In which Killer of the IPA and Major Mitchell get the holyday Monday nod, with commendations for some reptile triers (and they can be very trying)...

 

Knock the pond down again.

Just after John Birmingham had his EV rant and linked to The Drive, a certain Lisa Visentin did it again in the Nine rags with ‘Made in China’ EVs are taking over the streets, but just how safe is your data? (*intermittent archive link)

Lisa rabbited on endlessly about the dangers of the perfidious Chinese, but what of Uncle Leon getting all your data? How weird and deviant is that, but only deemed worthy of a sideways mention. 

And what of all the data collection by German and Indian and American manufacturers? What, if you own a reasonably modern gas guzzler, will happen to all the data stored in your OBD port? Like in your Merc?

Not to worry, it's just standard rant suffused with paranoid fear of the Chinese.

Well Chairman Xi is welcome to the pond's data, though the pond suspects that a weekly trip to do groceries might result in extreme ennui for him.

As for celebrities and "important people", take note of whatever your vehicle is doing, be it EV or gas guzzler, because all forms of modern cars collects data and your friendly local mechanic can download it and tip off your local Daily Terror reporter.

And so to the reptiles this holiday Monday (it's a holiday here and tough luck if you don't get seasonal benefits).

The Lynch mob was out and about scribbling ...

Latest assassination attempt reveals power of Trump’s luck
It turns out luck is an important ingredient of presidential success – the luck of staying alive perhaps chief among them.
By Timothy Lynch
Contributor

The pond supposes it should pay some attention to the latest attempt to whack the King, but "Luck" is a funny way to describe the singular incompetence of the wannabe assassin, matched only by the singular incompetence of the security team surrounding King Donald.

The pond doesn't want to spend a long time defaming the University of Melbourne, and so offers only this closing gobbet (spoiler alert) as part of the ongoing evidence...

...Having spent my career in the social sciences, I’m struck by how resistant the field has been to this insight. We tend to privilege grand, monocausal explanations. For much of the past century and a half, Marxian economic determinism cast a long shadow over the humanities.
More recently, class has given way to analytical frameworks that foreground race and gender as primary engines of historical change. What unites these approaches is a shared discomfort with chance: an impulse to impose coherence and necessity where accident and unpredictability so often rule.
An academic lifetime can pass in the patient work of making the evidence line up with one’s favoured structure. Trump’s failed assassins force us to appreciate the man’s sheer good fortune unrelated to any underlying structural factors. It turns out luck (what the great theorist of executive power, Niccolo Machiavelli, called “fortuna”) is an important ingredient of presidential success – the luck of staying alive perhaps chief among them.
The 46 men who have been president of the United States are among the most studied in history. And yet it is less what political scientists call structure and more fate that controls the destiny of this select group of men. It is often blind chance and good luck which explains why we have such contrasting presidencies to assess.
It is uncomfortable to admit that “crazy people” and “whack jobs” can change history. But Trump is living proof of this claim.

Talk about a whack job ...

Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne

It's hard to know where to begin with that sort of mystical nonsense - the answer apparently lies in the soil - so the pond didn't bother...

Additionally the pond decided not to participate in the latest round of lizard Oz black bashing ...

If welcomes to country were used sparingly, they’d acquire broader support
Indigenous Australians have served with distinction, but on Anzac Day that service is part of the same story, not a separate one.
By Louise Clegg

Thank the long absent lord the intermittent archive is up and running this day, so the pond need only do a teaser trailer with the closer ...

...In Goulburn, where I live, our local RSL committee has always taken a wise approach, consistent with what occurs in many country towns. The Anzac Day service proceeds without a welcome to country or an Indigenous flag. No statement is made about it. No point is proved. No one from our Indigenous community has ever complained about its absence. It is simply understood that, on this day, many people come for a particular kind of remembrance, and that nothing should be introduced that risks unsettling that shared purpose.
Anzac Day does not require augmentation. It is not an occasion to layer on another strand of our national story.
Indigenous Australians have served this country with distinction, and their sacrifice forms part of the Anzac story. But on Anzac Day that service is part of the same story, not a separate one. The losses are equal. The grief is equal. The remembrance is shared.
It is a blessing that governments bear no responsibility for Anzac Day. But those in the RSL responsible for designing services in our major cities would be wise to follow the commonsense approach of their country counterparts.

Well played Louise. You didn't actually applaud the booers, the neo-Nazis and the white supremacists, but you provided fine arguments for them and incidentally, for some peculiar reason, bolstered the bigoted beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way in his bigotry ... as he heads down the road of becoming an extreme right warrior at one with Pauline ...

The pond also avoided the latest example of the latest reptile jihad ... an endless fascination with Lattouf ...

Lattouf’s latest career move appears to be no joke
Post ABC saga, Antoinette Lattouf’s career takes a funny direction
After attempting to reduce Ita Buttrose’s immense publishing legacy to an ABC saga, the controversial figure seems to be giving up journalism for another pursuit.
By Steve Jackson

There's something awesomely sick (and fully sickening) in the way the reptiles keep up their jihads long after everybody else has stopped caring, or tries to muster up the slightest interest.

The pond will note for the record the bog standard offering by simpleton Simon ...

Labor’s overall tax take is headed in one direction
Chalmers is promising tax reform, but all the so-called reforms floated appear to amount to the overall tax take going in one direction.
By Simon Benson

Contrary to the reptiles, the pond doesn't mind the rich being asked to shoulder a little of society's burdens, but does admire the way that the supine lickspittle reptiles of Oz serve their rich masters.

That noted, for bashing Jimbo or offering economic advice,the pond will rarely stray beyond Dame Groan or Killer of the IPA, and his Killernomics was on parade this day ...

The header: Move over, Gough. PM’s spending addiction won’t age well; After almost four years of the Albanese government, it’s time to declare it worse than Gough Whitlam’s.

The caption: Anthony Albanese leaves the Museum of Australian Democracy in Canberra after delivering his speech, 50 years since Gough Whitlam's shock dismissal. Picture: Martin Ollman

The pond has noted this tendency before - the way that the reptiles love to romp in ancient times, presumably because anyone under seventy doesn't qualify as part of the demographic.

The pond supposes that a 50 year anniversary should cut some sort of mustard, but the dismissal took place on the 11th November, which is a long way from the 27th April.

Couldn't have Killer saved his rant to then? 

Well no, Gough's not really the point. He's just a sock puppet from ancient times that Killer can use as a clumsy cudgel to give comrade Albo a pounding, though the pond has a few bob (verifiable shillings) on Kalshi betting that it has absolutely diddly squat meaning for vulgar youff ...

After almost four years of the Albanese government, it’s time to declare it worse than Gough Whitlam’s. The polarising former Labor leader led a chaotic, short-lived government in the early 1970s that ended spectacularly, but this government’s legacy will ultimately be worse, both culturally and economically.
Nations can deteriorate for reasons beyond their control; invading foreign armies or, less dramatically, a severe slump in demand for their exports. We’ve endured none of that yet living standards have been slipping by more than any other developed nation, largely through deliberate policy choices, including massive immigration levels and destruction of a once reliable cheap energy grid.
For all the talk of social cohesion, the national mood and sense of collective purpose is weaker than ever, amid extreme crackdowns on free speech that Whitlam would have thought unthinkable. GDP per capita, a common proxy for living standards, has steadily fallen in roughly two-thirds of the last 15 quarters – the longest sustained decline ever.
Even on the government’s own biased measures (which exclude the price of buying a home, interest rates and taxes), real wages (after inflation) are down more than 6 per cent since 2020.
At least Gough, who also had the redeeming quality of eloquence and erudition, occasionally displayed some economic sense. His government cut tariffs by 25 per cent across the board in 1973, helping open Australia up to the world.
The Albanese government’s contributions have been a roll call of recklessness, spending billions to buy university student votes, $300 electricity bill handouts, supercharging doctors’ incomes with $8.5bn of “incentives”, and bailing out steelworks and smelters its own emissions policies had made unviable. Meanwhile the NDIS, the centrepiece of the government’s so-called “care economy”, remains a policy disaster of epic proportions, and threatens to corrupt the entire nation.

For some reason the reptiles were determined to undermine Killer's work by reminding the geriatric demographic that he wasn't actually scribbling on the actual anniversary ...

Gough Whitlam addresses the crowds from the steps of Parliament House after his dismissal by Sir John Kerr, November 11, 1975. Picture: National Archives

And here we are on the 27th April, and the pond reckons this "we'll all be rooned" routine is up there with Dame Groan's always reliable output ...

Quite aside from a fiscal cost near the defence budget, the share of Australians who claim to be disabled has shot up from 17.7 per cent to 21.4 per cent in only a few years on ABS figures.
At the same time, Anthony Albanese is seeking to make childcare universal and publicly funded, adding a whole vast new layer of bureaucracy and cost at a time relentless bracket creep struggles to keep up with federal spending growth above 8 per cent a year.
Gough lifted federal spending from around 18 per cent to 24 per cent of GDP, where it roughly was when Labor won the 2022 election.
Canberra’s footprint will be almost 27 per cent by June, the biggest ever outside the Covid pandemic years, and only the naive would believe federal spending growth will collapse from 8.2 per cent this financial year to 3.1 per cent next, as the latest budget update predicts.
Whitlam famously expanded the commonwealth bureaucracy, lifting public service numbers by more than 20 per cent in just three years. Yet the Albanese government added roughly 40,000 federal public servants in his first few years, a larger increase in raw numbers, albeit from a far higher base. With a third term quite possible, Albanese could easily beat Whitlam on these measures too.

How weird does it get? Well to make sure that comrade Albo goes under the hammer, Killer of the IPA has to indulge in rampant reptile heresy ...

Gough ran a more fiscally honest administration, running budget surpluses every year of his administration. 

Is Killer suggesting the Dismissal was wrong?!

Stunning stuff ... and the pond almost thought of referring Killer to the reptile Inquisition for the misrepresentation of reptile history:

Federal public debt recently burst through $1 trillion, and Jim Chalmers has pencilled in $35bn federal deficits in each of the next four years as the soaring tax take fails to keep pace with spending.
Whitlam was honest about his intentions whereas Australia under Albanese is becoming a command economy by stealth.
Gough had the 1973 oil price shock to deal with too, in which oil prices almost quadrupled overnight, pushing up inflation in our then highly oil-dependent economy to almost 18 per cent.
Even before the latest Middle East war broke out, Australia’s inflation rate was almost 4 per cent, the highest in the OECD outside Turkey, and rising.

The pond supposes that these days it wouldn't be a proper reptile piece without the Bolter and the Canavan caravan joining in the parade ...

Nationals Senator Matt Canavan comments on Anthony Albanese’s reigniting the dismissal of Gough Whitlam 50 years later. “We’ve always known that the reason Anthony Albanese is in politics is to fight Tories,” Mr Canavan told Sky News host Andrew Bolt. “Perhaps it would be better, though, if Anthony Albanese’s purpose was to lift the standards of all Australians.”

Killer followed up that visitation by a final gobbet of despair ...

Whitlam didn’t enjoy the extraordinary global demand for Australia’s resources Canberra still does, providing a deluge of company tax revenue that helps paper over the economy’s otherwise structural weakness.
No wonder the nation’s productivity growth over the past five years has averaged -0.4 per cent, the worst period on record, dragged down by an ever-larger non-market sector, according to the Productivity Commission. Around four-fifths of all new jobs are in the government or de facto government sector, something unthinkable in Gough’s day.
Whitlam made university education free when academic standards were still high and very few people attended. His government full dismantled the remnants of the White Australia policy but he didn’t seek to flood the nation with millions of workers from developing countries in a way that would obviously undermine native-born Australians’ quality of life and incomes.
Look no further than speculation leading up to the May budget for hard evidence of the weakness and cluelessness of the current government, despite having a huge parliamentary majority. Reducing spending growth of the NDIS from above 10 per cent to near 5 per cent sometime over the next few years is supposed to be a highlight.
Some minor changes to the capital gains tax regime are also planned – in the only budget far enough out from the next election where the government could actually make difficult decisions that would upset its voter base. Voters increasingly take the same dim view: Labor was thrashed at the 1975 election yet still managed to pull just over 40 per cent of the primary vote; 50 years later the party will be lucky to win 30 per cent at the next election.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Well played Killer, though the pond did wonder if the country, seemingly having survived Gough, might also survive time with comrade Albo. 

After all, we survived the onion muncher and Malware, so anything is possible ...

And after that burst of Killernomics and in the absence of the Caterist, the pond turned to the Major for a standard serve of Monday bigotry and bile.

Before beginning, the pond should note this delicious splash in Crikey (sorry, it's behind a paywall)

Just the header will do, and in a perverse way, it sets a tone for the Major's musings ...

The header: Let’s stop tiptoeing around Islamic intolerance and immigration; Australia needs to adopt a mature focus on the cultural integration of migrants, and the media must shed its naivety about multiculturalism.

The caption: Accused Bondi gunman Naveed Akram studied under ISIS-linked radical preacher Wissam Haddad in Sydney’s Bankstown Picture: Matrix News for the Daily Mail

The notion that the Major would ever tiptoe when he can perform like a bigoted bull in a China shop is a whimsical one.

The aim here is to bolster the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn's way in his attempt to start up a kind of war King Donald style down under.

It's part of an ongoing paranoid campaign, jihad if you will ...

Former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott was a speaker at the event. His speech had the title, "Mass migration across the Anglosphere must cease". (ABC here)

How naked can it get? Even more than that serve of white Xian nationalism?

As ugly as the way that King Donald has divided America and incidentally contributed to the ruination of many businesses that rely on migrant labour ...

Enough already with the introductions, time to get with the Major, chomping on his bigoted oats ...

Journalists are often quick to channel discussions about immigration into questions of political motivation.
ABC Insiders host David Speers was keen on April 19 to move the discussion on when both The Australian Financial Review’s Jennifer Hewett and news.com.au’s Samantha Maiden mentioned public concern about immigration.
Speers and his panel, which also included journalist Osman Faruqi, were discussing a speech by Opposition Leader Angus Taylor on April 14. Taylor flagged a new values test and other measures to vet potential immigrants.
Speers framed Taylor’s speech as a strategy for the May 9 Farrer by-election designed to boost the Coalition’s prospects against a surging One Nation.
Pakistan-born Faruqi, son of Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi and a one-time adviser to former Senator Lee Rhiannon, was sure the pivot would not work.
Hewett thought many Australians, including those not backing One Nation, were concerned immigration was too high. She said the Coalition was sending a coded message about values because it did not want to mention Muslim immigrants and thought Taylor was being careful not to offend Chinese and Indian migrants by not outlining specific cuts to the program.
Maiden said many social democrat governments were having similar discussions about migration, and referenced Denmark.
Hewett said more than 31 per cent of Australians today were born overseas, double the numbers in the UK and US.
Speers, Maiden and Faruqi seemed to agree Taylor’s approach “may not be racist enough” to appeal to One Nation voters but too racist for others.

Oh be fair, he's working hard to become a modern day Pauline, giving her preferences and doing all the things that racists do, and just to make sure we know this is a tribute to his ways, the reptiles slipped in a hagiographic snap of the bigot in chief, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has flagged a new values test. Picture: John Gass

Black people, brown people? He, and Louise and the Major have got it all covered ...

Taylor was motivated by One Nation’s poll surge. But Australia has been tiptoeing around the edges of wider issues about integration and multiculturalism since the September 2001 terror attacks in the US and the Bali bombings a year later.
This newspaper editorialised many times back then that democracies needed to be careful about allowing intolerant groups into nations built on the idea of tolerance: how much intolerance can a social democracy tolerate before its very nature is undermined?
That’s the question the Danes addressed in 2018 when they decided all Muslim immigrant children were to learn Danish, read Danish stories and taught the meaning of Christmas and Easter.
Denmark was rocked by Islamic intolerance in 2005 when a Danish newspaper published 12 cartoonists’ images of Mohammed. Nearly 200 people were killed in riots around the world and Danish embassies were targeted.
The English literary set got its Muslim tolerance wake-up much earlier, in 1989, when Iran’s first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against writer Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses.
France in 2010 banned the wearing of Muslim full-face veils in public. The January 2015 Charlie Hebdo murders of 17 people, again over cartoons Muslims considered disrespectful to Islam, forced France tore-examine its attitude to one of Europe’s largest Muslim populations. France has seven million Muslim immigrants, about nine per cent of its population.
The controversial 2015 novel Submission, by French writer Michel Houellebecq, was a hit in France and Germany. It centres on the fictional 2022 election of a Muslim government in France and was branded “Islamophobic”.
The issue was turbocharged again by the 2017 publication of conservative UK journalist Douglas Murray’s examination of Islam’s expanding European footprint, The Strange Death of Europe.
In Australia it was crickets, for the most part.
But weekly demonstrations for more than two years supporting Palestine (in effect Hamas) and Iran, and the massacre of 15 people at Bondi on December 14, are changing that.
It was different after the Bali bombing and again in 2013-15 when some Muslim Australians went to Syria to fight for ISIS.
The ABC and left media between 2001 and 2015 largely ignored investigating domestic Muslim extremism, but it was covered extensively in The Australian by the likes of Cameron Stewart, Paul Maley, Martin Chulov and Sally Neighbour.
The ABC criticised The Australian in 2014 for publishing a page one photo of Sydney terrorist Khaled Sharrouf in Syria with his son carrying a severed head.

The pond wasn't surprised that the Major would revert to sensationalist glory days, so the least the pond could do was downsize the image ... The front page of The Australian on Monday, August 11, 2014

As tacky as it ever was ... but don't expect the Major or the reptiles to show a snap of some schoolgirl graveyards ...

There's no end to the atrocities to fuel the rage on both sides.

The Major carried on ...

Again, the newspaper was criticised when it hired an Arabic-speaking Druze journalist to attend mosques in Sydney and Melbourne.

At this point the pond must interrupt to note the way that logarithms can play funny tricks, in a way that makes you doubt your sanity.

For some reason an actual Tucker Carlson monologue turned up on the pond's feed. The pond only watched the monologue bit of Tucker responds to Israel's Attacks on Jesus Christ ...and only includes the link here because it's certain to offend the Major ...(strong warning, it's the first time the pond ever saw a Carlson monologue. Do you really need to soil yourself? Do you really need to encourage the criminal behaviour of the pond's logarithms?)

Now the Bondi massacre has forced the wider media to look at extremist hate preachers.
Journalists need to look at the role of the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates that are taking a long view of the demographic challenges Islam presents the West.
The Jerusalem Post on December 18 published a piece under the headline ‘Europe is sleepwalking into the Muslim Brotherhood’s long game’ by veteran British diplomat Edmund Fitton-Brown and security and counter-terrorism expert Eran M. Teboul.
The article opens with a 2007 quote from the late Brotherhood intellectual Yusuf al-Qaradawi: “Islam will conquer Europe without resorting to the sword or fighting. It will do this through da’wah and ideology.”
Those, and a much higher birthrate than their host nations.
Da’wah is “education, charity and social aid, meant to bring others closer to Islam”.
In Australia, alleged Bondi shooter Naveed Akram studied under ISIS-linked radical preacher Wissam Haddad at the Al Madina Dawah Centre in Sydney’s Bankstown.

As expected, it didn't take long for the Major to drift off into Australian Daily Zionist News speak ...

Islamic preacher Wissam Haddad has faced court over alleged anti-Semitic speeches. Picture: Jane Dempster

The Jerusalem Post is a fine complement to the Australian Daily Zionist News ...

The Jerusalem Post points out the Brotherhood has been banned in Egypt and most Gulf countries for 30 years, but is thriving in Europe.
“The basic freedoms and rights given by European democracies are an enabler. Freedom of speech enables endless … protests against Israel.
“Freedom of religion is exploited to allow hate preaching. Freedom of the press allows … ubiquitous penetration by Al Jazeera.
“Freedom of association is exploited by charities and political action groups, whilst the right to privacy offers a firewall for activities hostile to the host nation.”
It’s not just Europe.
Islamists are murdering Christians in Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan. Readers who follow MEMRI (the Middle East Media Research Institute) will be aware of rising activism by Muslim hate preachers in the US.
Dearborn, Michigan, is 55 per cent Muslim.
Its Muslim mayor last September demanded a Christian minister on the city’s council leave Dearborn after criticising the renaming of an intersection after a prominent Hezbollah supporter.
Christianity was not long ago the dominant religion in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt (Coptic), Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya. Sudan and Somalia were Christian and animist.

At this point, having had his fun, the Major slipped in an obligatory billy goat butt, in the form of a "none":

None of this means most Muslims here are not good Australians. Nor at only three per cent of the population is Islam likely to become our dominant religion. 

But as soon as you get that sort of butt, as sure as hell you're going to get another butt ...

But we do need a mature focus on integration and less naivety about multiculturalism.

But that means diddly squat, a faux attempt at meaningless piety, with "mature" and "naivety" flung about as a way to soften the rampant bigotry.

Cue a final snap ...Dr Jamal Rifi has worked to stop young Sydney Muslims joining ISIS in Syria. Picture: John Feder

One thing's certain.

Each time the pond reads the lizards of Oz, it gets dangerously radicalised and this sort of closing puffery does nothing to help ...

This newspaper in 2015 made Lebanese-born doctor Jamal Rifi – a campaigner against the Muslim Votes Matter group at last year’s federal election – its Australian of the Year. Rifi had worked to stop young Sydney Muslims joining ISIS in Syria.
Sky News Australia chief executive Paul Whittaker, then editor of The Daily Telegraph, awarded Rifi the newspaper’s Pride of Australia Fair Go Medal the previous year.
It was a time when newspapers had the resources to cover the ethnic tribes of our biggest cities.

The pond has nothing against Jamal Rifi, except perhaps that he's sailed too close to the reptile sun.

But isn't he one of those pesky, difficult furriners the beefy boofhead and the lizards of Oz keep warning us about?

And speaking of privacy of data, as Lisa did at the start of the show, here's some juice for her next piece ...

And so to end with a little bit of light holyday fun ... (speaking of strange logarithms) ...

In which the Angelic one sets the pace for prattling Polonius, the disgraced Pelluzzo and the lizard Oz editorialist...

 

Knock the pond down with a feather and pleased, do it gently.

The pond had to do a double take, and then save this lizard Oz piece for the meditative Sunday outing ...

Amidst all the war mongering and carry on that came with yesterday's Australian Daily Zionist News, the Angelic one turned up with this ...

Two Anzac brothers’ horror: gassed, amputated, traumatised
A family’s sixth-generation Australian story reveals the devastating truth about what happened when young men ignored warnings about a ‘foreign war’.
By Angela Shanahan

It's there in the intermittent archive.

The pond didn't need to relive the "great" war narrative through the lives the Angelic one  describes.

There are millions of such stories, and this is the time of year the pond gets triggered and is reminded of a deeply unhappy grandfather who served as a machine gunner in the battle of the Somme.

He returned home a shell of a man, tormented by nightmares, and the pond doesn't need to be reminded of his alcohol-fuelled rages.

But the Angelic one's wrap up to her piece commanded the pond's attention ...

...After the war both brothers felt fortunate to get out of the army alive. Neither was interested in Anzac Day and, like most returned soldiers, would not speak outside the family about something they regarded as unspeakable. Instead they both carried on in their careers. Fred had a family and drove a specially altered Buick car. Ernest stayed in the family tailoring business, always immaculately dressed, and spent many long afternoons at the races with handy visits to us in Randwick.
When I hear very young people today parroting jingoistic claptrap they have overheard about the original Anzacs “fighting for Australia”, I always think about those two, who fortunately survived to realise the error of joining in 1915. I also think about them when I hear failed politicians, commentators and other armchair warriors wanting “boots on the ground” for yet another failed enterprise on the other side of the world – just as futile as that war that was supposed to end all wars.

Say what?

The pond was beguiled and entranced by the Angelic one's talk of jingoistic claptrap - of the kind that litters the lizard Oz - followed by talk of commentators and armchair warriors wanting boots on the ground for yet another failed enterprise. 

It's as if she'd read the bromancer and the dog botherer, and decided to take aim at those failed commentators and armchair warriors, and by extension the whole of the useless rag.

Who knew that the pond and the Angelic one could share a moment?

Who knew she'd preemptively dismiss all that claptrap that turns up down below?

It made the pond's day, it lifted the spirits, and it was sorely needed because ... prattling Polonius ... armchair warrior and failed commentator supreme ...

The header: Australian War Memorial becomes a battleground; Critics claim Anzac Day no longer connects with multicultural Australia, but the commemoration remains vital for a nation built on sacrifice and democratic values.

The caption which doesn't identify the rogues who decided to drag a Shetland pony into the affair: Soldiers of the 1st Battalion Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR), march through the town of Charters Towers as part of the Anzac Day Parade along with their unit mascot Septimus Quintus.

It didn't take Polonius long to get into war monger mode ...

It’s increasingly fashionable among the left intelligentsia these days to query the point of Anzac Day. Come to think of it, mocking April 25 and what it stands for was around in the 1960s. What’s different now is that a target of the criticism is the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Last Monday, historian Peter Stanley was interviewed by David Marr on ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live program. Stanley maintains that the Australian War Memorial turned itself into a tourist attraction 20 years ago. Presumably it’s a case of “travellers” looking down on mere “tourists”.
It was one of those interviews where Marr essentially agreed with Stanley and Stanley essentially agreed with Marr.
Asked about the challenges to the way in which we will celebrate Anzac Day in the near future, Stanley replied that one of the big differences is the sheer changes in Australian demography. He said the Australia that created Anzac Day was 95 per cent, or thereabouts, Anglo-Celtic.
Stanley’s argument is that, if we are not careful, we will have a society in which a section has, at times, an intense but mostly lukewarm connection to Anzac Day. And another large minority that feels no connection to April 25.
We shall see. It is my experience that crowds at Anzac Day football matches these days are probably more attentive to the remembrance part of the occasion than they were a half-century ago when commercial sport was first played on April 25.

The pond was bemused. 

Is Polonius a footy freak, so much so that he's attended matches for half a century and so is in a position to provide a judicious survey and summary of the mood of the punters.

Does he have a team?

It seems so ...

The great Gerard Henderson, the Executive Director of the Sydney Institute is from Melbourne. He loves his AFL, and I couldn’t resist referring to his beloved Essendon Football Club, which, just like the Liberal Party, had once experienced success but now had fallen on hard times and was accused by its critics of ‘lacking an identity’. (Essendon hasn’t won a final in twenty years.) (Here)

So he's a fanatic, and worse, a loser fanatic, and the pond couldn't help but think less of him for it ...as Polonius went on to serve up some standard Australian Daily Zionist News fare ...

Stanley’s experience is of a Canberra-based academic who was the principal historian at the Australian War Memorial between 1980 and 2007. That is, before it (allegedly) became a tourist attraction.
What I have noticed has been different about Anzac Day in the Sydney CBD in recent years is the appearance of large concrete boulders at or near the path of the Anzac Day march.
By April 25, they will have been moved in place to protect the men, women and children who will be participating in or watching the procession. The concrete slabs complement the bollards that have appeared gradually on Australian city streets since the terrorist attack on the US on September 11, 2001.
Sadly, there were no concrete barriers or bollards or adequate NSW Police protection in place on December 14 last year when Australia experienced its worst terrorist attack in history. The shooters were followers of radical Islam who chose to target the Jewish Australian community gathered at Bondi Beach to celebrate the Jewish feast of Hanukkah. As The Australian reported on April 23, Islamic State has urged Muslims to follow the example of the Bondi shooters.
According to Stanley, April 25 should be devoted to commemorating “the people who arrive in this country having experienced war first-hand, not wars that Australians were involved in but wars that they were involved in”. He mentioned Sudanese, Afghans, Congolese and Rwandans. But not, for some reason, the Vietnamese. Maybe because they were/are overwhelmingly anti-communist.

The pond suspects that Polonius will never be able to let go the way the Vietnam war went down. 

Cf Appropriate time to debunk myths of Vietnam War; So much misinformation is still propagated about Australia’s most controversial military engagement. Most of it on the ABC.

Inter alia ...

The pond particularly likes that last one ...

Myth: Australians fought and died in Vietnam in vain. As Edwards acknowledges in his official history, the US-led commitment in Vietnam delayed a communist victory by a decade. Former Singapore leader Lee Kuan Yew pointed out that the time delay meant the non-communist nations of Southeast Asia were better able to withstand communist insurgencies in the mid-1970s than if they had taken place earlier.

... (a) because of what happened in Southeast Asian countries of the Cambodian kind after a dinkum Kissingering, and (b) because there's not that much difference between the soft authoritarianism of the government of Singapore and other forms of authoritarian rule.

But the pond digresses ...

This overlooks the fact Australia is what it is today – a tolerant democracy – because others have fought and died for the nation.
As John Terraine pointed out in his book The Great War 1914-18 (Hutchinson, 1965), Australia played a key role in the military victories on the Western Front that led to the defeat of imperial Germany. So did other parts of what was called the British Empire – namely, India, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa – during the course of the conflict.
Left-wing journalist John Pilger always claimed that Australia fought what he termed “other people’s wars”. This overlooked the fact that in 1914-18 Germany was a Pacific power and a German victory would have led to a different Australia than exists today.
At the end of the war, the First Australian Imperial Force was led by Sir John Monash – a Jewish Australian of Prussian background. It is a matter of record that when he marched in the Anzac Day procession, Monash and his comrades did not need the protection of concrete slabs and bollards.

And so there came more cognitive dissonance for the pond, what with "a tolerant democracy" being followed by a mention of Monash, who definitely needed protection from the Melbourne Club's black ball.

In fact Monash ... had declined membership in a prominent Melbourne club because that club had a rule barring Jews and he “would not give the club the opportunity to make distinctions in his case.” (here)

In fact, the Melbourne club continued its bigotry for a long time - witness Thomas Keneally getting agitated about the club in February 1994 (Trove link)

It seems it's not just idle lefties that can claim a history of anti-Semitism - the Melbourne establishment knew how to do it in style.

And now it's time for the final Polonial gobbet ...

The Australian Defence Force also played an important role in the military victories over Nazi Germany in northern Africa, imperial Japan in the Pacific and in assisting South Korea to hold off aggression from communist North Korea. The ADF helped non-communist South Vietnam to hold out against communist North Vietnam for a decade. In the words of former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, this delay helped stabilise Southeast Asia between the mid-1960s and the mid-70s. A smaller ADF force performed well in Afghanistan and Iraq in extremely difficult circumstances.
The point that Stanley overlooks is that, without the survival of a democratic Australia, the refugees who came to this country in recent decades would not be here.
Moreover, Stanley ignores the fact many immigrants who arrived in Australia before and after 1945 and their descendants understand Australia and appreciate the security and high living standards it has provided. There will be many Australians of non-Anglo Celtic background honouring the fallen on April 25.
Despite the prevalence of the alienated left in educational institutions and sections of the media, patriotism in Australia is still alive. As someone who has opposed One Nation since it emerged 30 years ago, it is a regrettable fact that the movement has benefited because, in some sense, Australia is not the nation it once was.
According to a recent study by the Australian Population Research Institute in Melbourne, “there is a large patriotic constituency who are potentially mobilisable around right-leaning causes”. The study calls them “Australian Firsters” who are patriots with a strong sense of belonging to Australia. Their number is estimated at 60 per cent.
The study finds that what it calls “Australia’s surge to the right” occurred following “the sustained pro-Palestine and anti-Israel street protests” in late 2025 and early 2026. Along with the Bondi massacre. The task of the Coalition and Labor is to win back as many of these patriotic Australians as possible. Many will be gathered honouring the fallen on April 25. Including those at the Australian War Memorial where the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier can be found.

As soon as Polonius mentioned that study, the pond had to go and look it up. 

Unfortunately there was no direct link to the study (in docx form) but maybe it'll hang around in discoverable form on the site for a while.

This was the pitch for it ...

Australia’s surge to the right: How far can it go?
April 2026
Bob Birrell, Katharine Betts and Ernest Healy
Since November 2025 opinion polls have shown a surge towards One Nation. In the voluminous media commentary, the dominant view is that this surge is due to the cost of living and other household budget issues. A few commentators have suggested that it may reflect Australian’ patriot feelings.
This report shows that much of the surge to the right does come from the concerns of patriots. Previous TAPRI surveys indicate that just over half of Australian voters can be described as patriots. What they have in common is that they share a sense of belongingness to Australia ‘to a great extent’.
This patriotic constituency is opposed to the prevailing neoliberal economic orthodoxy and to its associated progressive views on cultural values. This constituency is especially opposed to high immigration and to policies promoting multiculturalism.
It is these voters who are driving the surge to the right in Australia, as manifested in the rise of One Nation in opinion polls.

It struck the pond as incredibly sloppy, and therefore right in Polonius's turf. 

The definition of "patriot" is nebulous and flung around with wild abandon, and it's nakedly political ...

...the neoliberal insistence on free trade has meant that Australian is now dependent on unreliable international supply chains. In the case of petrochemical products and refined petrol and diesel fuels, the loss of productive capacity in Australia has left us highly vulnerable. 
Living in Melbourne we are in the front line of casualties. This is because the Victorian Government, since 2014, has built its economic strategy on providing debt-financed infrastructure and services for Melbourne’s surging population. It proclaims, without complaint from progressive media circles, and with bipartisan support from the Liberal Party, that Melbourne is targeting a population of eight million by 2050 – the same level as in London today. 
From our perspective, the right surge promises an overdue correction.  

Well the authors might think a surge to Pauline and One Nation is the way to go, and to hell with that.

What was that, Angelic one?

...When I hear very young people today parroting jingoistic claptrap they have overheard about the original Anzacs “fighting for Australia”, I always think about those two, who fortunately survived to realise the error of joining in 1915. I also think about them when I hear failed politicians, commentators and other armchair warriors wanting “boots on the ground” for yet another failed enterprise on the other side of the world – just as futile as that war that was supposed to end all wars.

Darn tootin' ...and now for a distraction.

While checking up on ancient Polonial lore, the pond couldn't help but faint with it delight when it discovered by accident Humphrey McQueen's memories of Ming in The Forgotten Fascists, for Arena back in March 2025.

As this came from the time of the impending second world war, it seemed vaguely relevant to the lizard Oz's crusades ...

Oh dear, and so history repeats, wash and rinse and hang out to dry ...

And so to the search for a bonus ...

The pond immediately ruled out the disgraced Pezzullo, still being offered a rehabilitation tour by the reptiles ...

‘Lest we forget’ also means being ready for coming war
Conflict is not just in our past; it is in our future. Will we stand up for what’s worth fighting for?
By Mike Pezzullo

The pond has had an overdose of war mongering, especially from those who will never have to dodge a bullet.

A teaser trailer will suffice, because the disgraced cardigan wearer opened with an image of that fatted beast, as if we should be getting ready for a coming war with that banana republic and its risible, demented, sundowning leadership...

That outing ended with the sort of rhetorical flourish offered by someone who will never have to head into battle and find out what it's like to be shot at ...

...Will we have the fortitude to calculate the odds of war and to prepare accordingly, even as we abhor war? Will we have the moral clarity to calculate the cost of war and the price of peace? Will we be prepared to make the same sacrifices that we rightly honour on Saturday, for the sake of future generations?
Odds are, we may be tested soon enough. If we are to be ready, strategic and moral rearmament will be necessary. Or, in saying “never again”, are we really saying that such sacrifices are always senseless and unnecessary? Are we really saying we would not be prepared to make the same ultimate sacrifice in a just cause?
On Saturday, we need to steel ourselves for the wars of the future as we reflect on those of the past.

The reptiles offered a credit which lacked a crucial word ...

Mike Pezzullo was secretary of the former department of immigration and border protection (2014-17) and the Department of Home Affairs (2017-23).

Can someone help the pond?

Yes, that's the word:

Mike Pezzullo was the disgraced secretary of the former department of immigration and border protection (2014-17) and the Department of Home Affairs (2017-23), a mandarin who brought great shame on mandarins ...

Fixed it, and with a link to go ...

The pond supposes it could have looked at Cameron Stewart ...

Trump faces dwindling options in Iran conflict with no clear path to victory

The US President is scrambling to secure a peace and avoid humiliation. Can he do it?

But it was a long read to arrive at not much ...

The US President’s best hope now is a deal that leads to a meaningful delay in Iran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb as part of a wider agreement that includes an open and free Strait of Hormuz. These are minimalist aims compared with Trump’s once grandiose predictions of a new Iran and a new Middle East. But they appear to be the best-case outcome from a war that continues to confound the expectations of Trump and his team.

A bit like the mad king lashing out in revenge on the Falklands and Maggie Thatcher's legacy.

And so in lieu of a reptile column, the pond turned to the lizard Oz editorialist, source of the heart of darkness, for a summary of this weekend's war mongering ...

Shameless really, not even being allowed to remember and mourn the dead, but instead have the occasion serve as preparations for fresh war mongering ...

Now there was a completely useless war, however it ended - certainly not to the advantage of Afghan women or the Afghanis who helped American forces and now as a reward are facing deportation to the Congo.

As for the presumption of innocence, it's already been established on the balance of probabilities that Ben Roberts-Smith is guilty of war crimes and was intending to scarper to Spain, and that's enough for the pond, but it didn't stop the reptiles from running a very large hagiographic snap ...

Then it was on to the final gobbet ...

Shameless ... completely shameless, and there at the very end, once again supporting a disgraced rogue on his rehabilitation tour ...

...As Michael Pezzullo points out in Inquirer this weekend, it is right that Australians mourn the sacrifice and tragedy of war on Anzac Day, but we should not pretend that total war is an abstract or distant phenomenon. “For Australia’s part,” he writes, “we are not doing nearly enough to prepare for the possibility of a war in the Pacific in the near term. Even if we judge that likelihood to be a 10 per cent chance, we need to be doing more now to get to a war footing. Having placed our bet on the noble cause of peace (‘war has to be avoided at all costs’), we will not be ready in time to defend ourselves if a war were to break out in the Pacific.”

Mr Pezzullo asks: Do we have the fortitude to calculate the odds of war and prepare accordingly? Most Australians will be well accustomed to hearing that we live in the most threatening strategic circumstances since the end of World War II. Yet our neglect of defence and our failure to adapt to a new era of asymmetric warfare suggest both an entrenched attitude of entitlement and a complacency to the stark realities we face.

The legend has never been short of detractors; they have come and gone through the years, but Anzac Day has outlasted them all. The date endures because it proves that courage and dignity ultimately rest with ordinary people. Still, Saturday’s commemoration must do more than merely console; it should also warn. In these dangerous times we must be willing to turn reverence into readiness.

What say you, Angelic one?

Lest we forget?

When I hear very young people today parroting jingoistic claptrap they have overheard about the original Anzacs “fighting for Australia”, I always think about those two, who fortunately survived to realise the error of joining in 1915. I also think about them when I hear failed politicians, commentators and other armchair warriors wanting “boots on the ground” for yet another failed enterprise on the other side of the world – just as futile as that war that was supposed to end all wars.

Amen to that ...

It must have been a bug the pond picked up attending that funeral mass ...

And so to end on lies, all lies, and the tragedy of women caught between mad King Donald and the mad Mullahs ...

Is there any real difference in their love of the killing fields? Trump Administration Wants To Fast-Track Executions With Electrocution, Firing Squads, Lethal Gas

An odd day for the reptiles to revert to being the Australian Daily Zionist News, but the bromancer and the dog botherer show the way ...

It's been a long time since the pond mentioned John Birmingham, but the pond just has to start off this weekend by noting his substack offering, So, you've decided to write a terrible EV piece.

Birmingham is clearly a member of the EV cult, and knows whereof he writes, and his opening flourish establishes the tone ...

So, something different this week. I got angry, but this time on a Tuesday. Why? Because the ABC’s 7:30 Report decided to cosplay as The Daily Telegraph on the topic of EV’s.
Unsurprisingly there’s a lot of interest in electric vehicles at the moment, so even less surprisingly both old and new media channels are flooding the zone with clickable shit. And some of the worst, most deplorable shit has been at Ninefax and the ABC.

Well yes, but as the pond gave up the 7.30 Report long ago, the pond only finds stuff out when someone turns up in the pond's in box to explain that Ethiopia is more technologically sophisticated than the ABC ...(Much like the venerable Meade's essential service).

And so to the reptiles this day, and what a relief.

Some correspondents have been worried about the bromancer's mental state, but this day he reverted to form, rediscovered his inner Zionist, and scribbled a lengthy five minute piece worthy of the Australian Daily Zionist News.

The header: Israel and Lebanon: two victims of Iran and its proxies; Lebanon is as big a victim of Hezbollah as Israel. Both are attempting to free themselves of its deadly influence, as the Trump-brokered ceasefire indicates.

The caption: Southern Lebanon becomes a frontline in a wider Iran-Israel conflict. Picture: AFP

In this bromancer telling, mad King Donald isn't demented, he's a cheesemaker, and in the eyes of the bromancer, blessed are the cheesemakers... especially as it's all about the persecution of Xians ...

In the hours leading to Donald Trump’s White House declaration of a three-week extension of the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, Hezbollah terrorists launched a volley of rockets into northern Israel, trying to kill the ceasefire.
The Israel-Lebanon equation is a hinge of the Iran conflict, if not of global history.
Trump oversaw negotiations between Israeli and Lebanese officials and promises now to convene a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Lebanese President Joseph Aoun. Trump says Iran ending support for Hezbollah is a condition of any long-term peace.
The two nations that will suffer innocent and grievous damage from this conflict are two that by history and culture should be natural partners, Israel and Lebanon.
That’s counterintuitive. Israel seems to be winning. But the evil dynamics of terror and antisemitic hatred, as practised by Iran and its proxies, and amplified by the wretched alliance of the Western left with the Islamists, offer a disturbing prognosis for Israel.

Ah the perfidious left. 

Those wretches who dare note what's currently going down in Gaza and the West Bank, and assorted outrages will have to cop a lot of bromancer rage this day ...

Though you might remember reading in Haaretz  A Settler Drive to Ethnically Cleanse Palestinians Is Underway in the West Bank. Israel's Security Apparatus Is Complicit, even a peep about this dismal business puts you in league with fundamentalist Islamics and mad Mullahs, and makes you anti-Semitic ...

Meanwhile, Lebanon is effectively subject to colonial occupation, not by Israel but by Iran through Hezbollah.
That’s why a peace treaty between Israel and Lebanon could be destroyed by Iran acting through Hezbollah.
Israel and Lebanon should be brothers. Both host civilisations that are central to the entire Western tradition. Israel is the only Jewish state. Christianity, human rights, everything we like about civilisation proceeds in part from the Jewish heritage. Lebanon has been an essential Christian community since the first century AD. It was crucial in the history of Christianity, and the Maronite and Orthodox Lebanese Christians form, with Egyptian Copts, one of the last sizeable Christian communities in the Middle East.
The effective Middle East purge of Christianity in recent decades, which followed the Middle East purge of most Jews in the years after World War II, has seen millions of Lebanese Christians emigrate, many to Australia, and we’re immensely lucky to have them.
Once, Lebanon was a majority Christian nation; Christians are now a (large) minority. Israel, which practices religious freedom, is one of few Middle East nations where the Christian population is growing.
Official Iranian identity is fuelled by antisemitic conviction and it exaggerates these sentiments in the proxies it sponsors. There was briefly an Israel Lebanon peace treaty in the early 1980s. The Lebanese politician seen as its sponsor, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated and it never came into force. Although Lebanon is historically a nation of magnificent cultural richness, in modern times it has been ravaged by rapacious neighbours, first Syria, now Iran.

Will the bromancer at any point slip in a quiet word about the dismal treatment of Palestinians, settler violence, and the ethnic cleansing that has been a marker for the current far right government of Israel? Don't get too excited ...

For a period in the 70s and 80s, the Palestine Liberation Organisation was headquartered in southern Lebanon. The PLO launched repeated terrorist attacks on Israeli towns and villages, often targeting children and other civilians. To prevent this, the Israelis finally invaded Lebanon and set up a secure zone from the border to the Litani River. They empowered and allied with the South Lebanon Army, which was officially secular but mostly Christian. The SLA was the only Arab military force that ever fought for Israel’s security.
It allied with Israel not only out of self-interest but from a conviction that Israel was the nearest to its own values and civilisational ideals. When Israel abruptly withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000, the SLA was betrayed. Thousands of its members settled in Israel, others surrendered to Lebanese forces.
Hezbollah was from the start an extremist Shia Islamist group funded and supported by Iran. It claimed victory in Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, and at the direction of Iran has conducted deadly terrorism against Israel ever since. Hezbollah has no loyalty to Lebanon or consideration for the Lebanese people.
I have spent some time in northern Israel. Once I visited a Jewish retirement home on the Israel-Lebanon border. Looking into a Lebanese valley, I saw many flags flying. None showed the haunting cedar of the flag of Lebanon. All were Hezbollah flags.
After the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran eight weeks ago, it took only a few days for Hezbollah to begin a barrage of rocket, artillery and drone fire into northern Israel. This action had nothing to do with any Lebanese interest. It was entirely at the direction of Iran to mobilise another front in Iran’s endless war against Israel. Hezbollah knew this would force Israeli action.
Veteran Israeli journalist and strategic analyst Ehud Yaari tells me: “Virtually everywhere in Israel north of Haifa people were running into bomb shelters or safe rooms seven, eight, 10 times a day. There was a constant stream of rockets from Hezbollah.”
The Hezbollah attacks have to be seen as part of Iran’s long-run strategy.
The Hamas terror atrocity against Israel in October 2023, among the most sadistic, savage and barbaric actions the world has ever seen, were designed in part to prevent the imminent normalisation of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. In that, sadly, they were successful.

Has the bromancer supped deep on the Netanyahu kool aid? You betcha ...

Netanyahu once told me his long-term peace strategy with the Palestinians was an “outside in” approach. Israel would normalise relations with its Arab neighbours first and this would encourage Palestinians to accept a reasonable modus vivendi with Israel.
It’s a central fact that Israel has several times offered the Palestinians a state on almost all of the West Bank, all of Gaza and compensating territory from Israel proper, but the Palestinian leadership never accepted peace with Israel. Iran’s strategy was to use its proxies to prevent Israel from settling into a normal life, prevent peace treaties with Israel’s neighbours, and gradually exhaust Israel’s morale and even its military.
Thus relentless mortar and rocket attacks from Gaza made life difficult for southern Israeli towns; sporadically, something similar could be achieved by terror groups within the West Bank, and Hezbollah could constantly harass northern parts of Israel.
Here is where Western critics of Israel are so wrong and dishonest.

So it's wrong and dishonest to note the ethnic cleansing? Or perhaps the way that fatuous blather about natural alliances muddies the waters?

Bad optics? Israel jails soldiers who smashed Jesus statue in Lebanon
Critics say Israeli attacks on Christian sites challenge claims of a Judeo-Christian shared heritage and mutual respect.

...Christian holidays, specifically those around the time of Easter, have become particular sources of tension, the report noted, with priests and nuns wearing visible Christian clothing in West Jerusalem and occupied East Jerusalem facing the risk of harassment every time they enter public spaces.
“We’ve entered a period of what [Australian genocide studies scholar] Dirk Moses called ‘permanent security’, where anything different, anything that might be a threat, or could even be a threat in the future, has to be destroyed,“ prominent Israeli sociologist Yehouda Shenhav-Shahrabani told Al Jazeera.
That difference is inherent to the Christian faith.
“It’s not about left or right,” Shenhav-Shahrabani explained. “It even goes to language. In everyday Hebrew, people refer to Jesus as Yeshu, which is a curse word, rather than Yeshua, which is correct.”
“That’s commonplace. That’s how it’s used in everyday media,” he continued. “If that’s where you begin, it doesn’t matter if it’s stupidity or ignorance, it all leads to the same place.”

The pond never thought it would be mentioning Xians, but here we are.

Eventually the bromancer gets around to a minor billy goat butt ...

In isolation, Israel’s actions seem disproportionate. Sometimes I think they have been disproportionate.

But in the way of the bromancer, any minor billy goat butt is immediately followed by a huge butt ...

But you have to see the totality of the threat posed cumulatively by Hamas, terrorist groups in the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Shia militia in Iraq, and previously the Syrian regime, as well as Iran’s previously huge missile stocks, to accurately judge the credible threat to which Israel is responding.
Netanyahu also once told me his reputation as a hawk and a hard man was a strategic asset for Israel. It meant Jerusalem didn’t have to take many actions because Middle East actors feared Netanyahu.
Now the Iranians and their proxies have forced Netanyahu to act decisively.
The non-Shia Lebanese population and many Lebanese Shi’ites, too, hate Hezbollah for embroiling them in endless conflict. In eight weeks Hezbollah has fired thousands of projectiles against Israel. The Lebanese government ordered Hezbollah to stop, ordered the Lebanese Army to disarm Hezbollah and expelled the Iranian ambassador.
What actually happened? Hezbollah refused to stop. The Lebanese Army said it couldn’t disarm them. The Iranian ambassador refused to leave. And Hezbollah has threatened a violent coup against the Lebanese government.
Now Israel plans to establish a security zone once more in southern Lebanon, about 6km to 8km from the Israeli border. This is necessary for anything approaching normal life to resume in northern Israel. To clear this area perhaps 800,000 Lebanese have been displaced, an immense tragedy to be laid wholly at the feet of Hezbollah and Iran.
The useful idiots of the Western left will gleefully portray this, entirely dishonestly, as Israeli “colonialism”, further undermining Israel in the West.
Islamic State is urging its followers to emulate the Bondi massacre of innocent Jews everywhere. Synagogues are attacked in London, as in Australia.
Israel and Lebanon are victims of Iran and of Hezbollah. But don’t expect to hear that much in Western societies which, insanely, are becoming themselves more anti-Israel and more antisemitic.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

And that's how it goes in the Australian Daily Zionist News. 

Any consideration of the fate of Gaza and the West Bank and Palestinians is immediately dismissed as anti-Semitic, and is always in support of the mad Mullahs ...

And yet the latest excursion has been a mad folly that has done nothing for Iranian people, nor for the United States, nor for the world, which will soon begin to discover what real shortages look like ...

The lizard Oz had lots more of this sort of blather, including but not limited to ...

Moral collapse on antisemitism finds grotesque expression
The Left’s moral collapse on antisemitism has found its most grotesque expression
If declaring a murdered child beyond the bounds of empathy does not cross the most basic human test, then what does?
By Nick Dyrenfurth

Contributor

Luckily the intermittent archive is currently working, and the pond personally supervised Nick being sent off to that dismal cornfield.

Ditto the pond decided this outing by Dame Slap could be consigned to the wasteland ...

Girlcotted: how Catharine Lumby was cancelled by her own movement
After decades of pioneering activism against sexual violence, one of Australia’s most respected feminists was deplatformed by the very community she helped build.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

At the nub of this yarn were tensions over Gaza and Israel, but this is what stopped the pond dead in its tracks ...

Over a glass of wine a few weeks back, Lumby laughed about our views getting closer and closer. I winked at her, saying that I was pretty certain her views were moving closer to mine. It was a joke, the kind friends – and colleagues – with different views ought to be able to make.
The fundamentalists on the Left don’t joke. They lop off your head.

If Lumby thinks that laughing and winking and joking and sharing plonk with Dame Slap is the way forward, then the long absent lord help her.

Dame Slap lops off heads at a rate and in a way that would make your average lefty go pale with fear, and she has a platform from which she can conduct her jihads.

While noting that Islamophobia is rampant this weekend, the pond also saw that the reptiles had plenty of room for transphobia...

EXCLUSIVE
Top psychiatrist suspended for opposing youth gender treatments
‘Take my treatment as a warning’: Psychiatrist suspended for opposing youth gender treatments
Psychiatrists pleaded with professional body to support outspoken colleague Andrew Amos, only to discover it had suspended him.
By Stephen Rice

The always boiling Rice seems to make transophobia his special EXCLUSIVE work.

Such was the obsessive compulsive nature of the reptiles' transphobia that the lizard Oz editorialist felt the need to join in the jihad, encouraging paranoia and a persecution complex (something many trans people know only too well)...

Psychiatrist’s unjust suspension
Practitioners and authorities around the world are becoming more sceptical about the prescription of puberty blockers and hormones for gender-distressed children and teenagers.
By Editorial

It almost made the pond yearn for a world where normal madness can flourish ...

And so to the dog botherer, also contributing to what - amazingly on Anzac Day - is a rag seemingly more intent on being The Australian Daily Zionist News than in dragging out the two up and the biscuits ...

The header: We’re complacent about risk of extremism at home, but we’re all targets too; We may not want to be at war but Islamist fanatics certainly are at war against us, as Islamic State’s latest call to action declares.

The caption: Chayim Klein, a member of the Jewish community, stands in the damaged area of Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue, holding a Sefer (holy book) that was there during the attack orchestrated by Iran. Picture: Arsineh Houspian

Did the pond mention paranoia and a persecution complex?

The barking mad dog botherer decided that the way to begin was to plunge Australia into war ...

This year we will commemorate Anzac Day under the pretence that we are not at war.

Actually we're not at war, and many other countries decided that they didn't want to have anything to do with a folly, an excursion, that will ensure the world's economy is in a state of chaos for months to come.

But the war mongering dog botherer will have none of that ...

Our government will continue to portray the current conflict in the Middle East as an unnecessary excursion by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and stress that our Wedgetail aircraft deployment to the United Arab Emirates is solely defensive, laughably justified as protection for our expats.
But while thousands gather at North Bondi for one of the nation’s most iconic dawn services, those at the southern reaches of the crowd will stand where bullets ricocheted just five months ago in an act, allegedly, of jihadist war. This is the same Islamist extremist threat being tackled in Iran by the US and Israel, one that is existential for Israel but pivotal for the rest of the world, including Australia.
Just to square the circle: Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind the firebombing of Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue 17 months ago, taking the Islamist extremist-inspired antisemitism in this country to an ugly nadir that tragically was surpassed a year later on the bloodied sands of Bondi.

Cue another snap designed to get the hive mind agitated ... The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was behind the firebombing of Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue 17 months ago. Picture: NurPhoto via Getty Images

The dog botherer was determined to see the country at war ...

We do not want to be at war but the Islamist extremists, often inspired and funded by Iran, have fanatical certitude about their war against us.
That much of the population and most of our politicians fail to understand this or choose to ignore it only exacerbates our vulnerability. Time and again we fail to learn the lessons.
For more than two years there were many people in public debate warning about the rising tide of Islamist extremism and antisemitism in the wake of the October 7 atrocities in Israel. Australian Jewish community leaders took their warnings and appeals directly to governments.
Politicians and authorities paid lip service to the problem, tangled themselves in false equivalence about Islamophobia for fear of offending Muslim communities and did not do enough. The Bondi massacre was shocking yet seemed inevitable – we will never know if, without this national indolence, it might have been prevented.
Yet even now, after 15 funerals and untold trauma, our leaders and authorities slink back into complacency. They avert their eyes and wash their hands, yet will express shock and surprise, no doubt, the next time we see an Islamist terrorist attack.

And what of Gaza, and what of the atrocities on both sides? Crickets ... Many locals attending Bondi Beach pay their respects at a makeshift memorial to the victims of December's terror attack. Picture: NewsLocal

There aren't many upsides in having a federal Labor government, but surely one of them is that it avoided getting the country involved in the current folly. 

If the liar from the Shire had been in charge, or the mad monk, likely we'd have been off on the crusade, with the Murdoch press clamouring for war, and assorted crusaders of the dog botherer kind demanding that we get involved ...(while staying safe in their Surry Hills bunker) ...

A public forum is booked in a Sydney City Council building next month to discuss “Why it’s right to globalise the intifada”. This phrase is a blatant call for violence against Israel and Jews.
During two waves of intifada in the early 1990s and then from 2000 thousands of innocent Israelis were killed in suicide bombings and other random attacks, and thousands of Palestinians were killed in efforts to quell the violence. Some have dubbed Hamas’s murderous rampage in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, as the third intifada. Anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protesters were at Bondi Beach in September last year chanting for intifada. “Long live the intifada!” they shouted on the sand, punching the air, “Intifada, intifada!”
Three months later, 100m away, dozens of people were gunned down and 15 were killed. There it was, intifada globalised.
The chant to globalise the intifada is now illegal in Queensland and a parliamentary committee has recommended the same for NSW. The phrase could be a breach of the law already as an incitement to violence, but no police authority or prosecutor’s office has been willing to try.
The official complicity is astounding. Imagine how quickly authorities would act if groups were publicly calling for deadly violence against gays, Indigenous communities, Catholics or any other ethnic group or religion.
Jews are expected to accept this. Accept they can never live in peace and security, even in Australia.
Politicians will not even utter the word Islamist extremism (even though it is the central problem and main threat), preferring the catch-all term of antisemitism, lest they put off-side any sensitive members of Muslim communities. Yet Jewish Australians gather at schools and synagogues in suburban Sydney with armed guards, police patrols and cement barricades hastily installed by governments after Bondi.

Once again, any thought of the fate of Palestinians and Gaza is rounded up, and pressed into the crusader cause, Pro Palestine protests continue in Melbourne after the US and Israel attacked Iran. Picture: Josie Hayden

Is it possible to note that bad things are being done on both sides?

Per Haaretz ...

Dozens of Israeli settlers storm West Bank village, clash with residents and torch vehicle
Dozens of Israeli settlers entered the West Bank village of Qusra, south of Nablus, where they threw stones at local residents and later set fire to a construction machine during their withdrawal, according to Palestinian reports on Friday.

Are there any signs of hope?

'Swimming Against the Tide, but Swimming': More Israelis and Palestinians Now Choose to Grieve Together

...More Israelis are also joining, especially to do protective presence work: to act as human shields for Palestinians amid rising settler violence in the West Bank. For many Palestinians, this is a very surprising experience, Salman says. Young people in the West Bank today "haven't seen anything except separation walls, checkpoints and settler violence," which makes it difficult for them to picture an alternative, she says.
"What they know about the other is either like an Israeli soldier with a uniform and a gun, or a violent settler burning their villages and their cars and harming their fields and animals. So when they meet activists, especially on the ground, at protests and [providing a protective presence] at the olive harvest, they see something completely different. They have really interesting conversations, and it's important to learn about the other's narrative, because it's not something we learn at school."

Up against the fundamentalist madness on both sides, it's really just a drop in the ocean of hate, but it's still better than the dog botherer's war mongering ...

This is the protection they get from governments that are too timid to tackle the actual menace. Search all you like for moral equivalence, but you will find no other community in this country forced to live like this. Schoolchildren and congregations behind vehicle-proof barriers while mobs chant “globalise the intifada” at will. This, apparently, is peace for Australians who are Jewish.
Australia should, of course, be supporting the US and Israel in their war against Iran. We rejected a US request for naval assistance to protect shipping three years ago, and while we received no request before this war the government had already made its disdain known.
Anthony Albanese broke with Israel and the US in the UN and recognised a non-existent Palestinian state. In recent days he has been more critical of the US President than he has of the Islamist theocrats who run a murderous, misogynistic, antisemitic and terror-sponsoring regime in Tehran.
“We support very much the declaration that Iran couldn’t be allowed to get a nuclear weapon,” the Prime Minister said on Thursday. “What we have called for is for de-escalation. We’ve been critical and have called out some of the statements that have been made. It’s not appropriate or acceptable to say that you’re going to destroy a civilisation. And so, we’ve done that. We are allies with the United States, but that doesn’t mean that we’re automatically participants in any conflict and we haven’t been.”
He criticises Trump rather than the extremist Iranian leadership and suggests he would like Tehran to give up its nuclear weapons program but has no alternative plan as to how. Astonishingly, Albanese told a podcast that Barack Obama’s Iran deal was successful – this was the sellout that funnelled billions of dollars into Tehran while the mullahs pursued their nuclear weapons and missile programs with impunity.

And there you have it. If the dog botherer and Benji have their way, there never will be a Palestinian state, and the system of apartheid that currently prevails will be in place from the river to the sea ... The 15 innocent lives lost at Bondi should remind us to be vigilant. Picture: Monique Harmer

This is exactly why the middle east is stuffed. A middle aged man baying for blood in the Australian Daily Zionist News isn't going to sort things out, or be of any help ...

Australians would do well to accept that this is our war because we are its targets – as we saw at the Adass Israel Synagogue and at Bondi. Just because we are too weak to join the US and Israel militarily, or even diplomatically, it will not protect us from terrorists.
They target us for who we are. Strong kafirs or weak kafirs, it makes little difference.
Islamic State let it be known this week that the Bondi attack was just one “pebble from a mountain” and it would keep killing until we “grow weary of burying the dead”. And it made clear that any non-Muslim is a legitimate target.
Pretending the war in Iran is Israel’s or America’s alone, or trying to convince people the singular threat at home is for the Jewish community, is not only morally bankrupt but also intellectually feeble and strategically blind.
Defeating Islamist extremism and the main sponsor of global terrorism is an imperative for any person or country that can be targeted. This means it is a fight for all of us.
Four months before the original Anzac landing, two men believed they had a holy duty to take up arms against innocent Australians, attacking a train taking families to a New Year’s Day picnic out of Broken Hill. Children of my generation were taught that Mulla Abdullah and Gool Mahomed were Turks who decided to fight their adopted country because Australia and Turkey were at war in Europe.
In fact, they were fanaticised Muslims from South Asia who accepted the call to jihad against a nation fighting the Ottoman Empire abroad. The pair fired at picnickers killing three men and a 17-year-old girl before they were hunted down and killed.
The unsuspecting people on that train knew Australia was at war but believed they were a long way from any threat.
Many Australians today, including our national leadership, labour under the misapprehension that what is happening in the Middle East is someone else’s war, averting their eyes from a clear and present danger at home.

The clear and present danger at home? 

The pond, for its sins, reads the lizard Oz daily and is reminded of what a clear and present danger these reptiles are when it comes to peace, the economy and the sustainability of the planet ...

They're part of a supine mob that now lines up to lie down and be bullied by a sundowner in the grip of dementia ...

And so to end with rants of a more congenial kind ...