The pond regrets that - almost immediately after his return, the bromancer - as many predicted and expected - joined in the current hive mind jihad.
The pond was left with no choice but to send him off to the intermittent archive ...
The Albanese government will almost certainly fail in its effort to defeat anti-Semitism because it still doesn’t understand the problem.
By Greg Sheridan
Foreign Editor
Those who want to have at him can, the pond is content to note that anti-Semitism thrives in right wing la land, but never expects the reptiles to notice.
The pond is sad, but that's the way the cookie and the current jihad crumble.
Joining him in the intermittent archive was the careening Caterist ...
More migrants people snub Team Australia
Sloppy talk of ‘social cohesion’ risks blurring a royal commission’s task as anti-Semitism surges. Findings by the Scanlon Foundation show some migrants and the young drifting away from ‘Team Australia’.
By Nick Cater
Enough already about migrant people from a migrant people...and as for blather by a former Pom about Team Australia, enough already.
Joining the pair in the pond's specially constructed jihad sin bin was Ben, packing it in his usual way ...
At last, hate preachers and Hizb ut-Tahrir face bans
The government is finally acting to ban hate groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and silence radical preachers. The proposed laws will have teeth, too.
By Ben Packham
Foreign affairs and defence correspondent
Devotees of the jihad will be amused by the headline leading off the digital "news" this day ...
PM’s hate speech, gun reforms spark Coalition alarm
A carve out in new hate speech laws has raised alarm from Coalition sources that anti-Semitic views could still be espoused as long as a religious text is invoked, such as a passage in the Koran calling Jews and other nonbelievers ‘the worst of creatures’.
By Sarah Ison and Elizabeth Pike
Coalition alarm?
Oh they like to talk the jihad talk, but when it comes to doing the jihad gun ban walk, they tremble in the face of the gun lobby, not up there with the IRA, but still, close to the jihadists' hearts...
The pond also dismissed out of hand the standard reptile EXCLUSIVE beat up ...
‘Confusing mess’: Expert slams Bondi massacre inquiry set-up
The Albanese government has been warned the Richardson Bondi inquiry structure could see officials told what evidence they can give, potentially undermining the probe into intelligence failures.
By Ben Packham and James Dowling
This carry-on is going to last the entire length of the RC.
That's the real reason they wanted the RC, reams of headlines and endless ravaging of Albo for a year or more ...so there's no point in encouraging the raskals at the get go, just as there's no doubting it will wound him ...
The pond also isn't interested in defending the mad Mullahs ... with the fight being led by Boyes of The Times, amazingly, given his age, at one with Gen Z..
Iran faces its gravest threat since 2009 as young ‘enemies of God’ spread unrest to 160 locations nationwide, challenging the regime’s control with economic grievances and social media tactics.
By Roger Boyes
To make the massacre complete, the pond also despatched ...
What remains for Tehran? The answer is extreme violence, now directed against its own people. Will it work? Comparison to similar revolutionary situations elsewhere suggests that it might.
By Jonathan Spyer
Discovering why the reptiles decided to give the word 'limp' scare quotes wasn't worth the effort of the read, especially as the author saw no reason to use scare quotes in his final sentence ...
A combination of both short- and long-term intervention and assistance would be the most judicious path. Absent this, the Islamic regime in Iran could limp on for a while, to the extreme detriment of Iran’s people and the wider Middle East region.
Were the reptiles being politically correct, worried that they might offend anyone with a limp? Unlikely ...but the pond will leave Spyer and Boyes to fight out the fate of Iran, as only columnists staring at keyboards and screen can do ...
Good luck to the people of Iran, they haven't had much since the CIA helped set the 'revolution' rolling.
The pond did dive below the fold but the only addition in the top six was on the same theme...
History suggests that an unbridled theocratic regime – institutionalised through state-sponsored terrorism – endangers not only the Iranian people but regional and global security.
By Saba Vasefi
Speaking of unbridled theocratic regimes, will the reptiles ever get around to discussing the current state of Israel? Or the white Xian nationalists in charge of US policy.
Not likely.
The hive mind is extremely monochrome these days and the pond apologises to those who try to explore the archive in one of its drop out moments ...
Moving along, what to do ?How to manage a little Tuesday filler?
Mad King Donald is always a tempting target, as the madness grows wilder by the day ...
The Australian has run at least 10 stories decrying Cathy Wilcox’s controversial cartoon about the Bondi royal commission. The hypocrisy is staggering. (sorry, that's a paywall link)
To be fair, the Murdoch paper possesses a certain expertise on offensive cartoons, given how regularly it lauded the late Bill Leak — as much because of his egregious bigotry as despite it. Older readers will remember how, on National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Day in 2016, Leak offered an image of a swarthy, VB-clutching Indigenous man too drunk to remember the name of his son.
One can scarcely imagine how the Oz might respond if the SMH published an equivalent image directed at Jews. In the context, a cartoon relying on racialised physical characteristics for a punchline based on an offensive stereotype would look like something from Der Stürmer. Yet, when the Leak drawing led to an investigation under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (remember that?), The Australian launched a full-throated campaign to not only defend Leak but also laud him as a fearless truthteller.
Within a few months, the young Indigenous woman who’d sent the Leak cartoon to the commission withdrew her complaint, saying she could not cope with the harassment she felt she’d received from News Corp. Leak died the next year; The Australian ran an astonishing 33,000 words of tribute and then established an award in his name, which it has repeatedly bestowed on his son.
Well yes, the pond does remember that fuss well, but there's no need to repeat that offensive 'toon again.
The pond also remembers this cartoon, a valiant attempt to kick Godwin's Law into a Leakian ether ...
And so did Sparrow ...
Had Wilcox invoked National Socialism in her work, the outrage from The Australian would have, of course, registered on the Richter scale. But though Leak’s drawing affronted both Jewish and gay and lesbian groups, a year later Chris Kenny still celebrated the Nazi gag as an example of Leak’s “provocative and hilarious insights” and “a biting comment on the intolerance of gay marriage activists”.
You obviously don’t need to trawl the paper’s archives for evidence of conservative hypocrisy. In today’s edition, Catherine West calls for an investigation of “how the deliberate merging of domestic hate with foreign policy serves to silence opposition to prejudice”, while, nearby, Nick Dyrenfurth flatly equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
But it’s worth recalling the Leak brouhaha because it shows how sharply the Gaza genocide has reoriented a conservative movement that once prided itself on its “fuck your feelings” free speech advocacy. Back in the day, the right rallied around Leak because, as Paul Gravitas explained, “Bill saw the heart of political correctness is denial and avoidance of truth. The purpose is to reject rational debate through new norms of so-called polite behaviour — that people must not be offended, that feelings must not be insulted and that identity, whether arising from race, religion, sexuality or gender, must always be honoured.”
Today, The Australian applauds the Adelaide Festival for cutting a Palestinian author on the grounds of “cultural sensitivity”. Whereas, in 2016, it denounced, as a matter of principle, any cultural infrastructure that might limit Leak’s ability to mock Indigenous peoples.
In 2026, it publishes Steven Lowy declaring: “Australia needs its cultural, educational, business and civic leaders to actively model and defend pluralistic values. We need leaders in schools to explain why diversity makes us stronger. We need them in boardrooms to demonstrate that inclusion is not a compliance exercise but a competitive advantage. We need them in community centres to build bridges between groups that fear each other.”
Funnily enough, that laudable new enthusiasm for pluralism and inclusion doesn’t extend to the people of Gaza, where, as both Amnesty International and B’Tselem have recently documented, the genocide continues.
Someone should draw a cartoon about it.
Back at the lizard Oz, the reptiles continued their weird double standards, though this reptile travelling as Steve Jackson only managed a two minute read on the affair ...
The header: Cartoonist Cathy Wilcox lashes out after Nine’s half-hearted apology; No one appears to be happy after Nine apologised for publishing a now-notorious illustration about the push for a royal commission into anti-Semitism … not least the cartoonist who drew it.
The caption for the jihad victim: Cartoonist Cathy Wilcox.
The reptiles were keen to push the fuss, thereby doing down both Wilcox and the pathetic Nine rags ...
Both Wilcox’s critics and defenders have sledged the mastheads after they belatedly acknowledged the distress and hurt the image had caused “many in the community” – with even the illustrator herself taking a veiled swipe at her editors.
The now notorious cartoon, which portrayed those pushing for an inquiry into rising anti-Semitism following the atrocity as being secretly manipulated by Coalition figures and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, attracted an immediate backlash after it was printed in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age last Wednesday.
The image’s detractors accused it of “trivialising mass murder” in the wake of the Bondi Beach terror attack and playing on age-old anti-Semitic tropes.
Amazingly, Stevo used an X'er, cohabiting with Grok, promoter of falsehoods and nude deep fakes, to reproduce the cartoon ...Bondi Beach massacre survivor Arsen Ostrovsky responds to Wilcox's controversial cartoon.
Hang on, hang on, if it's so disturbing and offensive, why keep reproducing and circulating it?
If it's an "unadulterated form of Jew-hatred" why keep airing it, especially on a cesspit forum notorious for giving space to anti-Semitism, owned by a man notoriously not afraid to give the Nazi salute?
Who knows, but Wilcox got in a couple of good lines, a nice couple of licks...
While offering the papers’ sincere apologies to those offended, the editorial also went to great lengths to justify the tabloids’ decision to publish the picture in the first place, insisting “many of our readers found the cartoon thought-provoking”.
“It is undeniable, however, that many others in the community, particularly Jews, were deeply hurt and offended by it,” the editorial continued. “We have heard their distress and for this pain, we sincerely apologise.”
Following the admission, the tabloids’ went on to defend their cartoonists’ right to “draw the world as they see it”; both mastheads continue to host the illustration on their news sites.
Critics were underwhelmed, claiming the apology lacked sincerity and shifted blame to those who felt the illustration was irresponsible and inflammatory.
Wilcox and her defenders were equally unimpressed and took to social media to express outrage at the tabloids’ contrition within hours of the apology going live.
One social media user, “Rosco The Grouch”, who claims to be a retired secondary school teacher, labelled the apology “Simpering. Sycophantic. Blather” before adding: “So much for the once great SMH. Maybe (Cathy Wilcox) ought to consider joining a paper that has some integrity.”
Somewhat pointedly, Wilcox responded: “Do you know of any?”
The award-winning cartoonist also said she might start sharing some of the abusive feedback she had received about her work.
“When this blows over, I might have to share some of the emails I’ve received … which really make me wonder why I am the one accused of hatred,” she wrote. “There is deep unresolved trauma being spewed by some people and we cannot consent to living according to their warped reality.”
And they weren’t the only ones she was keen to have a crack at. Sky News Australia later reported Wilcox sent them “an abusive email” after they sought her thoughts about Nine’s apology.
Sadly, the pond doesn't know any mainstream rags worthy of any other name than rag, and as for Sky Noise down under ... 'cesspit' seems way too kind, given that cesspits have a useful function.
Crikey also had a nice piece on the death of the Adelaide Writers Week by Daanyal Saeed ...
Former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern has quit the Adelaide Festival’s Writers Week in the wake of a boycott around the cancellation of Palestinian-Australian academic Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah. (sorry, paywall link)
As well as noting the departure of the former NZ PMand the chair, Saeed had this to say ...
Legal representatives for Abdel-Fattah sent a letter to Whiting on January 11 requesting clarification in relation to the “past statements” referred to in the board’s public statement on the matter, which left open the possibility of future litigation.
It so happens that the pond had the first page of that letter to hand ...
Sorry for the interruption ...
“Following the Adelaide Festival board’s decision on Thursday, 8 January and the significant community response, Adelaide Writers’ Week and Adelaide Festival are navigating a complex and unprecedented moment and will share further updates as soon as we are able,” the statement read.
CAA Speakers, the firm responsible for Ardern’s speaking engagements, was contacted for comment but did not respond in time for publication.
The front page of the Adelaide-based News Corp tabloid paper The Advertiser on January 12 was dedicated to the controversy, titled “JEEZ LOUISE” with a full-page photograph of Adler, who led the Adelaide Festival last year to record attendances.
Ah the reptiles, always in the thick of it, always stirring up trouble ...
Talk about the suffering of a parochial one rag town ...
By sublime coincidence ... a demonstration that the 'Tiser has all the imagination of a coffee shop ...
Then came a count of the numbers of the tape, possibly already outdate ...
InDaily reports that Adelaide Festival made $472,000 last year, up from a loss of $825,000 in 2024. According to the festival’s own impact report, it had a $47.1 million net impact on gross state product last year, with 365,402 total attendees.
The list of Writers’ Week boycotting participants has grown to around 90, with the festival’s website stating (before its lineup page was taken down as a result of the boycott) that it was hosting 123 speakers.
What could the reptiles do, but shoot down Louise more, by bringing in reprehensible, disreputable Morry, an ongoing threat to his own brand? C.f. The Sunday Paper... which definitely has an axe to grind ...
And so on, and meanwhile, the lizard Oz hit piece ran under the header Culture, as if the reptiles didn't understand that what they had was a Kultur and it ran on for a goodly, bigly five minutes, or so the reptiles clocked it ...
The author: Tim Douglas
The ticking clock: January 13, 2026 - 6:37AM
The caption for the collage: Adelaide Writers’ Week boss Louise Adler; publisher Morry Schwartz; academic Randa Abdel-Fattah.
Morry, it should go without saying, is a biased, paranoid witness, exactly the kind the reptiles would turn to ...especially as he sought them out by way of letter to carry on his personal jihad ...
In a letter to The Australian, Mr Schwartz claimed Ms Adler’s “obsessive cause” was to blame for the fallout at AWW, where more than 70 authors reportedly had publicly withdrawn and four Adelaide Festival board members, including chair Tracey Whiting, had resigned.
“It’s clearly Louise Adler who has wounded Adelaide Writers’ Week – not the board, nor the SA government,” wrote Mr Schwartz, owner of Schwartz Media, publisher of Black Inc Books, The Saturday Paper and Quarterly Essay.
“Adler well knew that including Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah (‘if you are a Zionist you have no claim or right to cultural safety’) would endanger the institution.
“But it mattered nil to her – her obsessive cause is more important to her than our precious 66-year-old writers’ festival.”
Three years ago, Mr Schwartz called for Ms Adler to resign from her position, but for the writers at her festival to remain.
Naturally the preening Morry scored a still showing him posed in his finery, Leading Melbourne publisher Morry Schwartz. Aaron Francis/The Australian
Zionist Morry was given plenty of room to vent his spleen, as the cliché goes ...
Ms Adler and the Adelaide Festival were contacted for comment. The decision by the festival board, which oversees Adelaide Writers’ Week, to withdraw Dr Abdel-Fattah’s invitation over historic comments about Israel was made without Ms Adler’s input. She is yet to speak publicly.
The desire to erase Palestinians here is almost as strong as the desire for ethnic cleansing currently promoted by the government of Israel.
Eventually the reptiles had to get over Morry and report on the disaster that the reptile jihad and Zionists had produced ...
The decision came after a review into programming at the Adelaide event in the wake of the Bondi terror attack that killed 15 people. While the board made clear Dr Abdel-Fattah in no way was associated with the Bondi attack, it said it would not be “culturally appropriate” to keep her on the program. The decision sparked the mass boycott by authors including headliners Orange prize winner Zadie Smith, Pulitzer Prize winner Percival Everett, Australian literary doyenne Helen Garner, Miles Franklin winner Melissa Lucashenko and ABIA prize winner Trent Dalton. Former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern was confirmed on Monday evening to also have cancelled her festival appearance with the ABC’s Sarah Ferguson on March 3. The Australia Institute think tank pulled its funding from the event, and on Instagram publisher Hardie Grant publicly condemned the decision to disinvite Dr Abdel-Fattah, saying: “We cannot support an environment where festivals are destroyed when considered programming decisions are overridden by politicians and boards.”
There came a snap of the victim Randa Abdel-Fattah. Picture Instagram/@randaafattah
The reptiles then attempted a little "straight" reporting, though it doesn't really fit their kultur ...
The board now finds itself in a critical situation, with just three remaining members – Adelaide councillor Mary Couros, former Labor SA government minister Leesa Chesser and Adelaide Airport managing director Brenton Cox – along with government observer Jennifer Fuller. A festival spokeperson was contacted to clarify the board’s ability to operate with respect to guidelines under the Adelaide Festival Corporation Act 1998. The Act stipulates at least two women and two men must comprise the board.
The news came as an updated letter demanding Dr Abdel-Fattah’s reinstatement, signed by six other former Adelaide Festival directors, was sent to the remaining board members.
Robyn Archer, Peter Sellars, Ruth Mackenzie, Stephen Page, Paul Grabowsky and Penny Chapman added their names to the open letter. They join other big names of the Australian arts sector, who have run the country’s most prestigious cultural jamboree at various stages since 1975, including Neil Armfield, Rob Brookman, Jo Dyer, Peter Goldsworthy, Nicholas Heyward, Kath M. Mainland, Ian Scobie, David Sefton, Jim Sharman and Mary Vallentine.
The letter claimed the board had made a “grave mistake” and had brought the festival into disrepute.
“There is one remedy for the justified public outcry at this egregious incursion on free speech and the damaging series of withdrawals it has caused,” it read. “We call upon the board to reinstate Dr Abdel-Fattah’s invitation to the 2026 Adelaide Writers’ Week immediately. An about-face may be embarrassing but it is both the right thing to do and will cauterise the growing damage to this much loved and internationally significant South Australian cultural institution.
The one rebel to score a snap was English novelist Zadie Smith. Photo by Brian Dowling/Getty Images
Then it was on to the wrap up, with the reptiles doing their best to tilt the reporting in a way that favoured the banning ...
Arts Minister Tony Burke on Monday said the government had no involvement in the decisions made by festivals, stepping in to answer a question for Anthony Albanese at a press conference when the Prime Minister was asked if Dr Abdel-Fattah should be reinstated.
“With respect to any writers’ festival, we leave those decisions to the festivals themselves,” Mr Burke said. “We don’t tell festivals who they should put on and who they shouldn’t.”
Greens acting leader Sarah Hanson-Young said Adelaide’s famously strong arts and festival brands were “in tatters”. She called for Dr Abdel-Fattah to be reinstated, claiming South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas had made “an enormous mess” pressuring the board to cancel the writer.
“The Adelaide Festival is now on the brink of collapse and the government needs to act urgently,” Senator Hanson-Young said.
Tasmanian Liberal senator Jonathon Duniam, however, said while he accepted there were freedom of speech concerns, context was key.
“We have just seen the culmination of two years of horrible (anti-Semitic) behaviour, and that resulted in the worst terrorist act on our soil in history, in Bondi, and so we do need to have a degree of sensitivity,” he said. “I would urge those members of the creative community, the other authors who are saying they don’t want to participate in this event because someone has been asked to not participate, think again. There is a space for creative thought. There is a space for freedom of expression. But given some of the things that the individual in question has said in the past, it is definitely the right decision.”
Dr Abdel-Fattah said on Monday “attempts to police speech” were being met with resistance from those in the arts sector.
“No amount of retrospective back-pedalling about vague ‘prior statements’ can obscure the fact that I was formally disinvited on the grounds that my Palestinian identity would act as an emotional provocation,” she told Australian Associated Press.
“It is hard to view the timing as accidental rather than a calculated decision to make the announcement on that particular day and to reinforce the link between me and the Bondi atrocity.”
Dr Abdel-Fattah’s lawyers have sent a letter to the festival board, asking it to identify the exact “past statements” it cited in its announcement that it would cancel the author’s appearance. The legal team has demanded a response by January 14.
Adelaide Festival Corporation executive director Julian Hobba said in a statement on Monday that the “complex” situation was being “navigated”.
“Following the Adelaide Festival board’s decision on Thursday, 8 January and the significant community response, Adelaide Writers’ Week and Adelaide Festival are navigating a complex and unprecedented moment and will share further updates as soon as we are able,” he said.
Discredit where discredit is due ...
ELIZABETH PIKE AND SARAH ISON
P.S. Another notch on the hive mind press's and Morry's gun, Louise Adler resigns...
Sadly, Australia can't in any way match King Donald's current deeds ...but turning a mass terrorist murder into an ongoing political campaign seems to match the King's spirit ...
Meanwhile, for a closer, the lizard Oz editorialist echoed the current concern the King Donald administration has for breeding ...
Pro-natalism is big in King Donald land, but only of a certain kind and colour...
Just like Adolf ...
Naturally the lizard Oz editorialist heard the call ...
Did you see that closing line?
The reality is we need both, lest we end up like Canada, where domestic fertility is 1.25 and immigration is all that is keeping the country going. And that would not be the Australian way.
Immigration isn't the Australian way?
That's kinda funny. The pond thought most Australians came by way of immigration, but the pond understands ... Aussie blut is the way forward, and we must keep breeding for the Führer. Get to work, vulgar youff ...
And so to the good news in 'toon land.
The immortal Rowe is back, and so the pond can take it easy at close of Wasserglas play ...
