Bored watching some slow uploads crawl up into the ether - thanks Malware's NBN - the pond yesterday made the fatal mistake of using idle time to check out the reptiles.
Lordy, long absent lordy, do they know how to troll, they do it all day long, and the pond fell for it with several posts.
None of that today, and none of the reptiles' current jihad today.
Pauline showed the pond the danger of reading lizard Oz polls and taking them and herself way too seriously ...
She might be ready, and luckily there will also be shrinks on head to deal with massive delusions of grandeur.
Of course there was plenty more trolling this day, an over-abundance of it ... EXCLUSIVES being sold by the yard ...
EXCLUSIVE Labor’s hate group crackdown to pass Antisemitism bill set to pass parliament despite Coalition concerns Anthony Albanese’s antisemitism bill will pass parliament despite facing an 11th-hour Coalition hurdle over hate group powers. By Sarah Ison
You'd swear from reading that EXCLUSIVE that the Libs were going all wishy washy and yellerbelly, and joining in to help out comrade Albo's mob, but it's just the Nats - according to the story.
The Libs were in enabling mode ...
Anthony Albanese’s bill to combat antisemitism will pass parliament in coming days despite an 11th-hour hurdle thrown up by opposition MPs harbouring concerns over proposed new powers that would allow the government to proscribe and ban “hate groups”. Despite the laws giving Labor the power to crack down on Hizb ut-Tahrir after years of Coalition pressure for the radical Islamic group to be listed as a terrorist organisation, fears were shared by opposition MPs on Monday afternoon that the reforms could have unintended consequences. While the Liberal party room ticked off on the laws with amendments, the Nationals were understood to still be considering their final position.
They ticked off? So much for the lizard Oz jihad.
Meanwhile there was another EXCLUSIVE...
EXCLUSIVE Top imams: antisemitism law is Islamophobic ‘in law and practice’ Muslim leaders have delivered a devastating blow to Anthony Albanese’s hate crime laws, claiming the legislation designed to combat antisemitism will actually discriminate against their own community. By Noah Yim
Oh there's going to be all the fun of the fair for future reptile jihads ...
Meanwhile, the pond's hive mind favourite, the bromancer, joined the current jihad and so had to be sent to the intermittent archive cornfield ...
After Bondi, grim truth is Jew hate still flourishes Federal parliament united to stand strong, yet the cultural left’s role in fuelling anti-Semitism remains unaddressed by the government. By Greg Sheridan Foreign Editor
The Federal parliament united to stand strong?
Didn't the pond just EXCLUSIVELY read that the parliament was beset by saucy doubts and fears?
The bromancer was in exceptionally fine bigoted form ...
...Some 200 artists, some admittedly under monstrous pressure, withdrew from the writers week in solidarity with Abdel-Fattah. Did this herd of independent minds all reach this conclusion, that her statements were perfectly OK, individually? Truly, you’d find more moral courage in a fourth grade rugby league team in western Sydney than in the whole of the Australian arts community put together. The bottom line is this celebration of anti-Semitic hostility, and simultaneous indictment of anonymous Jews and their malign and mysterious influence, is exactly how anti-Semitism proceeds in the real world. The ABC is often, if unintentionally, complicit in anti-Semitism through: constant demonisation of Israel, failure to investigate seriously Australian anti-Semitism, and ready willingness to credit the “shadowy Jewish influence” line. Little said in parliament, beyond Leeser’s words, addresses the anti-Semitism of the cultural left.
Sssh, don't mention Gaza war crimes. And ... it's all the ABC's fault.
That's as much as the pond could take or stomach.
Never mind, there might be a chance down the track to get the lizard Oz listed as a hate group.
Speaking of that, ancient Troy also joined in the current round of hate speech, tediously going there yet again ...
The Premier warned Adelaide Festival’s ex-chair in a letter that the dignity of Australian-Jewish people still reeling from the Bondi terror attacks should not be “ignored at all costs” in the name of art. The Sunday Mail has obtained a copy of the letter sent to Adelaide Festival chairwoman Tracey Whiting by Premier Peter Malinauskas days before a decision was made to remove Palestinian-Australian author Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah from the Writers’ Week 2026 program. The letter, dated January 2, was sent after the Premier expressed his concerns about the inclusion of Dr Abdel-Fattah over the course of a few phone calls with Ms Whiting. It is understood she then asked him to put those concerns in writing for the board’s benefit as they considered what to do.
Quick, ancient Troy, diss that "important principle", save this cooked goose, make it right with a gigantic billy goat butt ...
...But governments have an obligation to ensure they are not used to put hateful rhetoric up in lights. And citizens have a right to demand that their taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and not used to advance radical and divisive political causes.
Quick, move on to rousing conclusion ...
Writers festivals should be places for robust debate and thought-provoking discussion. Attendees should have their views illuminated and challenged. They can be informed and entertained. Writers festivals should be a place for civilised conversation and respectful dialogue. Adler and Abdel-Fattah ensured AWW was anything but this.
Um, perhaps that prime goose Malinauskas and a compliant board had something to do with it? Nah, ancient Troy and the hive mind ensured it was anything butthat.
Begorrah, it took Paddy to remind the pond that some reptiles were still diligently pursuing old jihads ...
PROFESSOR EXPLAINS The NDIS has become a luxury liner. We need more, smaller boats The National Disability Insurance Scheme offers only first-class travel and a permanent berth. The model must change, says Australia’s foremost expert in mental health reform. By Patrick McGorry Contributor
Hang on, hang on. A Prof explains?
Isn't he automatically defined as one of those out of touch, dangerous, airy, bubble-headed boobies, a member of the wanky 'leet class that ruins everything for the hive mind? The sort that wouldn't prescribe Ivermectin when it was badly needed, or keep on rabbiting on about a climate change hoax?
Reassuringly, the reptiles took that metaphor and opened with a stupefyingly banal illustration ...
The pond confesses that it stopped reading at the opening gobsmacking literalism of that first illustration ...
Geddit? It's a luxury liner! What a metaphor.
Oh Prof, Prof, this is what happens when you consort with the lizard Oz hive mind.
The pond was rapidly winnowing down its list of candidates and topics for the day, and ended up stuck with Rowan rowing a boat, which really should have seen the bromancer behind the oars ...
The header: No, Mr Ambassador: Taiwan has nothing in common with Tassie, Since ambassador Xiao Qian highlights what he sees as parallels between Taiwan and Tasmania, it’s important to dig deeper, uncovering instead the deep disparities.
The caption: Chinese Ambassador to Australia Xiao Qian at the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Canberra. Picture: Martin Ollman
It was only a three minute read, and contained the astonishing insight that Tassie wasn't Taiwan, and perhaps vice versa ... but nowhere in it did Rowan ask what had set him off.
Not once did he wonder why the lizard Oz had chosen to become a propaganda sheet for Chairman Xi and his minions?
Or why he decided to waste time and space on a self-induced troll of such epic futility?
The obvious answer is that the reptiles rolled that way because it was easy and cheap filler, and it could lead to easy and cheap follow ups, providing a chance for "eggsperts" of the Rowan kind to leap up and down, and be affronted and express wild-eyed indignation, not to mention some meaningless history of the Our Henry kind...
“Taiwan is a province of China, just as Tasmania is a state of Australia,” wrote China’s ambassador to Australia in these pages on Monday. Both Taiwan and Tasmania were inhabited by Indigenous people before Dutch forces in the first case, and British in the second, became involved in either. But that’s about as much as they share in common. Since ambassador Xiao Qian highlights what he sees as parallels between Taiwan and Tasmania, it’s appropriate to dig deeper, uncovering instead the deep disparities. Taiwan was first colonised by the Dutch (1624-1662). The Manchus who conquered China and ruled it as the Qing dynasty (1691-1911) took a sporadic but growing interest, eventually declaring it a province in 1887. But only eight years later the dynasty ceded Taiwan to Japan after military defeat. Mao Zedong told American journalist Edgar Snow in a 1937 interview: “We will extend them (the Koreans) our enthusiastic help in their struggle for independence. The same thing applies for Taiwan.”
That's digging deeper?
This ranting allowed an ancient snap of the lad for whom the lizard Oz had been working, Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks in 2017 in Beijing. Picture: Getty Images
That's when it dawned on the pond what was missing from this tepid fare.
Better to blather on about Tasmania than deal with King Donald and any one of a hundred of his recent absurdities.
For that sort of talk, you had to head off to the keen Keane in Crikey ... (sorry paywall)
Instead of any of that with the bromancer, the pond was stuck with Rowan, as he resumed his rowing of this wretched Tassie boat:
The Republic of China seized control of Taiwan following Japan’s defeat in 1945, then took the remnants of its army there following its own loss to Mao’s Chinese Communist Party, and the establishment in 1949 of the People’s Republic of China, which has never ruled Taiwan. British whalers and sealers established bases in Tasmania at the very start of the 19th century, and the British governor in New South Wales built military outposts to support them from 1803. It became a colony, then in 1856 a state. In 1899, 94 per cent of the Tasmanians eligible to vote supported its federation with Australia, the largest majority of the states. The Australian Constitution provides a complex route for states to withdraw, but secession moves in the 1920s petered out, and more recent straw-polling in Tasmania has failed to indicate significant support for this. The Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) that ruled the Republic of China that succeeded the Qing dynasty, re-established itself in Taiwan following its defeat by the communist forces, but 35 years ago formally withdrew any claims over mainland China. The CCP’s insistence on recognition as ruling “one China” is not these days contested significantly anywhere including within Taiwan, unlike its own claim also to rule the island.
The reptiles decided that an AV distraction would act as seafood extender...
China’s ambassador to Australia is calling on the federal government to support the reunification of China and Taiwan. Xiao Qian says Australia cannot keep reaping the benefits of trade with China while seeking to block reunification. He has cautioned the government against pursuing dialogue on Taiwan unless they were committed to reunification, signalling economic consequences. “Taiwan is a province of China, just as Tasmania is a state of Australia. This is the only correct understanding of ‘one China’,” Mr Qian said.
Rowan then decided to diss Tasmania as a pimple on the rump:
Tasmania has a population of 575,000 and annual economic output of $44bn. Taiwan’s population is 23 million, its output $1.17 trillion. Taiwan’s average wealth per adult is 11 times higher than China’s. In a recent poll in Taiwan, 86 per cent favoured maintaining the status quo – also supported by Australia’s major parties – with 72 per cent disagreeing that Taiwan is part of China, and 83 per cent insisting that Taiwan’s future should be determined by its own people. In Pew Research polling two years ago, 67 per cent of respondents described themselves as Taiwanese, 28 per cent as both Taiwanese and Chinese, and 3 per cent as primarily Chinese. Of those aged 18-34, 83 per cent see themselves as Taiwanese. Ambassador Xiao wrote that “blood runs thicker than water”. Yet 56 per cent polled by Pew say they are not emotionally attached to China, and 66 per cent believe China is a major threat. Ten years ago independent senator Jacqui Lambie said her “dream for Tasmania” would see the island leaving the Australian Federation. But while re-elected, she received little support for such a move, which she no longer advances. Ambassador Xiao says: “It is clearly stated in the official legal opinions of the UN that ‘the United Nations considers Taiwan as a province of China’.” On August 21, 2024, Australia’s Senate passed unanimously a motion – proposed jointly by Labor and Liberal senators – that UN Resolution 2758 of 1971 “does not establish the PRC’s sovereignty over Taiwan and does not determine the future status of Taiwan in the UN”. Australia itself, while holding its own “one China policy”, has not formally committed to a position on Taiwan’s identity. Many Tasmanians might preference their identity as Tasmanian first and Australian second, but very few would go on to disavow their Australian-ness or Australian citizenship. Tasmania is structurally dependent on federal economic support.
The reptiles slipped in another snap ... Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te delivers a New Year’s Day speech at the presidential hall in Taipei.
But the pond was still deep in the deepest south, singing a rebel song ...
And again:
Stay strong, Tassies, elbows up Canada, stay defiant Taiwan ...
Taiwan has a standing military force of about 160,000, with a further 1.6 million reservists, up to 500 combat aircraft and a substantial navy. It polices and defends its own borders. Tasmania has a police force of about 1400. Taiwan elects its own leaders. At the last election, 72 per cent of eligible voters turned out, compared with 60 per cent in Britain and 63 per cent in the US. Its legislature passes laws that are imposed through an independent judicial system. Tasmanians, via their elected government, exercise a wide range of authority within their own jurisdiction, compared with the PRC’s provinces, which operate within a unitary, one-party state. China is unique among large states in maintaining a centralised, not federal, structure. Ambassador Xiao should be applauded for stating, in conclusion, “we hope Australia will keep ahead of the historical trend on the Taiwan question”. It’s historically intricate, it’s complex, but it’s also very important for our role in our own region that we all “keep ahead”, watch carefully what’s happening, and staunchly back peace and stability. Rowan Callick is an expert associate at the ANU’s National Security College and an industry fellow at Griffith University’s Asia Institute.
Sheesh, Taiwan's just doing what everybody has been wanting to do since way back when ...
And now to be fair, the reptiles did slip in a yarn about King Donald while the pond was seceding from the hive mind and the world ... but it didn't come from the bromancer, it came from the WSJ ...
Why are the reptiles and the bromancer always outsourcing this gig?
Simple, they're too busy navel-gazing, fluff-gathering and carrying on their latest set of narrow minded jihads, while the world goes to hell in a King Donald handbasket.
Just for the record then ...
Having embarked on this journey, the pond decided to go full hog ...
Oh yes ...
Ain't he a wonder, and how much more interesting than Tasmania seceding ...
Just one more gobbet showing a rogue nation at work, giving comfort and aid to Chairman Xi in the matter of Taiwan.
You see Rowan? Blather about Tassie entirely misses the real Xi point and inspiration ...
If you happened to get stuck in the lizard Oz, you might have thought it was all about Tasmania.
And so to end up with the immortal Rowe where the reptiles sort of began ...
Adelaide Writers’ Week Are writers weeks like Adelaide now pointless? Why Adelaide Writers Week and others are in danger of extinction Distinguished South Australian writer Stephen Orr argues Adelaide Writers Week has transformed from an exciting literary discovery into tedious ideological battlegrounds that have lost their original purpose. By Stephen Orr
How desperate, pathetic, needy and unseemly it is to join up late to a lizard Oz jihad?
Wondering who this Ore is, desperate to step into the limelight and join the current lizard Oz jihad? The reptiles provided this thumb ...
Stephen Orr is a writer based in South Australia. His first book was shortlisted for The Australian’s Vogel prize; he has also been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Miles Franklin Award and the International Dublin Literary Award. His new novel, The Night Parrots (Wakefield Press), is due in May 2026. Set in Hermannsburg Mission in 1922, it tells the story of fifty-year-old Pastor Martin Gerlach, his wife Alma and their fourteen-year-old son Benno.
More to the point:
So what now? Are we condemned to an eternity of intercol football, mega-utes and shiny new petrol stations? Endless photo ops for the Suits? The unholy communion of politics and populist media. Writers braying in the lizard Oz while narcissistically seeking attention? (Or some such, the pond might have added that last line).
Good on her ...
Furious Nine cartoonist Cathy Wilcox draws the line at an apology Sorry certainly seems to be the hardest word for the award-winning Cathy Wilcox … expletives on the other hand? Not so much. By Steve Jackson
Was it just another excuse to run the 'toon, which allegedly was extremely offensive and insulting and should never again see the light of day?
Tell us, jerk off Jacko ...
It was, it was ... look what the reptiles trotted out ...allegedly the shame that should never be seen again ...
Just like Bill Leak and his lesser spawn, you braying jack ass Jacko?
Here's a suggestion. Stop pretending to be a faux leftie while running with the reptiles, and instead do something useful with what's left of your life ...
Why completely up himself, as is his wont, as he joined in the latest reptile jihad ...
Sorry, PM: You can’t engineer grief Albanese reaction to Bondi has been to appeal for national unity at every opportunity. Yet no amount of determination can command it into existence. National unity and social cohesion cannot be created in a vacuum. By Nick Cater
The pond didn't have, still hasn't, got the stomach for it. Despite years of inuring itself to nausea, there has to be a limit... but the intermittent archive link is there for anyone able to swallow this sort of rabid, jingoistic nonsense ...
There is a precedent. In the US after 9/11, the Stars and Stripes became a symbol of resistance. Sales of flags and poles surged. The flags painted on the side of carriages on the New York Subway are a legacy of that period. The NSW government might like to think about taking up that idea for its trains, ferries and buses.
Lately, what with assorted reptile jihads going down as befits the Australian Daily Zionist News, climate science denialism seems to have taken a back seat, and the consequences of the recent wild weather gone unremarked.
The reptiles at the Nine rags have tried to compensate ...
Married to readings of average temperatures, which lag but waltz ever upwards in harmony, the Keeling Curve is the world’s most simple and transparent illustration of climate change. The curve, and the field of climate science it accelerated, is not only one of the US’s great achievements and gifts to the world, but a demonstration of the efficacy of long-term and dedicated scientific practice. Naturally, the Trump administration wants to destroy it. In March, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency said it could save $US150,000 by ending the observatory’s lease on an office and in the administration’s midyear budget proposal, it flagged ending the organisation’s funding. The assault on the Mauna Loa Observatory is part of a far wider attack on climate science and action mounted by the Trump administration over the past year. Some highlights: In April, the administration disbanded the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which had once been home to the climatologist James Hansen, whose 1988 testimony before Congress was key to introducing the world to the climate threat. In August, Trump ordered a halt in the construction of the near-complete $US4 billion Revolution Wind project, a wind farm of 114 turbines off the coast of Rhode Island that by next year would have been providing enough electricity for 350,000 homes if the developer had been allowed to finish the job. Courts intervened, though days before Christmas, Trump again sought to force a halt to Revolution, and a second project called Empire Wind, also nearing completion. Trump has raged against wind energy ever since turbines were built near his golf course in Scotland. “I’ve studied it better than anybody I know,” he said in a 2019 speech. “I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much. They’re noisy. They kill the birds.” In September, Trump’s address to the United Nations General Assembly devolved into a rant against climate science and renewable energy. “This ‘climate change’, it’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” Trump said. “All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong.” Trump told world leaders, who listened in silence: “I’m really good at predicting things. I don’t say that in a braggadocious way, but it’s true. I’ve been right about everything. And I’m telling you that if you don’t get away from this green energy scam, your country is going to fail. “Radicalised environmentalists,” he said, wanted to “kill all the cows.“
What will it take for policymakers to take this more seriously? That’s the question a desperate-sounding Jeremy posed on local ABC talkback radio as he drove through central Victoria, which has been ravaged by bushfires for the past week, while his family was on the Great Ocean Road trapped by floodwaters. Queenslanders have been warned to brace for further flooding and heavy swells in coming days, as another cyclone threatens to form off the coast – even as recovery from ex-cyclone Koji continues. In both NSW and Victoria, authorities on the weekend warned people to limit the time they spend outdoors to reduce exposure to bushfire smoke. That smoke, it should be remembered, contains toxic particles from everything incinerated in the fires – not just trees and grass, but buildings, factories, vehicles, and more. Communities in southern New South Wales have been hit by fires. Communities in Queensland’s central highlands were urged to evacuate on Thursday morning as the Mackenzie River inched ever closer to its peak. Large areas of Western Australia remain gripped by severe heatwaves and fires. Hundreds have been made homeless by the Victorian bushfires. Many more are now homeless – tourists, thankfully temporarily – due to the flash flooding that swept through the Great Ocean Road and Gippsland on Thursday. These are not just “weather events”, and it’s not like we haven’t been warned. Climate scientists have been sounding the alarm for decades about the devastation that unchecked fossil fuel production and consumption, and the resulting warming, will bring. They have warned that a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, which exacerbates sudden storms, just like the one that smashed through the Great Ocean Road. And yet, there is a maddening tendency to treat each environmental crisis that climate change throws at us as another isolated incident. Surely, that pretence must now fall.
There was even a graph, in approved ABC Finance report style...
It's all a bit late.
Not that the pond is bitter, but see how that graph was performing back in 2010?
The pond remembers the glory days when the Nine rags, then under the name of Fairfax, hosted ratbags of the Paul Sheehan kind ...
...The subject of this column is not small. It is a book entitled Heaven And Earth, which will be published tomorrow. It has been written by one of Australia's foremost Earth scientists, Professor Ian Plimer. He is a confronting sort of individual, polite but gruff, courteous but combative. He can write extremely well, and Heaven And Earth is a brilliantly argued book by someone not intimidated by hostile majorities or intellectual fashions. The book's 500 pages and 230,000 words and 2311 footnotes are the product of 40 years' research and a depth and breadth of scholarship. As Plimer writes: "An understanding of climate requires an amalgamation of astronomy, solar physics, geology, geochronology, geochemistry, sedimentology, tectonics, palaeontology, palaeoecology, glaciology, climatology, meteorology, oceanography, ecology, archaeology and history." The most important point to remember about Plimer is that he is Australia's most eminent geologist. As such, he thinks about time very differently from most of us. He takes the long, long view. He looks at climate over geological, archaeological, historical and modern time. He writes: "Past climate changes, sea-level changes and catastrophes are written in stone." Much of what we have read about climate change, he argues, is rubbish, especially the computer modelling on which much current scientific opinion is based, which he describes as "primitive". Errors and distortions in computer modelling will be exposed in time. (As if on cue, the United Nations' peak scientific body on climate change was obliged to make an embarrassing admission last week that some of its computers models were wrong.)
And so on, and that's when it mattered, and that's when things might have been set in motion.
Instead the Nine rags went all in on click bait trolling with the likes of Miranda the Devine...
The Devine was in her prime back in February 2009:
So many people need not have died so horribly. The warnings have been there for a decade. If politicians are intent on whipping up a lynch mob to divert attention from their own culpability, it is not arsonists who should be hanging from lamp-posts but greenies.
...As a University of Adelaide geologist, Dr Ian Plimer, writes in his new book, Heaven And Earth, Global Warming: The Missing Science, scientists are usually "anarchic, bow to no authority and construct conclusions based on evidence … Science is not dogmatic and the science of any phenomenon is never settled." His dense book, crammed with 2311 footnotes, is a comprehensive scientific refutation of the beliefs underpinning the idea of human-caused climate change. "It is meant to be an overwhelming demolition job," said Plimer on the phone from Adelaide where he is preparing a field trip this weekend to Broken Hill to study rocks. He wrote the book, "for those out there with an open mind wanting to know more about how the planet works. The mind is like a parachute. It only works when it is open". From the geologist's perspective he says our climate has always changed in cycles, affected by such variables as the orbit of the planet and our distance from the sun, which itself produces variable amounts of radiation. One of the lessons of 500 million years of history, he says, is that there is no relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature.
Sorry Nick, sorry Bianca, it's long way past too late, and how much better if young Warwick had driven your rag into bankruptcy and oblivion.
Your rag helped pave the way for the onion muncher and his kind, and now the Devine panders to King Donald, climate science denialist in chief. Your rag was an enabler, complicit in the folly, for which we now see the fruits.
Of course your rag struggled to match the out and proud loonacy of the lizard Oz, and characters of the Lloydie of the Amazon kind. Cf Crikey ... (sorry paywall, but this is all of it):
Back to reptile studies and the reason the pond did that extended Tootle is that today is a comprehensive bust.
The pond should note that yesterday rabid Zionist Our Henry was out and about, gambolling in company with Gawenda ...
The pond will do no more than provide intermittent archive links ...
This is more than just a storm in a teacup. Our culture is being shredded;
The pond only notes it for diligent students and for those wanting to have a chortle at a rabidly intolerant bigot ranting about the need for tolerance in relation to this storm in a lizard Oz jihad teacup.
Another notable Zionist was also out and about and was still hanging around like a bad smell this morning ...
Conspiracy, hypocrisy: how Adler burned down Writers Week house How Louise Adler burned down the Adelaide Writers’ Week house Is this the biggest fiction? Louise Adler resigned over ‘Jewish lobby’ influence. Yet she allegedly tried to cancel a Pulitzer Prize winner herself, exposing contradictions in her free speech stance. By Michael Gawenda
Is there anything lower or more intellectually debasing than joining in a lizard Oz jihad? While alleging that apparently the board had no agency whatsoever in the matter?
One thing's certain - Jew on Jew action can be as wild as ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
As for debasement, Dame Slap blowing in from Planet Janet above the Faraway Tree was on hand to provide a definitive answer:
Remember when the reptile jihad was all about legislation and the quicker the better to pander to the Zionist lobby? But remember, the reptile spirit is to get them coming, and then going, and then coming and going again...
Have at her if you will, but the pond suspects that changing the behaviour of the current genocidal government of Israel might help.
As for the rest, the reason it's a bust is that this day's fare is what the pond calls headline nodders...
You read the headlines, and you nod, and perhaps say, "ah, so and thus", and then move on, knowing that all you need to know was embedded in the headlines ... while perhaps wondering, "is the lettuce still in with a shot?"
For some weird reason the reptiles have taken to encouraging chairman Xi and his minions on the Taiwan matter...
China says Australia must accept Taiwan reunification or face ‘no forgiveness’
Beijing’s ambassador has delivered a stark message comparing Taiwan to Tasmania while threatening Australia faces a choice between Chinese trade benefits and supporting Taiwan’s status quo. By Anthony Galloway
The pond likes to imagine that back in the 1930s the reptiles would regularly have provided space for Herr Joachim von Ribbentrop advising "prepare for reunified Germany, envoy warns".
What EXCLUSIVES those would have been...
How King Donald's Greenland putsch has empowered rogue states ...
The best the reptiles could muster was a mild clucking and tut-tutting from the lizard Oz editorialist buried deep in the commentary section ...
Perhaps the bromancer will surface later in the day, perhaps not.
As for the current lizard Oz jihad on Albo, his hate speech and gun laws, the reptiles continue to get him coming and going, but did he have to make it so easy for them?
Yet again the pond was reminded of that quote from The Wire:
Royce's ex-chief of staff, Coleman Parker, to Norman: "They always disappoint. Closer you get, the more you look. All of them."
Never mind, the pond always believes, with Scarlett, that tamarrah will be a better day ...or at least another one.
And so to end this day, the pond could have indulged in a survey of fine King Donald tweets ...
Instead a note by a correspondent sent the pond haring off to cartoons in ancient 1950s times ... where McCarthyism suggests King Donald isn't the exception, so much as the rule ...
There were a couple of sites worth a squiz ...Let Me Finish ...
I checked out the third volume of Walt Kelly’s Pogo strips, Evidence to the Contrary, which runs from from 1953 to 1954. As acknowledged in the notes at the back of the volume, this is when the strip started getting political, satirizing Joseph McCarthy and the fervor for weeding out communists. McCarthy is caricatured in Simple J. Malarkey, a rather sinister wildcat introduced as a cousin of occasional villain Wiley Catt. He’s assisted by Mole MacCarony, an extreme germophobe who walks around with a Flit gun that he sprays at just about everybody and everything, and later takes issue with migratory birds as well. He’s also incredibly near-sighted, as befits his species. He’s based on Patrick McCarran, an anti-communist senator from Nevada who supported limiting immigration and denying visas for ideological reasons. The two of them join Deacon Mushrat’s bird-watching club, with Malarkey taking it over by threatening the Deacon with a shotgun, and starts casting suspicion on everyone. The two are assumed to have killed each other in June 1953, but they both later reappear at a time when McCarthy was no longer being taken as seriously. MacCarony receives a taste of his own medicine when Albert accuses him of kidnapping with absolutely no evidence, and then starts a bomb scare when he mistakes a young woodchuck’s gibberish for subversive foreign speech. In August 1954, Malarkey shows up in the company of a badger named Charlie. He was named after someone called “Indian Charlie” whom McCarthy cited as his childhood mentor, but is drawn to look like Richard Nixon. Malarkey, MacCarony, and Charlie all wear sacks on their heads a few times, and while of course McCarthy wasn’t affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, Kelly wanted to point out the similarity of their paranoid prejudice. The satire is silly and absurd, yet would presumably have hit close to home when the strips first ran and McCarthy was surprisingly popular. After all, if you DIDN’T support him, he was liable to brand you a communist.
A few more samples ...
Truth to tell, back in the day, the pond was more MAD magazine, though not as early as this sample ...
In that panel you can see Roy Cohn whispering into McCarthy's ear, and the ghost of Roy is still whispering into King Donald's ear to this very day ...
Re Herb Lock, here's a few cartoons, found at PBS ...
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was ...
A final word on climate science.
Anyone interested in those ghastly days can refresh memories with a Kiwi academic paper, available in pdf form for download:
Actually grating Gemma might have done us all a favour by talking about Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi and his award-winning film It Was Just an Accident.
The pond has watched all of Panahi's low budget guerrilla outings and they stick in the mind ...
...All Panahi's films are banned in his home country, with the Iranian leadership accusing him of "propaganda against the system", because his often darkly comic, always socially conscious filmmaking challenges the status quo. Enduring house arrest and even going to prison in 2010 for his art, Panahi refuses to back down. In December 2025, he was tried in absentia for "propaganda activities" and now faces a year in prison and the resumption of his travel ban. While imprisoned, Panahi was brutally interrogated while blindfolded. He's poured this traumatic experience into the riveting screenplay of It Was Just an Accident. "When you are interrogated, blindfolded, your sense of hearing sharpens," Panahi explains. "You become so sensitive to the sound of the person behind you, and you get curious about who they are. How old is he? How tall?" The film features a group of similarly persecuted people, including mechanic Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), photographer, Shiva (Mariam Afshari) and a newly married couple, Goli and Ali (Hadis Pakbaten and Majid Panahi), who form an unlikely band of vigilantes. (ABC)
Well yes, why not celebrate a triumph snatched from the jaws of the malignant Mad Mullahs?
Truth to tell, the last thing the world needs is the Australian Zionist Daily News doing the same thing to Palestinians attempting to draw attention to the ongoing Gaza genocide and the endless ethnic cleansing, but here we are with the lizard Oz editorialist...
Groupthink is not free speech The next few weeks are not the time for tirades against Israel The Adelaide Writers Week meltdown isn’t a victory for free speech but a case study in ideology trumping judgment, exposing how far the cultural elite is from the national mood after Bondi.
It gets the pond every time ... whenever the reptiles blather about groupthink, the pond realises it's projection ... because every day is groupthink day in the hive mind.
Whenever they carry on about cultural 'leets, the pond is reminded how they nestle in the 'leet bosoms of the filthy rich Murdochians.
But the pond knew what this also meant.
The pond's Sunday favourite, prattling Polonius, would also go there, not least because he loathes all writers' festivals, because of the way they disrespect him, one of Australia's most astonishing writers, at least if you're astonished by tedious pedantry.
Before going there, please allow the pond a few Tootles, but where to go?
The pond would rather do in the liver with a Bex, a cup of tea and a nice lie down than go there.
And the pond wasn't going to go with the disgraced putz Pezzullo, still seeking his redemption via the reptiles ...
The warning signs of impending violence were there long before Bondi Beach ‘Kill the Jews’ echoed at the Opera House in October 2023. The terrorism threat level was raised to ‘probable’ in August 2024. Iranian agents directed attacks against Jewish Australians. Yet when asked if he’d imagined such an attack, the Prime Minister said no. By Mike Pezzullo
The lizard Oz hive mind is always a gravy train for adept grifters and snake oil salesmen ...
Nor could the pond visit Planet Janet above the Faraway Tree ...
The airline that made me fall back in love with Qantas Oh Air Canada, what a long dreary trip it’s been. Cracker rationing. Vanishing luggage. Cabin crew who wouldn’t know a smile if it boarded in first class. After 14 hours in business class that felt more like steerage, I’ve learnt an expensive lesson: never take Qantas for granted. By Janet Albrechtsen
Elbows up Canada, and here's a tip.
If you spot Dame Slap roaming wild-eyed in the street, likely without her celebratory MAGA cap on (she's dumb, but not that dumb), fix eyes on a bottle of maple syrup or stare off into the distance.
Even King Donald says you're on the right track ...
President Trump said Friday that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney should be making a trade deal with China, an economic U.S. adversary the president has been going after during his second term. “That’s OK. That’s what he should be doing. I mean, it’s a good thing for him to sign a trade deal. If you can get a deal with China, you should do that,” Trump told reporters in response to a question about what he thought of Canada and China announcing a trade deal between the two countries.
Just think of all those cheap EVs that the silly climate change inducing Yanks won't have.
And maybe when Dame Slap tips her filthy Murdochian paycheck into the Canadian economy, it might just help tip the balance.
With all those contenders ruled out, the pond hates to go there again, into the land of King Donald, but there must be room for a Baker's dozen..
Sure it was a four minute trawl over the same ground as that covered by the bromancer and jittery Joe yesterday, but you need at least three pundits to construct a camel.
At least he's an import, and how fitting is that for a foreign owned corporation very canny about paying taxes in Australia:
The header: Does Donald the Lame Duck await Trump?; The second year of second terms has tripped up many presidents – there are four challenges the 47th must overcome.
The caption: There are signs that Donald Trump’s vice-like grip on the Republican Party is slipping. Picture: AFP
This Baker sounded gloomy, as if elbows deep in lumpy King Donald dough:
The second year of a second term has typically been the most perilous for an American president in the modern era. Richard Nixon was forced from office in 1974; Ronald Reagan was undone by the Iran-Contra scandal in 1986; in 1998 the world learnt the name Monica Lewinsky, and Bill Clinton’s history was forever changed. George W. Bush’s presidency sank irretrievably in 2006 as Iraq descended into full-blown civil war. The second year of Donald Trump’s second term starts next week. We have seen enough over his career to know the old rules don’t apply. In the past 12 months he has overturned the political order at home and abroad. In just the first few days of 2026 he has already shown – from Venezuela to Greenland and Iran, from the streets of Minneapolis to the halls of the Federal Reserve – that he intends to double down on his second American Revolution.
The reptiles seized the chance to throw in AV distractions: US President Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to quell the protests in Minnesota. The Insurrection Act authorises the president to deploy military forces within the US to suppress rebellion, domestic violence, or to enforce the law. The protest in Minnesota escalated after an ICE agent fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis. Since Good’s death, a second non-fatal shooting has occurred in Minneapolis against a man wielding a shovel. The president also labelled the politicians of Minnesota “corrupt”, claiming they “don’t obey the law”.
The pond freely admits it overdid the 'toons yesterday, and might well make the same mistake again, because it's a sure way to cure a hangover ...
The bromancer might well have been startled by the tone:
Given his success in disdaining the conventions of US politics, only a fool would bet they would now apply to him. And yet there are signs that all the conditions of his political mortality are asserting themselves. His approval rating is near his lowest since he first took office in 2017. His vice-like grip on the Republican Party, achieved through the sheer force of personality and his cult-like following among supporters and the fear they strike into fellow Republicans, is slipping. The Supreme Court, until recently relatively pliant in its oversight of his various executive power grabs, has recently shown signs of resistance. While no one thinks the man who turns 80 this year is close to following his predecessor, Joe Biden, into rambling frailty, he is starting to display evidence of physical and mental deterioration. He faces the inevitable constraint on all second-term presidents imposed by the 22nd Amendment that limits incumbents to two terms: the looming end of his presidential rope. It seems the oldest of Washington cliches is beckoning with nominative aptness: Donald the Lame Duck. But the tumultuous year ahead is shaping up to be a struggle between two laws of physics: momentum and gravity. Will Trump and his MAGA allies be able to maintain the pace of radical change so his new order emerges before the laws of political gravity reassert themselves?
The reptiles followed up with a sublime AV distraction, blessed with a sublimely out of date caption: Venezuelan opposition leader MarÃa Corina Machado met with President Trump at the White House, where she offered him her Nobel Peace Prize, but did not confirm if he accepted it.
Did not confirm if he accepted it?
Oh come on, there was a great exchange of swag ...
The hapless Baker carried on his brooding:
Four factors threaten Trump’s presidency. The first is policy; specifically the two policies most responsible for his victory in 2024: immigration and the economy. Trump has had unparalleled success in curbing illegal immigration, as voters wanted him to do. But that very success means the focus of public attention has shifted from border protection to the removal of the millions of immigrants here illegally. Polling shows voters are increasingly uneasy at the spectacle of masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on the streets of cities, bundling brown-skinned people into unmarked vehicles. The killing last week of Renee Good, who was protesting at the scene of such a raid in Minneapolis, has shocked Americans. Trump’s support among Latino voters especially – crucial to his 2024 victory – is cratering. While economic growth remains strong, voters are concerned about “affordability”. Inflation soared under Biden, and Trump promised to bring down prices. But while the inflation rate has indeed fallen, prices continue to rise. The president’s apparent insouciance – he describes concerns over affordability as a Democratic “con job” – adds insult to injury. Unease about his policies translates into weakening public support. Trump’s approval rating stands just above 40 per cent, similar to that of his two two-term predecessors, but low enough to signal a big political setback for Republicans in the crucial midterm elections in November. This sets the conditions for the third and most important downgrade in Trump’s political authority: a widening crack-up in the MAGA coalition and the first real evidence of Republicans standing up to him. It began last year with Jeffrey Epstein and fury over Trump’s failure to deliver on the promised vast conspiracy imagined by the MAGA right. But it has steadily escalated.
The reptiles slipped in a distracting prof, Deakin University Islamic Politics Professor Greg Barton analyses US President Donald Trump’s patterns in the last 12 months to predict the President’s next moves concerning Iran. “His pattern these last 12 months is sort of quick, decisive actions that are sort of largely air-based, so no boots on the ground,” Dr Barton told Sky News host Steve Price. “Venezuela was exceptional.”
Be fair, it's worked out tremendously well thus far ...
In the past month growing numbers of Republicans have put their heads above the parapet: over his plans for redistricting in key states, and over Venezuela and threats to Greenland. Last weekend his justice department announced a criminal investigation of Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve (the politically independent US central bank) over alleged cost overruns. Trump has been furious with Powell for not cutting interest rates fast enough and this latest intervention was condemned by a succession of Republican senators. The last challenge is personal: Trump’s own physical and mental health. While the man’s personal foibles have long been central to his character, there are some in Washington who think they detect a clear age-related decline in his cognitive capacities. Policy failures, electoral jeopardy, internal party dissent, the challenges of age; none of these are new for a second-term president. They represent vectors of political gravity that would doom most leaders. But you don’t have to like him to know that Trump is not like any previous president. We can expect more tension between the conventional and radical realities. Trump seems increasingly intent on doing things that in normal circumstances would consign him and his party to oblivion. Polling shows large majorities of Americans don’t want him to invade Greenland, take over the Federal Reserve or fill city streets with paramilitary units. But his calculation seems to be from the classic revolutionary mindset: establishing the new reality creates its own authority. As the once unthinkable becomes routine, the new order acquires its own legitimacy. This will be the defining clash of the age. The Times
Take heart, it's all working out tremendously well ...
And so, after giving correspondents a chance to flee with that 'toon parade, on with the most tedious chore of the day ...
The header: Diversity of views never occurred on Louise Adler’s watch as Adelaide Writers Week director; Louise Adler’s defence is revealed as plain delulu, given the pile of evidence pointing to how Adelaide Writers Week functions have been leftist stacks under her watch.
The caption: Louise Adler appearing on 7.30 following her resignation from Adelaide Writers' Week. Picture: ABC
Yes, he went there, as the pond predicted and expected, and the pompous pedant was full of the worst kind of prattle ...what with the withered old wretch, a veritable Ebenezer more at home in Kidnapped pretending that he was with it, he was with vulgar youff ...
When Louise Adler appeared on ABC TV’s 7.30 on Tuesday, she certainly threw the switch to delusional – or delulu in modern-day slang.
Oh come on, it would have been much more in the Polonial spirit to talk of argot. Or maybe not. In his cantish way, Polonius doesn't have much time for the perfidious French.
As usual, it was the ABC that got Polonius going:
The former director of the Adelaide Festival’s Adelaide Writers Week was interviewed by Michael Rowland about the decision to cancel the 2026 AWW and her choice to step down as its director. As is well known, Adler invited controversial Macquarie University academic and writer Randa Abdel-Fattah to this year’s AWW. The invitation was withdrawn by the festival board, some of whose members resigned when the majority decision was made. Eventually all independent board members resigned and a new board was chosen by the South Australian government. Attention had been drawn to some of Abdel-Fattah’s social media posts, which included messages such as “If you are a Zionist, you have no claim or right to cultural safety”. The definition of a Zionist is someone who believes in the establishment of a Jewish state in the ancestral lands of the Jewish people. Namely, Israel.
Inevitably Polonius was going to go the full Morry, what with this still already having done the reptile rounds ... Publisher Morry Schwartz, centre, accused former Adelaide Writers Week director Louise Adler, left, of deliberately ‘wounding’ the festival by programming controversial academic Randa Abdel-Fattah.
Carry on Morrying ...
In the wake of the Bondi Beach terrorist massacre aimed at the Jewish community, it is understandable why some members of the festival board initially believed that this was not the time for platforming a speaker who has written that Zionists (Jews and gentiles alike) have no claim or right to cultural safety. Adler, who is Jewish, is an avowed critic of contemporary Israel. Since she took up the position of AWW director in 2023, she has provided speaking opportunities to opponents of Israel (including the occasional Jew). In other words, there has been scant viewpoint diversity in the program on the Middle East, among other issues. Adler’s decision was supported by 180 speakers who were scheduled to appear at the 2026 AWW and withdrew before the event was junked, including Australians such as Helen Garner, Jane Caro, Peter FitzSimons, John Lyons and so on. You get the picture. They, along with Adler, maintained that their gesture was a statement in support of freedom of expression in a democratic society. But was it? Adler defended her position on 7.30 by accusing the Adelaide Festival board’s decision as an act of “cultural vandalism” that had been brought about by “the pro-Israel lobby”. She asserted that Abdel-Fattah had not been invited to the AWW “because of her social media feed” and that, in any event, “they’re certainly deleted”. A convenient cop-out, don’t you think?
Inevitably the reptiles dug into the dirt ...A 2023 social media post by Ms Abdel-Fattah.
Never mind, Polonius has always been offended by the way that writers's festivals have ignored his genius, and it was payback time...
But there was more. Adler went on to claim that “this is a moment where freedom of expression matters and that’s what’s at stake here”. What absolute tosh. Adler’s AWW functions have been essentially leftist stacks – as I documented in these pages on February 25, 2023, and March 22, 2025. The 2024 and planned 2026 events were no different. In a cover story for The Spectator Australia in April 2011, I defined writers festivals as occasions when “a group of leftists invite their leftist friends to perform before an audience primarily made up of inner-city leftist luvvies, at the taxpayer’s expense”. In recent times, the most egregious examples of writers festivals as leftist stacks have been at the Sydney Writers Festival and the AWW. But the overwhelming majority reflect the Sydney and Adelaide events. If freedom of expression really mattered to Adler, she would provide a diversity of views – on Israel, Gaza and more besides. But this never occurred on her watch.
At this point the reptiles interrupted with a couple of familiar faces guaranteed to get the hive mind buzzing ...Peter FitzSimons withdrew before the event was junked … as did Jane Caro.
(Tip to reptile graphics department. Always pick snaps that demean and ridicule, or look grim).
Could it get any worse?
Of course it could. See how Polonius invites Lord Downer and his spawn to the feast:
Writing in Adelaide’s The Advertiser on January 11, Adelaide-based Nicky Downer (an arts administrator of long standing) and Alexander Downer (the former Australian foreign minister) described the AWW as “a conservative-free zone” devoid of “viewpoint diversity”. A bit like the ABC. The Downers wrote that, when donating to the AWW in 2024, they asked Adler “about the lack of representation of more liberal/conservative views” in the program. Adler responded “that when she did ask someone from the right, they would invariably decline her invitation”, they wrote. The Downers added: “Another (Adler) excuse was that people on the right just don’t write books; we suggested a few names, but when it came to settling the program, none were featured.” Adler’s excuse is simply false; political conservatives do write books.
Implicit in that?
Polonius writes books too, but when have they given the old codger a fair crack at the sauce bottle, but do carry on ...
Morry Schwartz, publisher of The Saturday Paper and Quarterly Essay, is no conservative.
Say what? He might purport to be a leftie but his Zionism has caused something of a fuss ...
And then ... as already noted by the pond, Morry's an extreme Zionist, out, loud and proud, an enthusiastic devotee of the killing fields:
At this point the reptiles flung in a distracting post to bolster the Polonial cause ...A 2024 social media post by Ms Abdel-Fattah.
Note that Abel-Fattah references "cultural safety".
Is that any more problematic than the cultural abuse offered each day by the Australian Daily Zionist News? Which offers a safe space for many reptiles to espouse their ethnic cleansing Zionist ideology?
Polonis followed with more Morry ...
He blames Adler for the disaster that has befallen AWW. In a letter to The Australian on January 13 Schwartz wrote: “Adler knew well that including Dr Randa Abdel-Fattah … 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.”
Sydney business figure and arts aficionado Tony Berg (who was a member of the festival board) wrote to The Australian on January 15 in the following terms: “I am now utterly astonished at Louise Adler’s statement in her resignation letter in support of free speech. I am likewise surprised by Randa Abdel-Fattah’s invocation of free speech and her outrage at being ‘cancelled’. They both exhibit hypocrisy in defending free speech for some, when I observed them both to stridently oppose free speech during my time on the board.”
More on that in a moment ... first the pond has to get two snaps out of the way ...Thomas Friedman … deplatformed...Tony Berg … ‘utterly astonished’.
Polonius then went full Friedman ...
Berg reported that Adler and Abdel-Fattah succeeded in having New York Times columnist Tom Friedman deplatformed with respect to the 2024 AWW. This has not been denied.
This should give an idea of how incestuous the hive mind is, because that Polonial link didn't lead to Friedman, it led to this, as a way of keeping docile minds inside the hive ...
Now in actual fact - Polonius has rarely been troubled by the facts of a matter - there have been denials of a kind.
...Adler responded to Berg’s allegations by accusing the former board member of breaching board confidentiality. “I consider discussions of the board table to be confidential,” she said in a prepared statement. “I’m rather surprised that a former CEO of Macquarie Bank has breached those confidences. It’s indicative of the way the former board operated, and I believe will make for a rich case study for future management students.” Abdel-Fattah disputed Berg’s claims that she, along with Adler, led the charge to cancel Friedman. “I was one of 10 Indigenous and academics of colour who wrote a researched letter with references and footnotes about the harm of racial tropes,” she said in a statement to Guardian Australia. “What is missing in this is the question of power. We write letters on Google Docs to boards. The people who want to cancel us have premiers intervening.” Since last Thursday, the South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, has denied any direct interference, insisting the board acted independently.
We know that the mendacious Malinauskas was all in, and has stayed all in, and Friedman's appearance was just by way of a video link ... but it was passing strange is that the indignant and righteous Berg didn't bother resigning in relation to the Friedman matter ...
At the time, a group of 10 academics had signed a petition demanding Friedman’s removal due to a controversial column he had written in the New York Times days earlier, which compared the Middle East conflict to the animal kingdom. The Palestinian author and academic Randa Abdel-Fattah, who was uninvited from this year’s writers’ week, was among the group. When Friedman was notified, the academics were sent a letter by the board saying that requesting the cancellation of an artist or writer was an “extremely serious” issue. “We have an international reputation for supporting artistic freedom of expression,” the letter signed by the board’s chair, Tracey Whiting, said. “Thomas L Friedman was programmed to contribute online from New York. However, I have been advised that due to last-minute scheduling issues, he is no longer participating in this year’s program.” Whiting resigned as the chair of the festival board on Saturday. Guardian Australia has been unable to reach her for comment.
Instead ...
Berg’s letter was tendered on 22 October to Whiting, South Australian arts minister Andrea Michaels and the Adelaide festival’s executive director, Julian Hobba.
“I cannot serve on a board which employs a director of Adelaide Writers Week (AWW) … who programs writers who have a vendetta against Israel and Zionism,” Berg wrote in his resignation email.
“That the director programs pro-Palestinians and anti-Zionists is well known. The Board has encouraged her to program writers who might have a different perspective. She resolutely fails to do so.”
He waited an unseemly amount of time to act ... and yet he claims to have seethed at the treatment of the malodorous Friedman.
Perhaps Polonius should have provided, or been provided, with a link to that malodorous Friedman NY Times outing...
Never mind the way that Benji cultivated that trap door spider, feeding it Qatar cash. Cf Le Monde ...
All that insufferable, insulting entyomology provoked a right royal fuss, and Friedman tried a tactical retreat and a half-baked wannabe apology ...
The miracle, considering Friedman's form, was that he was ever given an offer to visit that Moscow on the Torrens where maiden aunts sit on verandahs and croweaters fail to do olives the Don Dunstan way, but then the both siderist NY Times always dresses up its toads as important figures and keen pundits without any ideological bias (if the pond might continue the biological metaphor):
Say one thing for Polonius, at least he allowed the pond a chance to take a look at yet another disreputable NY Times figure ...
But in his final thrust Polonius invokes Sharri, and, despite offering full disrespect, the pond simply can't go there ...
As Elizabeth Pike reported in these pages on January 15, Abdel-Fattah was one of several high-profile figures who revealed personal details of 600 Jewish creatives. She commented at the time that the list provided “critical insight into how Zionists organise and operate in so-called progressive arts, academic and media spaces”. Moreover, as Sharri Markson revealed on Sky News last Wednesday, when interviewed on the We Used to be Journos podcast on January 14 Abdel-Fattah declared that “Zionism should not be platformed”. In announcing her resignation in The Guardian Australia on January 13, Adler opined that South Australia’s “tourism slogan could be ‘Welcome to Moscow on the Torrens’ ” – ignoring the fact that, from 2022, in Russia 30 journalists have been imprisoned, one of whom was killed. This makes Adler’s Adelaide/Moscow description somewhat delusional. The same description can be applied to those who consider Abdel-Fattah a hero of the free speech cause.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.
