Trump recently browbeat oil companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron over their refining margins, as the Iran war’s economic toll has led to higher gasoline prices. His own pick for the Federal Reserve is floundering, even as Trump spam calls him repeatedly. All the while, Trump continues to arrogate congressional powers of taxation to raise import duties on U.S. consumers. 
“There are some novel economic changes going on, and nobody is talking about it,” said Tad DeHaven, an analyst at the Cato Institute who is setting up a program to research state capitalism. “Since it is driven by one man’s personal desires, there is no plan and no strategy. It changes by the day.”
Trump’s blitzkrieg on industry has focused on rare earths, mining, metals, and semiconductors, among other sectors. It is a jarring move for a nominally Republican president, from a party that has long espoused free-market values. 
There is a case to be made for state intervention in certain industries that need government injections of money, know-how, or support otherwise. Shipbuilding is a good case in point and was, at one point in Trump’s second administration, a priority—until it wasn’t. Semiconductors are another critical sector that requires government support in most cases; Taiwan’s world-beating chip industry grew off government largesse, as did, for a spell, the U.S. chip sector. There are scads of academic research about the spread of state capitalism worldwide.
The difference between what Trump is doing and what other countries are doing is significant. While other countries grapple with the sudden vulnerability of supply chains or a needy infant industry, the Trump administration has turned state capitalism into a revenue stream. The number of exemptions and exclusions for tariffs, and special treatment for certain firms, has grown.
“The spin is always, ‘It’s just the critical industries.’ There is not some sophisticated plan here. This is someone who wants to exercise control over the economy,” DeHaven said.

But Killer still hadn't caught up with the trend ...

The supposed 30 per cent discount will invite shortages and arbitrage, not to mention rich opportunities for the successful operators to learn how to maximise their “affordability payments” while satisfying the black letter of their obligations. For example, 30 per cent below what exactly?
Operators may use market data, their own advice or “other observable data points”, to fulfil this requirement. And equivalent products are left vague – private label or premium brand? The whole political sales pitch becomes a joke once specifying a market benchmark becomes impossible.
And even if the stores can manage to meaningfully offer cheaper goods, savvy customers will naturally buy in bulk. Indeed, if meat could be bought far below market price, why wouldn’t restaurants or enterprising middlemen buy it in bulk for themselves, or resell it? Stopping such behaviour would mean quantity limits, membership cards and bureaucrats policing shopping baskets, all of which will add to the cost of the whole process.
Moreover, the stores will put some of the city’s existing 1100 grocery stores and 10,000 bodegas (which, unlike NYC Groceries, have to pay tax and rent and get by without lucrative “affordability subsidies”) out of business, thereby exacerbating the above problems.
Mamdani’s argument that existing providers are profiteering or price gouging doesn’t make sense.
American food retailers made an average net profit margin of just 2.1 per cent last year, according to the Food Industry Association. In other words, confiscating every cent of grocery store profits would get Mamdani’s stores only barely one-14th of the way to his promised discount.
If Mamdani’s shops manage to achieve lower prices it’s only because he has shifted the bill from the checkout to the tax system, while adding administrators’ and other compliance costs along the way.
And as Margaret Thatcher once observed, socialist governments eventually run out of other people’s money. New Yorkers collectively cannot save money by subsidising themselves.

Maggie is Killer's inspiration? The woman who produced little England all on her own, and it's been littler England ever since? Sure 'nuff ...Britain’s former prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

And so to the final gobbet ...with Killer ranting away for a corporation which in the past has shown an appetite for government funding and/or marketplace "adjustment", as a replacement for failing market interest, though it's never enough.

To the extent New York’s groceries are overpriced, it’s because of government regulation. Strict zoning has made it very hard for large low-cost supermarket giants such as Aldi or Walmart to compete.
Just as Anthony Albanese could scrap the energy regulations that make smelting unviable, Mamdani could tear up regulations that make real competition possible. Instead, both prefer to waste billions of dollars of other people’s money and present themselves as the saviour.
The two virtues of Mamdani’s policy are: first, its relatively small cost and scope given the city’s budget of over $120bn. It’s almost as if Mamdani or his advisers don’t even believe the scheme can work or will last. It’s really a $US70m political campaign marketing expense.
Second, it is very likely to become a wonderful case study in economic stupidity.
Socialists often proclaim “health” and “education” are “important” so they should supposedly be subsidised or provided by the government. But food is certainly at least as important as those things, and its provision by the private sector has been one of history’s greatest successes.
Mamdani probably isn’t aware that it was American supermarkets that in fact helped defeat his beloved “socialism”. In 1989, then Soviet reformer Boris Yeltsin made a visit to a supermarket outside Houston, Texas, where he reportedly wandered the aisles astonished at the abundance and variety of food available to ordinary Americans.
“Even the Politburo doesn’t have this choice,” he marvelled, according to the Houston Chronicle. If Soviet citizens saw it, he said, “there would be a revolution”.
If only we’d learn from our mistakes. A Queensland Labor government launched dozens of government-owned butchers from 1915 onwards, specifically to provide cheap meat and restrain private prices. Naturally they ultimately failed and the last were sold by 1929.
A century later, Mamdani is repeating Queensland’s experiment, proving that if anything requires government subsidy it’s the study of economics and history.

Splendid stuff and all that the pond might expect from an IPA man, and what joy to see public utilities privatised, because it's worked out so well for the Poms - nothing like swimming in sewage - not to mention how well we're doing down under ...

But what to do for a bonus, with much of what's happening in the real world excluded from the reptile purview? 

The pond stepped past the usual AUKUS silliness ...

Canberra honesty the key to social licence of AUKUS
Conflicting ministerial accounts of how long US submarines will rotate through HMAS Stirling have left Western Australian communities exposed to planning uncertainty.
By Cathy Moloney

If it ain't the bromancer, it ain't on ...

...The way governments handle both places will shape expectations for any future submarine basing decision on the east coast, including Newcastle, where similar questions will arise.
A more persuasive AUKUS story will not come from smoothing over these tensions. It will come from showing that governments are prepared to be honest about them, and that places asked to host capabilities central to the Australian defence strategy of deterrence by denial will also be given the planning certainty, investment discipline and political respect needed to manage it. That is why the rotational question cannot be treated as a technical footnote – it is a matter of trust. Australians need a clear account of the trade-offs, safeguards and local obligations that will define AUKUS in practice, because trust will depend not on what governments promise at the start, but on whether host communities can recognise success when it arrives.
Cathy Moloney is an independent strategic adviser and an executive member of Women in Nuclear Australia.

If the government was being honest, it'd have to confess that AUKUS is a turkey of the first water, and a bunch of Moloney isn't going to help with that.

Delusional, but it ain't the pond's business to deal with reptile dreams ...

The pond also stepped past the meretricious Merritt and an educational Alex ...

Why a charter of rights undermines parliament as the true guardian of our liberty
Human rights charters make almost no difference to protecting ordinary people, as NSW parliament considers adopting its own Human Rights Bill.
By Chris Merritt

Memo to self. 

Must at some point advise dumb Yanks of how useless their dumb bill of rights is ...

Actions speak louder than vacuous words in bonding society
Australia’s classrooms once built a shared national story – now the traditions holding the country together are going untaught.
By Alex McDermott

Bonded society? 

Memo to self. 

Must at some point boast about having avoided being a teacher, despite being a bonded student, destined to wake in fright out woop woop way ...

Memo to Alex, must at some point explain to reptiles that living in the days of Ming the Merciless wasn't some sort of golden age. 

Must point out that this might appeal to the aged lizard Oz demographic, but the days when a cheap arsed medal and a commemorative booklet worked their magic are long gone.

Been there, done that, move on ...

And with that the pond could allow itself an indulgence.

And it wasn't ...

‘NO PROBLEM’
Pauline Hanson unable to name leaders of Japan and Indonesia
In a moment reminiscent of Senator Hanson’s infamous ‘please explain’ moment, the One Nation leader was unable to name leaders of key international partners but maintained diplomacy with South East Asia would be ‘no problem’.
By Noah Yim

No, it was the bouffant one talking up the Canavan caravan, a man these days attempting to sound saner than Malcolm Roberts and Gina's pet, despite them all sharing a deep love of coal ... and better still, it was an EXCLUSIVE ...

The header: Matt Canavan push audit of foreign treaties as Nationals meet and discuss Pauline Hanson threat; Nationals leader Matt Canavan has called for a full audit of more than 4000 international treaties, warning some are being weaponised against Australians.

The caption for the snap of a man attempting to catch flies with his mouth: Matt Canavan on Thursday, and Pauline Hanson, inset. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire, Getty Images

What's more, it was only a two minute read, because when attempting to puff up a boofhead, the less said the better ...

Nationals leader Matt Canavan is calling for a full audit of more than 4000 international treaties to which Australia is a party, to ­prevent foreigners, international organisations, unelected bureaucrats and those seeking to impose a “global tyrannical order” from weaponising agreements against the Australian people.
In a speech to the Nationals’ conference in Canberra on the weekend, Senator Canavan will declare that an audit is necessary to know what treaties Australia is subject to and to ensure “each treaty puts Australians first”.

This is the best he's got? This will turn the tide against Gina's pampered pet? So it seems...

The bold foreign policy move comes as the country party meets over two days to discuss their ­direction, amid a tidal wave of One Nation support that threatens MPs at November’s Victorian state election, the NSW poll next March and the federal election due by 2028.
Senator Canavan will tell the conference he is concerned that there are thousands of treaties in which the content and intent is not known and whether they “serve the national interest and protect the sovereignty of Australian people?”
“The Australian public deserves to know, do the thousands of international agreements that we have signed up to and that any agreement that Australia is party to must serve the interests of Australians, not foreigners,” told The Australian on Thursday.
Senator Canavan said some of the 4000 treaties “were signed by the King of England on behalf of his British Dominions, and others were with countries that no longer exist”.

Railing at the doings of King Chuck (no Queen?) is the best he can do? So it seems ...

“In the past few years, international bodies have lectured Australians about what energy we should use, what cars we should drive, what food we should eat, who we should let into our country and even what we should be allowed to say,” he said.
“The only people that should decide what happens in this country are the Australian people.”
In 1995, Liberal elder Rod Kemp backed a Senate committee recommendation that government conduct an audit of treaties, partly because “there is still uncertainty as to the exact number of treaties to which Australia is currently a party”.
But, the audit was not done and Senator Canavan said it was time it was done.
“Too often, international agreements have become weaponised to take away the basic rights of farmers and everyday Australians,” he said. “The increasing abuse of the external affairs powers is weakening our federation.”
Senator Canavan said the Albanese government did a deal with the Greens to use international treaties’ powers to expand the laws surrounding the Great Barrier Reef catchment area. “For many farmers this means the federal government has effectively taken over control of their entire farm, when it should be the states that have control of basic land planning issues,” he said.
“The only people that should decide what happens in this country are the Australian people.”
Senator Canavan said the Nationals would be accused “of all sorts of bad things for wanting to oppose the attempt to impose a global tyrannical order”.
“But I will not apologise for being a patriot. I will always defend the right of a free people to decide what happens in their nation,” he said.
Senator Canavan’s speech will be his first as leader. The party conference comes after Senator Canavan’s predecessor David Littleproud quit following two Coalition splits and questions over his ability to mount an electoral case against Pauline Hanson’s surging populist party.

What a dismal bout of impending blather ...

The pond felt so bereft it turned to the lizard Oz editorialist, still trying to coach some sense into the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way ...

Thanks coach, that ought to fix everything ...

Stay focussed, take the ball up the guts, and don't get distracted by dreams of glory ...

And so to a whiff of heresy ...