Barners, Tamworth's eternal shame, has always been rogue, but now he's gone terminal rogue, the pond did wonder what sort of send off the lizard Oz had in store for him.
Not much.
Interested Tamworthians had to scroll way down the digital page to land on Sarah's EXCLUSIVE summary ...
It was a bare 3 minute farewell, and best left to the archive.
Why is it that the cartoonists always have a better sense of occasion than the reptiles do?
Also best left to the archive was Geoff's attempt to give the lettuce hope, chambering yet another round, but also well down the page ...
Sussan Ley’s leadership hangs by a thread after the Coalition spectacularly botched negotiations and handed Labor-Greens a historic environmental victory.
By Geoff Chambers
Did the reptiles have to to invoke memories of the late Queen Liz, Andrew's mum?
Did poor old downcast Susssan need that handicap, especially as the lettuce still looks exceptionally fresh ..
The reptiles were more interested in being EXCLUSIVELY outraged by cardigan wearers...
One in three public servants full-time in office
The nation’s public service workforce has exploded to nearly 200,000 employees yet office attendance has plummeted to shocking lows across government departments.
by Noah Yim, Matthew Cranston and Elizabeth Pike
And of course it wouldn't be the reptiles without hysteria about defence, with Ben packing it in his usual way ...
ADF at risk with old satellite kept on line
Australia’s military communications could be jammed by enemies after the government cancelled a $7bn satellite project, forcing reliance on ageing commercial technology until 2033.
By Ben Packham
But enough of all that, because early this morning the disgraced swishing Switzer was at the top of the world on the extreme far right.
Should he be called disgraced? No matter, he's a disgrace, but he does retain ancient folk memory about what sells to the hive mind ...
The header: Energy elites in denial over collapse of net-zero support,At COP30, all that emerged on the global warming front was a lot of hot air, and an agreement that makes no direct reference to phase out oil, gas and coal.
The caption for that Sauron hard of hearing snap the reptiles love and repeat endlessly: Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen during question time at Parliament House. A balance has to be struck between the climate and economic growth, and Labor’s radical approach to the former at a time when governments around the world are walking back climate commitments they made years ago will have bad consequences for the latter, writes Tom Switzer. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
It was a full four minutes of the swishing Switzer swishing away at the "leets", perhaps as a result of him not feeling so 'leet himself.
Ex-think tank boss Tom Switzer denies sexual harassment claim
Think tank accused of ‘retaliatory action’ after staffer complaint about high-profile director
And now, with nothing better to do, he's back peddling his climate science denialist wares ...
“There is overwhelming support for action on climate change,” declared the Prime Minister.
Somebody forgot to tell the climate delegates gathered at the latest UN climate conference in the Amazonian city of Belem. Not that you’d know it from the dearth of local media coverage, but COP30 was supposed to set out clear plans to transition the world away from fossil fuels. All that emerged on the global warming front was a lot of hot air, and an agreement that makes no direct reference to phase out oil, gas and coal.
Could it really be a reptile climate science denialist outing without the dog botherer turning up?
Of course not ... Sky News host Chris Kenny blasts Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen as he misses Question Time. Australian households and businesses around the country are feeling the pinch of energy prices under the Labor government. Mr Kenny said Mr Bowen “botched” Australia’s bid to host next year’s COP31.
The swishing Switzer was very pleased at the triumph of fossil fools...
As The Washington Post reported, the deal “represents a win for the oil, gas and coal industries and underscores the extent to which the global political environment has shifted since the same group struck the Paris agreement a decade ago”. According to the BBC World Service, one delegate at Belem said “they’d never seen so many people so underwhelmed by so little progress at a COP”.
Another fossil fuel lover quickly turned up in the mix ... The COP30 climate conference wrapped up on Saturday (November 22) with a compromise deal that would boost finance for poor nations coping with global warming, but omitted any mention of the fossil fuels driving it, an agreement analyst Michael Jacobs, Senior Fellow at ODI Global, said "very few countries are satisfied" with.
Now there was a rare slip ... the pond could barely believe it, but in the middle of the swishing Switzer's fossil fool triumphalism, there came a rare admission ...
Read closely that caption for the AV distraction. Extract the message:
Fossil fuels are driving global warming ...
Who'd have thunk it, but it skipped right over the swishing Switzer's head, as his triumphalism continued ...
A Factiva search shows that, during the fortnight period of COP21 in Paris (Nov. 30 – Dec. 13, 2015), The Sydney Morning Herald and The New York Times published 38 and 57 articles, respectively, about a deal that Barack Obama hailed a “historic breakthrough.”
But during the recent fortnight of COP30 (November 10-23), the Herald and Times published just one and five articles about the Belem negotiations. Neither ABC’s 730 nor AM broadcast any segments on Belem, even though both programs were fixated on the Liberal Party’s decision to ditch net-zero policy. Which raises the question: is the Coalition’s stance so odd, and so out of step with reality, when global support for net zero is collapsing?
The pond is inclined to mark down any reptile outing on the basis of its stills, and the reptiles managed to drag in a huge snap of a man with many problems ... UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer
Meanwhile the fossilised fool kept on chanting ....
This month, business leaders as well as US diplomats skipped the annual climate summit for the first time. Meanwhile, wealthy industrialised nations have failed to pony up the funds to help poor nations transition to renewable energy. It’s abundantly clear that the UN climate approach – from Berlin in 1995 and Kyoto in 1997, through Copenhagen in 2009, then Paris in 2015 and now Belem – is a nonsense. Hope of a legally binding, enforceable and verifiable global agreement on emissions reductions is a chimera. Even UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer concedes “the consensus is gone” on fighting climate change.
And yet there are those like Albanese who still believe that global warming represents such a grave threat to humanity that nations will come together to eliminate fossil fuels. But history is not on their side. Global agreements do not guarantee practical outcomes. The Kellogg-Briand Pact in Paris outlawed war about a decade before the outbreak of World War II. Test ban and anti-proliferation treaties have not stopped states bent on creating nuclear arsenals.
As if we need reminding, the UN is not a moral arbiter nor is it an effective lawmaking body. The interests of the 194 member states are too diverse. It is relevant as a forum where disputes and grievances are aired. But the agreements the UN reaches, even when they command broad support (such as they did in Paris in 2015), are all too often violated when they clash with vital national interests.
For no particular reason, the reptiles offered a snap of an odd couple: Then US president Barack Obama welcomes then president-elect Donald Trump to the White House in 2017.
Then there was a final gobbet of the predictable:
None of this means that the rest of the world is in a state of climate denial. It’s just that the activists, not to mention the Prime Minister and other politicians and most of their media mates, are living in a reality vacuum.
A balance has to be struck between the climate and economic growth, and Labor’s radical approach to the former at a time when governments around the world are walking back climate commitments they made years ago will have bad consequences for the latter. Making energy supplies more expensive and less reliable will do little to fight climate change, but it will make life more miserable.
Labor’s net-zero fixations aren’t just a threat to living standards. By making us so reliant on Chinese renewables, they’re also a threat to our national security.
Instead of the orgy of rhetoric designed to make noisy climate enthusiasts feel smug, Canberra should make proper contingency plans for our own energy supplies and tread carefully in our reliance upon renewables: even if that means using coal to power generators of electricity or a renaissance of nuclear power to keep the lights on. One day, with market-driven technological breakthroughs, it might be possible to power the world without using fossil fuels. But it just isn’t possible yet, and our leaders should end the pretence it is, or will be any time soon.
Tom Switzer is author of Events, Dear Boy: Any Government Can Be Derailed (Centre for Independent Studies.)
The pond supposes that the swishing Switzer, cast into exile, has to do something to stay in touch, but did he have to do this?
And did the reptiles have to encourage him?
Those who winced their way through it deserve a reward, with the infallible Pope on hand to help ...
Now there's a detail to treasure ...
It took considerable effort by the pond not to cack itself.
Meanwhile, in its guise as the Australian Daily Zionist News, the reptiles were on the case ...
Muslim bid to change terror laws sparks fear, anger among Jews
Jewish groups angered by push to remove religion from terror law definition
A push to strip religion from Australia’s terrorism laws has ignited fierce opposition from Jewish groups who warn the changes will leave their community dangerously exposed to future attacks.
By Elizabeth Pike
And Julie was on the case ...
There's more of that handsome Hansonism at the archive ...
What the left has to understand is that its acquiescence to radical Islam is not only hypocrisy, but also extremely helpful to the far right.
By Julie Bindel
The pond is still waiting for an MP to dress up as a nun in one of the more outlandish garbs the Catholic church foists on its victims...
Why do the reptiles love these Pom blow-ins?
Don't they have a cricket team to worry about?
Couldn't the reptiles have drummed up a local?
Of course they could, and all those preliminaries are just a build up to the appearance of the hole in bucket fixer in his regular Friday outing, designed to appeal to pond correspondents devoted to arcane references.
The header: Reform terror laws and the danger is that Iran would get off scot-free; Just as ASIO elevates the threat level, Muslim organisations have proposed a far-reaching weakening of the counter-terrorism laws.
The caption: ASIO Director-General of Security, Mike Burgess says the elevated threat level is expected to persist “at least out to 2030”. Picture: Jane Dempster
As always, fellow devotees are invited to rate Our Henry on his ability to drag in references, the more pompous, portentous, and pretentious they are the better ...
Forget the tepid surface excuses for the show of intellectual finery, just focus on the philosophical feathers.
Given that he was allowed by the reptiles to go on for a full five minutes, correspondents surely were hoping for Our Henry to deliver the goods ...
That comes at a moment when ASIO has warned of “a greater than 50 per cent chance of a domestic terrorist attack or attack planning in the next 12 months”, with the elevated threat level expected to persist “at least out to 2030”.
The stakes could not be higher. Yet so is the pressure being exerted by a broad range of Muslim organisations seeking changes ASIO says could have “catastrophic consequences”.
Viewed superficially, the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor’s review appears extremely narrow, confined as it is to the current legislation’s definition of terrorism. But it is only when an act – or the planning of an act – falls within the definition that the legislation’s sweeping powers are engaged.
And it is those powers of surveillance, search, questioning and detention that allow law enforcement agencies to disrupt plots, identify offenders and ensure they are brought to trial.
An incredibly feeble opening, made worse by the reptiles's attempt at an AV distraction:
Sky News host James Macpherson says Palestine Action protesters “openly support” a terror group. Nearly 900 people were arrested in London after a protest in support of Palestine Action. The people were arrested under anti-terror laws.
Um, perhaps there are some a tad agitated by actual ethnic cleansing, and the use of mass starvation as a war tactic?
Never mind, the pond immediately began to have saucy doubts and fears.
Not a single classical, medieval or Queen Vic era reference in that opening flourish.
Is it because Our Henry was sent into a frenzy by the Islamics?
Did he get so enraged he lost his copy of the Dictionary of Classical References?
Did some vile Islamic make off with his copy of Brewer's and that's why he couldn't brew up a referential storm?
Worse was to follow ... and by worse, the pond isn't talking about the topic at hand, it's talking about the wilful refusal to hit the Islamics over the head with Thucydides ...
Acts aimed at intimidating only a section of the population – such as Jews – would be excluded. Acts that cause harm to property rather than to persons – such as arson attacks on synagogues – would be excluded as well. So too would threats and hoaxes, including the trailer found earlier this year in northwest Sydney containing explosives and notes identifying Jewish community buildings.
Had those changes been in place, virtually all of Iran’s terrorist activity in Australia would have fallen outside the definition’s scope, making it far harder to apprehend culprits and document Iran’s responsibility.
Yet backed by the taxpayer-funded Human Rights Commission and the Special Envoy for Islamophobia, the Muslim organisations’ central objective reaches further still: they want to eliminate from the definition any reference to a religious motive.
As the submissions from law enforcement agencies stress, retaining that motive is of crucial operational significance. It has, in practice, allowed agencies to specify and prioritise areas of highest risk – particularly jihadist extremism – so that they can allocate scarce resources to where they prevent the most harm.
Moreover, the meaning of a “religious motive” is now well settled in Australian jurisprudence, ensuring clarity for investigators, prosecutors and courts alike. And because it aligns closely with the approach of Australia’s principal intelligence partners, it supports timely, comprehensive intelligence-sharing, which is an indispensable component of Australia’s security.
But it is precisely that effectiveness the Muslim organisations cannot accept. The empirical record makes the reason plain. Of the 83 sentencing decisions and appeals for persons convicted of terrorism offences from 2002 to 2024, 78 involved perpetrators motivated by Islamic fundamentalism. In the same period, 28 imminent attacks were disrupted – 22 of them motivated by Islamic fundamentalism. Still today, Islamic fundamentalism dominates the threat landscape. And of the 31 groups listed as a “terrorist organisation”, 26 have a self-proclaimed link to Islam.
By now the pond could here a wailing and a chanting.
Oh fix it, dear Henry, just fix it: Protesters rally in favour of Palestine at Lakemba. Picture: TNV
Where's Aristotle? Whither Herodotus, or is that wither?
And, claims the Muslim Legal Network (speaking on behalf of 15 leading Muslim organisations), for so long as religious extremism remains a factor triggering the legislation’s special powers, “structural Islamophobia” will ensure those agencies’ “use Division 101 offences exclusively, or almost exclusively, for individuals who are Muslim” – even though, it asserts, Muslims are no more likely to be terrorists than anyone else.
Those arguments are plainly untenable. Were it true that the agencies, blinded by anti-Muslim bias, had (as the submissions claim) massively “over-policed” Muslims while neglecting the acute risk posed by (say) Wesleyan Methodists, we would not be confronting a renewed Islamist threat but a wave of wild-eyed Wesleyan terrorists running amok, brandishing knives, and shouting their own version of “Allahu Akbar”.
But the mere fact that this vision shows no sign of eventuating does not deter the Muslim organisations from demanding the “removal of religious expression as a standalone risk factor in assessment tools”, with risk profiling based on Muslim extremism to be “explicitly prohibited”.
What that implies is that agencies should spread their detection resources evenly across the population, ignoring systematic differences in the likelihood of terrorist offending. But assume, consistent with experience, that Muslim extremists account for some 85 per cent of the roughly 125 individuals in Sydney who pose a credible risk of planning an attack at any given time. And assume too that NSW Police, ASIO and the AFP can, at peak, dedicate approximately 350,000 hours of investigative time each month to counter-terrorism work.
Were those hours applied “equally” across the metropolitan area – sampling about 25,000 people per month – the standard criminological model indicates that agencies would detect only 0.11 genuine plotters in each period, while generating about 350 false positives. Almost every person investigated would be innocent; almost every genuinely dangerous individual would be missed.
The pond can hardly accept a reference to Wesleyan Methodists as the real deal, and the situation was becoming dire as the reptiles whipped in another visual distraction: Anthony Albanese, Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia Aftab Malik and Multicultural Affairs Minister Anne Aly in September. Picture: Gaye Gerard
Surely in the last gobbet Our Henry would come good, perhaps with a reference to Hume or Burke or John Stuart Mill.
It's the least he could do to repair the damage arising from this sorry outing:
And were such targeting banned, achieving the same detection rate would require increasing monthly counter-terrorism hours in Sydney from 350,000 to nearly nine million. That is not policing; it is fantasy.
My modelling is, of course, merely indicative. Its lesson is not. When risk is concentrated, pretending it is evenly spread guarantees failure.
The mathematics are unforgiving: whether 60, 80 or 85 per cent of the threat sits in a small, identifiable cluster, each hour spent there yields exponentially greater returns – in plots disrupted and lives saved – than an hour spent trawling the general population, while producing roughly the same number of false alarms.
Law-enforcement agencies grasp this instinctively, as does the Attorney-General’s Department. Their concerns reflect not Islamophobia but arithmetic. And thoughtful Muslims should share those concerns too: for a surge in jihadi attacks – made possible because critical tools had been deliberately blunted – would spark an anti-Muslim backlash of unprecedented ferocity.
Whether the government understands that is an open question. What is undeniable is that the Muslim organisations, the Human Rights Commission and the Special Envoy for Islamophobia seem confident their proposals are politically viable – proposals that would make anti-Semitic attacks easier to mount, harder to detect and far more likely to succeed.
Their confidence says much about the Australia that has taken shape, with far too little resistance, since October 7.
That is precisely why these proposals cannot be permitted to drift quietly through the system. At a moment of elevated threat, weakening the instruments that keep all Australians safe would not be reform. It would be capitulation.
What a bitter disappointment. What an epic failure.
And worse still, when confronted by the Australian Daily Zionist News, the pond always feels the need to turn to Haaretz for a little balance.
Henry might have got himself out of this by talking about the role of Robespierre in the French terror, but no ... instead there was modern murder in the air ...
More at Haaretz ...
And once again the bromancer has failed the pond, and so the pond must end with news of the disunited states by way of 'toonists...
