In which the Brexit-loving Bromancer struts his stuff, and Dame Gran does her regular Tuesday groaning ...

 

This day the Australian Daily Zionist News was in full flight ...

As a coda, Col was on hand on the extreme far right to follow the Benji line ...

Trump’s peace deal leaves no winners except Tehran
Iran has long demonstrated it will never concede its uranium enrichment program regardless of military or economic pressure.
By Colin Rubenstein
Contributor
Colin Rubenstein is executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council.

He would say that, wouldn't he?

Ironically a little further down the page came ...

LIVE Iran peace talks
Iran to let nuclear inspectors in, allowed to sell oil in dollars
JD Vance says IAEA inspectors may be back in Iran from as early as this week, the US clears the way for Tehran to sell oil in dollars, including to American buyers | FOLLOW LIVE
Staff writers and agencies.

Who knows what  might happen with a couch lover in charge?

One thing seems likely ... Benji misplayed his hand.

None of this had any interest for the pond, except for noting Geoff chambering another round with the need to "stop the Left’s false equivocation between antisemitism and Islamophobia".

Really? In recent times, for an atheist observing from the outside who prefers to be called conservative rather than leftist, they seem more than a fair match.

Perhaps Geoff has forgotten that back in 2019 it was an Australian who conducted a massacre in a Christchurch mosque with a body count of 51 dead, 89 injured, 40 by gunfire, a total which shades the Bondi massacre, not that this is a competition to be celebrated.

And when you consider the current ethnic cleansing being conducted by the current government of Israel, it seems like a dedicated attempt to match the behaviour of the mad mullahs towards their own people in Iran, not that this is a competition to be celebrated.

But more than enough already, because the pond watched live the teary farewell of Sir Keir, and knew that the reptiles would pay some attention.

It's truly remarkable to be able to chew through so many PMs in so few years, and then to have a blow in from the north take on the job with no preliminaries, and no desire to call an election to confirm his legitimacy, despite having abused Rishi Sunak for his failure on that score.

The reptiles called on the malignant Magnay to have several says ...

UK leadership race
Starmer resigns as British PM, Burnham set to run unopposed
Sir Keir will remain in the job until a new Labour leader is chosen, with Wes Streeting withdrawing from the contest and backing hot favourite Andy Burnham.
By Jacquelin Magnay

Keir was a dud prime minister but the country’s pain will only continue
Keir Starmer will be remembered as one of the worst British prime ministers in recent history but his resignation will usher in a period of tumult.
By Jacquelin Magnay
Europe Correspondent

That was all very well, and Magnay conformed to the reptile agenda, but the pond was of course compelled by the bromancer's take, a man with an almost infinite, Boris-like capacity for getting it wrong.

The header: Brexit gave Britain the freedom to succeed. It’s bad government that’s let it down; Countless faux experts claim that Brexit has cost Britain millions, billions, trillions. Name your figure. It’s complete eyewash.
The caption for a shameless liar who shamelessly misled the country, and how satisfying he should set the tone for this bromancer outing: Boris Johnson wears boxing gloves emblazoned with “Get Brexit Done”. Picture: Frank Augstein / AFP

The bromancer spent a bigly four minutes peddling assorted big lies, dancing on sundry graves by peddling hogwash about the benefits of Brexit.

Say what you will, when the bromancer is wildly in error, he sticks to his gun with the rigid stupidity that would have made him a dead cert as an advisor to Boris, or perhaps these days, Nige ...

The 10th anniversary of the Brexit vote – when Britain left the EU – celebrates one of the most joyous, hopeful events in the modern history of Western civilisation. It was, and is, a mark of national and democratic maturity. It’s one of the most brilliant and inspiring moments of real democracy, by which I mean not only a decision arrived at by a majority vote but a people determined to regain and keep control, to exercise self-determination and accept all the responsibility that goes with that.
Of course, there’s a paradox. Britain has been very badly governed for the past 10 years, as Keir Starmer’s defenestration richly demonstrates. As I wrote last weekend, it’s appallingly governed now. But Brexit means when British politics finally gets around to tackling its problems, its institutions have the national freedom to do so effectively.

One of the key problems is that the bromancer routinely talks to the wrong people, and he seems to be doing that in spades in his current trip to Old Blighty. 

The Moggster, long an irrelevance, will always take the time to talk to any passing colonial dropkick willing to listen, and so it came to pass with the bromancer's return to his spiritual home...

Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of the architects of Brexit and a senior minister in Boris Johnson’s government, does not remotely deny the failures of the last Conservative government. He lists them for me: too much Covid lockdown, too much legal immigration when people wanted it cut, too much illegal immigration, too much tax, not being conservative enough.
But he says of Johnson: “In Brexit, he delivered the most important constitutional reform in Britain in centuries. It was fundamentally important. It restored democratic control to parliament.”

All nonsense, drivel as pure as a heated English summer of course, and as a distraction, the reptiles slipped in a snap: Keir Starmer speaks to members of the media on the sidelines of the G7 summit. Picture: Isabel Infantes / Getty Images

The bromancer carried on like a pork chop just as the British government is trying to undo the Brexit damage and sidle up to the EU - what with mad King Donald on the loose - see the Beeb's A decade on from Brexit, the new PM has big calls to make on Europe

Europe might be a bit of a mess, but there isn't any joy across the Atlantic, as Keir discovered to his cost, but inevitably the bromancer wasn't having any of it ...

Countless faux experts claim that Brexit has cost Britain millions, billions, trillions. Name your figure. It’s complete eyewash. Folks who discount sovereignty and want Britain, as they want other nations, tightly bound in undemocratic rules of undemocratic internationalist Frankensteins such as the EU predicted instant economic collapse for Britain the minute it left the EU.
No such thing happened. All the claimed economic costs of Brexit are similarly fatuous.
Let’s subject the claims to the most elementary empirical test. How have comparable European economies such as France and Germany gone in the past 10 years? They had what the eurocrats would regard as the incomparable benefits of continued EU membership while Britain did not.
In fact, over the past 10 years, the French and German economies have fared worse than the British economy. Starmer, on most measures, is the most unpopular man to have been UK prime minister. Yet he was less unpopular than Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Germany and President Emmanuel Macron in France.

The pond realises that the bromancer has no head for figures, and so decided a little trolling wouldn't hurt, and so reverted to the Graudian's celebration of the tenth anniversary of the folly:

How Brexit has made Britain poorer – in charts
Forecasters were wrong about an immediate recession but right that we would be worse off outside the EU
Richard Partington Senior economics correspondent

There were many graphs and much data, including ...

There are none so deaf as those determined not to hear.

Strangely, looking at that graph was more appealing than looking at the interrupting snap of Jacob Rees-Mogg...

Rather than delve into the data, the bromancer preferred rhetoric of the bro kind:

So all these incomparable, unbearable, debilitating, self-inflicted, monstrous, illogical, populist, ruinous, self-destructive costs of Brexit have ended up with Britain amazingly doing better than France and Germany despite all their (substitute similar cliches, but positive) benefits of continuing EU membership.
Could the cause of success and failure over the past decade actually reside instead in the content of government policy?
Brexit didn’t guarantee good government, it provided the opportunity for good government. Some of that has come about for Britain, such as free trade agreements with the US, India and Australia. Freedom to manoeuvre on tariffs. A more flexible policy on artificial intelligence than the eurosclerotic behemoth could ever deliver.
But on the biggest things, of course, the British government is not delivering.

Dear sweet long absent lord of delusion, the free trade agreement with the US? The pond wants whatever the bromancer is on ...and hopes he doesn't do a search for the benefits, or it might depress him...

As for India and Australia, what a hoot. Freedom to manoeuvre with King Donald on tariffs? Good luck with that. And a chance to lie down and be screwed by AI? Wonders will never cease.

The reptiles next interrupted with a snap of a man who, having helped introduce the ruinous Brexit, is now making plans to ruin little England some more...Nigel Farage celebrates and poses for photographers at Brexit

The bromancer went on a big rhetorical jag, what with welfare wastrels and Covid, as if Boris didn't have anything to do with any of that ...

Famously, Andy Burnham just won a big victory for the Labour Party, and for himself, in the Makerfield by-election. On the same day, Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives took a House of Commons seat from the Scottish National Party, which was the Conservatives’ first big win under Badenoch. In yet another by-election, the SNP held a seat, with the Conservatives, not Labour or Reform, coming second. If Burnham actually believes some of the things he said in victory, Britain is in for years more of terrible government and deepening crisis. In courting popularity, Burnham is saying yes to everybody and promising everybody more goodies. But the simple reality is that Britain is broke.
Bizarrely, Burnham attributes this to 40 years of, allegedly, Thatcherism, neoliberalism, austerity, privatisation and deregulation. Frankly, that analysis is hallucinogenic.
More than half of all British households now receive more in welfare than they pay in tax. The welfare system is totally out of control. Far from being neoliberal, the budget is in vast, chronic deficit. In May, the government borrowed more than £23bn ($43.4bn), more than half of which was to service the interest on existing debt.
Under Covid lockdowns, the country squandered hundreds of billions of pounds. No one in politics opposed this and no one was prepared to tell the British people that at some stage it would all have to be paid back.

The reptiles decided to put up snaps of the two likely contenders, though really Kemi's party is working hard to be completely irrelevant ...Andy Burnham; Kemi Badenoch

 

The bromancer kept on resorting to the usual suspects ... uppity furriners, Covid and welfare wastrels, thereby suggesting a limited palate, but when you have a litany, best stick with it...

One reason for the huge immigration spike after Covid was that the government effectively thought the British people, or some millions of them anyway, had lost interest in working. There’s some empirical evidence for that dolorous reflection. Almost everyone you encounter working in London hotels and restaurants comes from overseas, while there are a million young Brits involved in neither employment nor education or training. That, surely, is social and policy failure.
The long and badly managed fallout of Covid, massive government expenditure, debt and transfer payments, net-zero policies producing the most expensive energy in the world – these are infinitely more the causes of Britain’s travails than the fictional “neoliberalism”, much less “austerity”, of Burnham’s imagination.
One aspect of the three by-elections was fascinating – the degree of tactical voting.
In Britain’s first-past-the-post system, if you vote for a candidate who doesn’t come first or second your vote is wasted. Under Australia’s preferential voting system you get a second chance.

Inevitably the Nige/Reform curious bromancer put in a good word for the habitual liar, who doesn't mind scoring the odd five million quid from a filthy rich donor, and then staying mum about it...
British voters are becoming adept at tactical voting. A habitual Liberal-Democrat voter might vote Labour to defeat the Conservative, a Conservative voter might vote Reform to defeat Labour. The demonisation of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK may well lead to tactical voting to keep it out in many electorates. (That may apply to One Nation in Australia.)
Overall it makes the next British election very hard to pick. More than ever before it will have the character of 650 by-elections.
Neo-liberalism is a ludicrously fictitious bogeyman. Brexit means any government has the policy power to fix the nation’s problems.
Will it have the courage, competence and grip to do so? That’s the question, just as it should be. The whole world can thank Brexit for that happy outcome.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

Thank Brexit, thank that fraud Boris? Only in the bromancer's alternative bizarro world ...

Why was the pond reminded of the current state of play down under?

Reform, One Nation, King Donald, peas in a bromancer pod.

On the deregulation front, the departure of the man responsible for inspiring the 2008 financial disaster was well down the page...and then it had to be borrowed from the WSJ ...

Obituary
Former US Fed chairman Alan Greenspan dies at 100
Alan Greenspan, a rock-star Fed chairman whose legacy was dimmed by the financial crisis, dies at age 100
The ‘maestro’ rivalled the US president for global influence. But his faith in financial markets’ ability to police themselves became an Achilles’ heel.
By Nick Timiraos

Bizarrely Dame Slap was also on the regulatory case. It's a few days old, but better noted than never ...

Why did KPMG behave so recklessly? ‘Because it could’
A disastrous 30-year-old law shielded accounting firms from liability, creating the toxic moral hazard behind the KPMG scandal.
By Janet Albrechtsen

Relax, it's all about being woke, what with unreconstructed greed passing as woke these days in the hive mind, but what better way could be found to introduce Dame Groan's regular Tuesday rant about us all being rooned by Xmas?

The header: Treasury was once the premier agency for economic counsel. Not any longer; Was Jim Chalmers the principal villain or was it the faulty advice provided by inexperienced, bungling Treasury officials?

There was no caption for the snap, but that's because everyone in the hive mind knows who these downcast/grim looking villains are ...

Dame Groan was in feisty form, ready for a full four minutes of abuse, and didn't get past the first sentence before she rolled out "fiasco":

It’s hard to know who to blame for the rolling budget fiasco. Was Jim Chalmers the principal villain or was it the faulty advice provided by inexperienced, bungling Treasury officials? Probably the answer is a bit of both.
Treasury would be fully aware that Labor doesn’t like small businesses, which are incapable of being unionised. There are no downsides to recommending measures that harm them, if only inadvertently. Labor also distrusts most small business owners. Are they just doing what they’re doing to rip off the tax system? Do they treat their workers in the same way as big business?
So, when Treasury officials recommended that the capital gains tax changes be broadened beyond housing to include all capital gains, including those made by small business owners, the Treasurer would have seen this as an attractive option. The addition to revenue would be very welcome and he could crow about reducing tax for working Australians – OK, by only $250 in over a year’s time.
Treasury’s effective dismissal of the additional compliance costs of the indexation method – 14 steps are required to calculate liabilities – is one thing. But its support for what will become one of the highest CGT rates in the world is another thing altogether.

How to sooth the hive mind after rolling out those disasters? Show a snap of Petey boy: Peter Costello arrives at the 30th Anniversary of the Howard Government. Picture: The Australian / Nadir Kinani

Dame Groan was ropeable at sundry students who'd failed to absorb her teaching:

I’ve said it before, but let’s be clear – this new proposed method of CGT calculation is not a reversion to the Keating method. There was no 30 per cent minimum tax, a very onerous burden, and averaging over five years was allowed then but not now.
One important issue that a genuine economist would have picked up is the suitability of the consumer price index as the factor to be used for indexation. In fact, it is completely unsuitable, with a much more defensible index being the long-term government bond rate. It was used in Wayne Swan’s ill-fated mining tax calculation, the one aspect of that tax that the government of the day got right.
What a CGT should be trying to capture is the surplus above the risk-adjusted return given the nature of small business activity. The preferred route at this stage would be to stick with the CGT discount method, both because of its incredibly low compliance costs and the fact it is widely understood. Its bias towards high-growth assets is a good thing; it’s not a defect.
Let’s not forget that the discount method was introduced after thorough investigation by the 1999 business tax review commissioned by treasurer Peter Costello and led by John Ralph, culminating in a report of several hundred pages. Those were the days. Labor fully supported the change.
Now if the 50 per cent discount was deemed to be too high, there was always the option of reducing it, say to 40 per cent or 35 per cent. In fact, this is one of the proposals that had been widely floated by the busy advocates of tax reform, including MP Allegra Spender.

Oh dear, not Allegra, that'll send Dame Groan right off: Allegra Spender. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

It might be worse ...

Thank the long absent lord, Dame Groan never worries about the big picture.

Instead she was so exasperated she had to resort to dot points:

What is likely to emerge is a hotchpotch of different arrangements, including the immensely bureaucratic (proposed) Innovative Business CGT Concession. Businesses that meet the criteria for this scheme will be able to stick to the 50 per cent discount on CGT, although there is a lifetime cap on the benefit achievable.
But check out the ludicrous list to qualify.

•  The company must be genuinely focused on developing one or more new or significantly improved innovations for commercialisation.
• The business relating to that innovation must have a high growth potential.
• The company must demonstrate that it has the potential to be able to successfully scale up that business.
• The company must demonstrate that it has the potential to be able to address a broader than local market, including global markets, through that business.
• The company must demonstrate that it has the potential to be able to have competitive advantages for that business.

Shocking stuff and Dame Groan was in despair...

Companies must meet these criteria when equity is first raised, but the assessment by the Australian Taxation Office of whether the tests are met does not occur until the capital gain is realised. If this is the lauded carve-out for start-ups, it’s a joke. In the meantime, other small businesses can just put up with the onerous and costly new CGT rules, even with the enhanced concessions.
Chalmers also would be wise just to drop the changes to the taxation of trusts, having been forced to back away from his bizarre attack on discretionary testamentary trusts. It is estimated that about 400,000 small businesses are set up as trusts and the imposition of a minimum 30 per cent tax will force many of them to the wall. This is made worse by the double taxing of bucket companies that often are set up by businesses in association with discretionary trusts.
As for the naive advice offered up in the budget papers that small businesses currently set up as trusts should simply restructure as companies, the cost of doing so is basically overlooked. The payment of stamp duty to state governments alone will make this route impossible for many small businesses.

Just to compound Dame Groan's grief, the reptiles insisted on a snap of the Cold Chisel man, Labor Party President Wayne Swan

Dammit, enough of that working class nonsense, let's hear it for those rich enough to be able to construct a trust to hide their wealth:

It’s worth noting that many discretionary trusts distribute funds to charities and not-for-profit organisations. This option will be effectively destroyed by a 30 per cent minimum tax, to be initially collected by the trustee and distributed to beneficiaries on a non-refundable basis.
There’s no obvious solution to making charities tax-exempt from trust distributions, although a way out may have been found in respect of realised capital gains.
One of the most depressing aspects of the past several weeks has been the obvious decline in the professional capacity of the Treasury to offer well-informed and economically sensible advice.
Once upon a time, Treasury was the premier agency for excellent economic counsel; not any longer. Mind you, if you head to Treasury’s website, you will learn about the Inclusion and Diversity Strategy 2023-2028, “where difference is celebrated and used to activate innovative ideas, policies and practices”.
It doesn’t extend to ensuring that Treasury officials are fully prepared to answer questions from senators. But evidently within Treasury, “diversity, wellbeing and integrity are embedded in a supportive culture that enables people to thrive”.
It’s just a pity there is not more focus on having the most capable and experienced people providing the highest quality advice to the benefit of all Australians.

Oh dear, the pond knows who that is, and what a pity Dame Groan didn't make it clearer: 

It’s just a pity there is not more focus on having the most capable and experienced people, like me, the most fair and experienced groaner in the land, providing the highest quality advice to the benefit of all Australians.

Fixed it.

The pond trusts that the usual suspects enjoyed this outing ... as David Rowe turned up to help celebrate the latest twist in the little England saga ...

Is there no end to entertaining circuses?

In which the pond celebrates the swishing Switzer celebrating mad King Donald, and the Major worshipping at the feet of Pauline ...

 

King Donald's negotiating style resembles the Mafia ...

In short, if you don't agree to my deal, I'm gunna kill ya. Or nice country, pity I have to do some stuff to it again.

Of course there other mysteries arising from his crazed social media outings...

Trump baffles internet with picture of woman and message of ‘great daughter’ - but nobody is sure who she is; The 80-year-old president raised eyebrows after sharing an image of a mysterious blonde woman on Truth Social (The Independent)

And then there was this with Faux Noise ...

...In a 20-minute phone call with Fox News, which revealed his sensitivity to the criticism being directed at him by Republicans and Democrats alike, he said: “We may take over the strait, if we have to. If they don’t make a deal, we’ll collect tolls.”
Referring to the strait, he appeared to threaten to kidnap the Iranian negotiators, saying: “You close it and you won’t have a country. You won’t even make it back to your f*cking country.”
The US president’s threat led to a formal protest by the Iranians to the mediators, and a demand that what they described as his “bullying” was brought under control.
At the talks in Switzerland, Vance played down the impact of violence in Lebanon, saying ​progress had been made towards ending hostilities there. “These things are always a little bit messy,” he said. (Graudian).

Messy? Like a horse's head on the silk sheets?

Great stuff.

What the reptiles need is some brave soul, brimming with idiocy, to paint a noble picture of the mad King.

Who better than the swishing Switzer?

The header: Trump’s critics must ask: if not this peace deal, then what? Trump deserves credit not for starting this war but for recognising the costs of pressing on were likely to exceed the benefits.

The caption for a snap celebrating yet another remarkably corrupt deal: President Donald Trump speaks after touring the newly designated Air Force One presidential aircraft. Picture: Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP Photo

Trust the swishing Switzer to swim against the tide ...

Donald Trump’s decision to sign a memorandum of understanding ending hostilities with Iran has infuriated many of his strongest supporters. From Andrew Bolt on Sky News Australia to Israeli commentators, neo-conservative voices such as John Podhoretz and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, the verdict is much the same: Trump has struck a bad deal that weakens US credibility, abandons Israel, unsettles America’s Sunni Gulf partners and allows the Islamic Republic to survive another day.
Whether the memorandum ultimately survives political opposition in Tehran, Washington and Jerusalem remains to be seen. Already, Iran says it has closed the Strait of Hormuz once again in response to Israel’s continued strikes on southern Lebanon. Whether those attacks constitute a breach of Tehran’s understanding with Washington is contested.

Actually whether the memorandum ultimately survives the mad King's interventions might be more to the point, but perhaps the swishing Switzer was scribbling before the latest folly. Even then, he should have known, what with the mad King's determination to keep his feud with Moroni bubbling along, and sundry other fits of madness:

What is clear is that the latest confrontation is a reminder of how fragile the situation remains in the Persian Gulf and how uncertain the prospects are for a durable peace.
Still, credit where it’s due: Trump is right to try to end a war he never should have launched. His angry critics insist the memorandum gives away too much. They may be right. But what, precisely, was the alternative?

What an expert bout of meaningless blather, and the reptiles interrupted with a snap to remind the hive mind of the winners, Iranians hold pictures of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Picture: Atta Kenare / AFP

What was the alternative? Wasn't it total surrender, regime change and freedumb for Iranians/

Nah, it was threaten to renew the bombing, as the swishing Switzer tried to sweep up the mess...

A renewed bombing campaign simply would have returned Washington to a strategy that already had fallen well short of its stated objectives. Iran’s regime remained in power. Its nuclear program had been damaged but not eliminated. Its ballistic missile capability survived and its regional proxy network, though weakened, remained intact.
Why should anyone believe another round of airstrikes would suddenly have produced a fundamentally different result? More to the point, how long would that campaign have continued before Washington concluded the costs outweighed the diminishing prospect of success?
Neither would the costs have been confined to the battlefield. Another sustained campaign would have consumed scarce American precision munitions when many strategists remain focused on the Indo-Pacific, where the region does face a genuine threat to US primacy – namely China.
More important, military escalation almost certainly would have invited another round of Iranian retaliation against Gulf energy infrastructure and commercial shipping. Tehran cannot conventionally match US military power. But the past several months have demonstrated that it retains the capacity to impose enormous economic costs by threatening the Strait of Hormuz and disrupting energy flows across the Gulf.
Give Trump credit for recognising this reality. His recent comments, however weird, suggest an appreciation that continued escalation carried unacceptable economic and strategic risks.
Critics argue the agreement leaves Iran free to threaten Israel’s existence. That overstates the case. Whatever one thinks of the Islamic Republic – and there is little to admire – its conduct generally has reflected strategic calculation rather than a desire for direct unconstrained war with the US or Israel.
Remember on three occasions in the past two years – October 2024, June last year and February this year – it was Israel or the US, or both, that attacked Iran, the last two occasions during negotiations.
Faced with overwhelming military superiority, Tehran typically has sought calibrated retaliation and deterrence rather than national suicide.
Some argue Washington should simply have tightened sanctions and waited for the regime to buckle. But economic coercion is rarely an instrument of rapid political change, especially against governments that regard the struggle as existential.
None of this diminishes the brutality of the Iranian regime or the threat posed by its regional proxies. The question is whether further military escalation would have advanced Western interests.

What a question, still being posed:

Sorry, the reptiles preferred to drag Obama and Joe into the mess ...Barack Obama, standing with Joe Biden, delivers remarks in the East Room of the White House, November 2015. Picture: Andrew Harnik / AFP

And so did Switzer:

Critics also argue that Trump’s agreement is little better than the Obama administration’s 2015 nuclear deal, which Trump abandoned three years later. Yet, with the benefit of hindsight, was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action really such a failure?
Under that agreement, Iran broadly observed restrictions on uranium enrichment throughout the remainder of the Obama presidency and into Trump’s first term.
It was only after Washington withdrew from the accord in 2018 that Tehran progressively abandoned those constraints, enriching uranium to levels approaching weapons grade. Whatever the shortcomings of the original agreement, it had succeeded in imposing meaningful limits on Iran’s nuclear program. Those constraints steadily unravelled after Washington walked away.
Why be so coy? It wasn't "Washington" that withdrew and walked away. It was mad King Donald, in a fit of pique, envy and resentment, and in a style which routinely marks his narcissistic negotiating skills.

Somehow this malevolent stupidity gets transformed into a form of "statesmanship" by the swishing Switzer:

Statesmanship sometimes consists not in beginning wars but in recognising when their original objectives have become unattainable. Trump deserves credit not for starting this conflict but for recognising that the costs of pressing on were likely to exceed the benefits.
His harshest critics have yet to answer the most important question of all: if not this imperfect peace, then what?
The broader lesson extends well beyond Trump. From Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, the US repeatedly has discovered that overwhelming military superiority does not necessarily translate into lasting political success. Iran may yet become another chapter in that long and sobering history.

Tom Switzer is presenter of the Switzerland podcast.

The pond looks forward to the swishing Switzer's next opus, wherein he explains that the real reason for the reflecting pool folly isn't King Donald hiring a corrupt, incompetent mate (and felon) for the job, but the work of treasonous conspirators.

The pond must pause to celebrate the feudin' and fussin' with the immortal Rowe ...

The lizard Oz editorialist also had a stab at the matter, preferring the use of "illusive" rather than "elusive"...

He mustn't give in to Tehran's tactics?

What else? Well the jihad on Jimbo and Albo continues...

EXCLUSIVE
Vanishing investors a steep price: warning as housing buckles
Labor should address business concerns on budget, CEDA declares
An early champion of Labor’s CGT package has joined industry groups warning the tax overhaul could destroy jobs and slow wage growth, as the housing market shows signs of falling.
By Greg Brown and Ben Wilmot

And the jihad on the ABC was also flourishing...

EXCLUSIVE
‘Ideological capture’: Despite praise, ABC rejects Sall Grover opinion piece
After 37 emails, three drafts and three weeks of negotiations, the ABC rejected Sall Grover’s opinion piece on sex-based rights – without ever revealing the ‘inaccuracies’ it cited.
By Rachel Baxendale

Luckily the intermittent archive was working, so the pond could move on and not indulge the transphobia ... only for the pond to decide that the quarry whisperer whining away could be given the same cornfield treatment ...

Jim’s budget retreat is just another ALP whiteboard disaster
Chalmers’ budget reforms are not an aberration. They are the product of a corrupted public policy process.
By Nick Cater
Columnist

A teaser trailer would suffice ...

It was the sight of the floodwater in quarries Caterist posing as a hands-on carpenter - as opposed to being a loon who makes his living sheltering in a lobby group and occasionally turning up in print - that made the pond seek other entertainment.

There's only so much carry on about the budget that anyone should be made to suffer and the pond is well over it ...

But then the pond couldn't even get excited by simpleton Simon indulging in a seance, and bringing back a ghost to haunt the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way ...

‘Good policy is nothing if you don’t win the politics’
Has the Liberal Party forgotten that it is in the business of politics?
By Simon Benson

A teaser trailer showing the haunted one, and the ghoulish spectre haunting him with advice - a spectre who in his time was a singularly incompetent, ABC-obsessed politician - was more than enough ...

Lordy, long absent lordy, they really do hate the beefy boofhead, but resorting to grave digging of this kind was a form of abuse that almost gave the pond some sympathy for the windmill hater. Almost ...

And that just left the Major, doing what he does best, celebrating Pauline's remarkably affinity with the policies of the lizard Oz ...

The header: How media attacks and establishment sneering are fuelling One Nation’s resurgence;  Journalists attacking Hanson’s National Press Club speech on radical Islam and multiculturalism are fuelling the very One Nation surge they seek to stop.

The caption for the snap that suggested the Major would carry on his Zionist duties for the Australian Daily Zionist News: A mourner lights candles as people gather around floral tributes outside Bondi Pavilion in Sydney in December 2025 to honour victims of the Bondi Beach shooting. It’s clear the real spurt to Pauline Hanson’s political fortunes was the murder of 15 people at Bondi Beach. Picture: David Gray/AFP

The Major was fully on board at the outrageous suggestion that the media should take a look at Pauline's policies, and her routine, barely concealed dog-whistling racism.

Why such policies and poses were entirely lizard Oz approved and as pure as the driven snow ...

Oh Crikey's Wanning Sun might carp ...

A room of cowed journalists legitimised Pauline Hanson. It’s proof she’s muzzled the watchdog
Rather than challenge the premise of Pauline Hanson’s press club speech with questions about its contents, reporters looked the other way. It proved we’re dealing with a new type of journalism. (sorry, paywall, but the header says it all.

... but the Major would have none of it.

After all, Pauline was just doing right by the lizard Oz, and by golly the Major would do right by her...

Journalists who imagine One Nation supporters don’t understand politics and policy need to get out more.
This column has spent the past fortnight in a National Party seat on the NSW mid-north coast and has asked many people of different backgrounds about One Nation.
One woman explained why she and her husband had donated twice to the One Nation’s “Fire the Liar” ad campaign that raised $4m in less than a week.
Asked why she would support a party that had only two federal Lower House members, former Nationals leader and ex-deputy PM Barnaby Joyce and new MP for Farrer David Farley, the woman – who has always voted Coalition – said she wanted a party that reflected her views.
She spoke about immigration, multiculturalism, renewables and gender ideology – the main subjects of One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s National Press club speech two days later last Wednesday.
“Listen, the Coalition are no better than Labor on these issues. Just look at renewables. John Howard introduced the RET in his last term and went to the Rudd election (in 2007) with an emissions trading scheme just like Rudd did,” the woman said.
“Tony Abbott ratified our commitment to the Paris agreement. Turnbull had us up for $40bn on Snowy 2.0, and Morrison committed to net zero by 2050. How are they better than (Climate Change Minister) Chris Bowen?”
The details of her assessment were correct.
This column reckons much of the activist media class misunderstands One Nation supporters. People moving to One Nation know exactly what they do and don’t want.
Like populist movements in the US and the UK, they are part of a backlash against the censorious sneering of the political establishment, freed by Donald Trump’s rejection of woke pieties on immigration, gender and climate.
In Australia, they may not approve of Trump’s handling of world affairs, but they feel they can now speak openly against foolish ideology in favour of common sense.
Journalists Sarah Ferguson on the ABC’s 7.30 on Wednesday and Sally Sara on Radio National breakfast on Thursday railed against Hanson’s words on radical Islam, multiculturalism, speaking English at home, criticism of late-term abortion and support for biological truth over gender ideology.
The pair is only helping One Nation – just as surely as GetUp!’s stunt of unfurling an anti-Hanson poster in the middle of her speech at the National Press Club in Canberra helped her.

The reptiles offered a brief moment of comedy ...A banner was unfurled behind Pauline Hanson during her National Press Club speech, and right GetUp media lead David Sharaz. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

A reminder. How to discuss Islam in a meaningful way, aka reptile style...

That snap courtesy The Economist story ..

Australia’s hard right is resurgent
It includes actual Nazis

...Today, one in three people in Australia was born overseas—millions of them in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. So Ms Hanson’s dressing-up games do not reflect the concerns of middle Australia. Moreover, the country’s system of preferential voting would seem to present a big obstacle to the One Nation party ever forming a government, even if its fortunes continue to improve. That contrasts with Britain’s first-past-the-post system, whereby the prospect of a once fringe party such as Reform UK one day taking office is starting to look very real.
Yet it is becoming ever more clear that the ideology of “White Australia” still appeals to a sizeable number of Aussies. Officials sound worried about violence: the head of Australia’s spy agency says that the majority of terror threats it investigated last year involved racist or nationalist ideologies. This is hardly the time for Australia’s squabbling centrists to be needlessly giving up ground.

Sorry, the Major ain't a squabbling centrist. 

He's a celebratory far right loon, and he intends to keep on playing that dog anxious to catch that Pauline car routine ...

A federal election is still two years away. Hanson’s ascendance may continue or falter, as it has many times over the 30 years since she entered politics.
Polling is not predictive. Most polling six months before last year’s May election had Peter Dutton in a winning position.
Hanson admitted her party would need to face media scrutiny as its support grew. But scrutiny is not the same as adversarial political activism by reporters.
Hanson, Joyce and One Nation campaign boss James Ashby are taking their operation to a new level. The production values and cut-through in One Nation’s latest two-minute ad, widely shared on Facebook, is better than any the major parties have put out.
And despite all the cogent economic analysis from pollsters and political editors about the effects of the cost-of-living crisis on working class Australians, it’s clear the real spurt to Hanson’s political fortunes was the murder of 15 people at Bondi Beach in December during a celebration of Hanukkah.
The massacre makes up the entire first part of the new One Nation ad, and it’s powerful. The implication is clear – this attack is the fruit of multiculturalism and high migration.
Australians, Hanson said, should be able to discuss radical Islamism. Yet such discussions are seldom had openly, even though they have been in Europe for more than a decade.
ABC global affairs editor Laura Tingle on December 16 told her colleague Patricia Karvelas on the Politics Now podcast that the actions of the Bondi gunmen had “nothing to do with religion”.

Ah, there comes the Zionism, even though it might be argued that a mass slaughter of anyone hardly conforms to a sensible reading of religious texts (except of course for the Crusades, which were entirely necessary and justified).

The reptiles followed up with two snaps contrasting distilled essence of ABC cardigan wearing evil, and distilled essence of bottled red-headed innocence: Laura Tingle, the ABC's global affairs editor. Picture: X; Pauline Hanson at the National Press Club. Picture: Hilary Wardhaugh/Getty Images

Why it's just like those tatts on Robert Mitchum's (and De Niro's) hands, "Love"and "Hate", sadly reduced to "Wait" and "Full" on Javier Bardem's hands in the latest Cape Fear.

The Major reverted to standard reptile fear and loathing of furriners ... one of the lizard Oz's favourite jihads, and with Pauline taking up their policy, what's not to like?

Months earlier ASIO boss Mike Burgess had warned that the war in Gaza was firing up Muslim anger online, especially among young males.
Many journalists have tried to deny the link between high immigration, high house prices and housing shortages. Common sense tells voters the link is obvious.
Hanson on Wednesday repeated figures this column published on April 26 – a third of Australians today are born overseas. In the US, the figure is 14 per cent.
Labor had promised to regain control of immigration but many in the media see the debate as code for right wing racism. Yet many on the left, including former NSW Labor premier Bob Car and the Greens political party, have long advocated for lower immigration.

This newspaper and The Australian Financial Review have been almost alone in explaining why governments, Labor and Coalition, back high migration and why it hurts ordinary Australians.

Indeed, indeed ...

Federal Treasury uses migration to maintain the illusion of GDP growth. Neither the Coalition nor Labor have been able to lift productivity for a decade to ensure real growth in per capita terms. Australians feel poorer because in GDP per capita terms, they are.
The Albanese government uses huge federal spending, indiscriminate cash handouts and underwriting of private-sector wages in aged and child care to hide the fact. Australians sense this is only fuelling inflation and making workers poorer as interest rates rise.

In every reptile story of this kind, a comical picture of Albo is a necessity, and again the lizards of Oz graphics department carried out their duty ...Anthony Albanese. His government uses huge federal spending, indiscriminate cash handouts and underwriting of private-sector wages in aged and child care to hide the lack of real per capita growth. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

The Major continued his unctuous celebration of pandering to Pauline...

Redbridge Group pollster Kos Samaras wrote before the last election and long before One Nation’s recent rise of the feeling among the working poor, especially Gen Xers, that government is not working for them.
This column on May 31 quoted former Labor senator, now political demographer, John Black, arguing Labor was no longer the party of the working class. Like the teals in former Coalition seats, Labor targets wealthy city voters. Hence childcare support for families earning up to $532,000.
All this opens the door for One Nation.
In The Australian on Thursday, former Treasury assistant secretary David Pearl wrote the best analysis of Hanson’s speech: “She said that just as ‘every attempt has been made to silence me in Australia’ people have been frightened to speak up.
“People have been ‘demeaned and condescended to’ and ‘civil debate has been paralysed’ Hanson said, with the media being complicit.”
History proves his point.
Discussing the media’s handling of Hanson, this column on February 8 examined that the previous One Nation high-water mark was in the Queensland state election in June 1998, when Hanson was the federal member for the seat of Oxley. One Nation won 24 per cent of the vote and 11 state seats – five from the Coalition and six from Labor.

Some day the reptiles will discover what it's like to catch the Pauline car ...

And if you find a comical picture of Albo, you must find an alluring picture of Pauline, dressed in a flag in a way that sends the adoring hive mind into a frenzy... Pauline Hanson launches her One Nation party in Ipswich in her Queensland electorate. Picture: Nathan Richter

The Major ended by celebrating "thoughtful journalists", aka reptiles, who'd give Pauline every break she wanted ...

The Courier-Mail was leaked the nightly Labor poll track in the final campaign week.
The tracking showed two enormous bumps in One Nation support after aggressive national interviews by Ray Martin and Maxine McKew. Labor won the election with the support of independents, ousting a first-term Coalition government.
The more thoughtful journalists at the Press Club seemed to sense that attack would only help One Nation.
Scrutiny is fair. Finger-pointing accusations of racism not so much.

Same as it ever was. She's been a racist on the public record since the day John Howard kicked her out, and she's still a racist, as are many Australians and as is the lizard Oz, with its relentless persecution of furriners, but the Major reckons we should stay shtoom about it?

Nah, that's how terrifying monsters (and bullies) work ...

Meanwhile, let confusion reign ...

In which the pond is bored by Polonius gone full Pauline and the Angelic One terrified of AI, but still has to send sundry alternative reptiles to the cornfield ...

 

Regarding the bromancer outing yesterday, the pond deeply regrets not having got up early enough and so be able to slip in a reference to the great Hydeing doled out to Nige in the Graudian 

Reform’s genius plan is finally coming into view: field terrible candidates then lose (the pond added an intermittent archive link because the Graudian is playing that 'give me your email game' again)

Every time the pond reads a Marina hatchet job, the pond wishes it had the skill, or at least that she'd turn her sights on the reptiles.

...The other increasingly noticeable thing about Farage is that he is incredibly thin-skinned and can’t help showing it. Remember, he spent the first part of this campaign in sulky seclusion after people found out about him taking a totally normal personal gift of £5m from a Thailand-based crypto billionaire. When he finally emerged to talk about it, he couldn’t keep his nuclear irritation and affront under wraps. This is very Nigel. The commentator Dominic Lawson recently recalled Farage’s reaction to a mild joke at some Spectator awards last winter, describing his face turning white before he shouted: “Why don’t you go f*ck yourself?” Why do you keep f*cking yourself, feels like the more salient question for Farage. (* the pond apologises for making the text googlebot safe)

The cracking Crace was also relevant ...

Burnham the mystic with a mission is all smiles after Makerfield coronation (again the pond added an intermittent archive link because the Graudian is playing that 'give me your email game' again)

It was mainly about Labor delusions but at the very end Nige got a mention as being election MIA ...

..One other person not much in evidence was Nigel Farage. This had been a terrible night for Reform. If Makerfield had voted as it had in the May local elections, Kenyon would have won with a majority of 8,000. Burnham’s victory showed the country was not hellbent on putting Reform in Downing Street. Still, at least Nige hadn’t spent any of his £5m handout on the campaign. So things weren’t all bad.
Instead, Farage made do with a sulky video, yet again made in a field. He’s always in a field these days. The only place he can be sure no one will ask him awkward questions about his slush funds. He had been expecting a disappointing night, he said. He really hadn’t. Not this disappointing. “Reform is still the leading party of the centre right,” he added. Except it isn’t. There is nothing centre-right about Reform. They are much further from the middle than that. Something more than half the Makerfield voters understood only too well.

Instead of those pleasures, the pond's dismal meditative Sunday duty was to spend time with prattling Polonius.

On the other hand, the pond overdid it yesterday, so at least it'd be a quiet time with Pauline and Polonius, as the tedious Mr Pooter clone was determined to carry on the One Nation-isation of the hive mind at the lizard Oz.

The header: GetUp’s anti-Hanson stunt another own goal; The organisation that spent $600,000 trying to stop One Nation in the Farrer by-election handed the party leader one of her best political moments yet, at the National Press Club.

The caption: A banner was unfurled behind Pauline Hanson during her National Press Club speech, and right GetUp media lead David Sharaz. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

Polonius spent a bigly four minutes of his prattle conclusively proving he lacked a sensa huma, though whoever imagined he ever had one clearly hasn't read a word he's written.

That banner sliding down was mildly amusing and faintly diverting, and nothing to get excited about, but Polonius was determined to be outraged.

For the pond the moment had a faint whiff of that Banksy moment when the image slid down through a shredder at the auction, though with Pauline it was the minions doing the shredding and the tearing ...

For Polonius it was time to get hot and bothered, recant his criticism and embrace his inner One Nation ...

In World Cup football terminology, I would score the recent political contest at the National Press Club in Canberra as Leftist Sneerers 0, Pauline Hanson 3.
Ever since Hanson arrived on the political scene in the lead-up to the 1996 federal election, I have always taken the One Nation leader seriously. Sure, in her early years in politics, I was critical of Hanson on many (but not all) issues. I still am.
But it was always apparent that she stood for something and that, although at times inarticulate, she was a good communicator.
After a nervous stumbling start at the NPC, Hanson soon settled down. This occurred around the time the stunt by the leftist GetUp organisation went into operation. A poster critical of One Nation’s position on industrial relations was unravelled along with a reference to Hanson accepting an increase to her parliamentary salary.
The latter was the result of the fact, having won the Farrer by-election, One Nation was entitled to have minor party status, resulting in a pay increase for its leader. Most employees, if offered pay increases, accept them.
Hanson’s vote in the Senate will never affect the decisions of the Fair Work Commission, which determines pay and conditions for most workers. Moreover, there is a strong case that the labour market should be more flexible to facilitate employment and productivity, as was in the case in the final years of the Hawke-Keating government.
Hanson’s response to the GetUp stunt was controlled as she spoke about the cost of living in general and child poverty in particular. At the end of the lengthy speech and before the Q&A began, the following exchange took place between Hanson and NPC president Tom Connell: “Connell: Thank you, Senator. Just in case it needs clarifying, we had no knowledge of what happened here. Hanson: Just tell me, is this another first? Connell: It’s, I believe it is. I believe it is. Hanson: I’ve got a lot of firsts in my life.”

In keeping with Polonius's uxorious scribbling, the reptiles then jumped the shark and nuked the South Park fridge: Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain videos first aired in 2021 and the series is in its fourth season. Its animation style is sometimes compared to South Park.

Um, no, the animation style is nothing like that of South Park's, and Trey Parker and Matt Stone would have a good case for a defamation action.

The wretched Pauline efforts can be found on YouTube but damned if the pond will link to them for fear of provoking an action claiming damages for nausea.

The vague way the defamation is couched gives a clue to the nonsense behind it: Its animation style is sometimes compared to South Park.

Sometimes? By whom? Citation needed so that they can be enjoined in the action. 

Oh no, you don't mean to suggest that further down the page Polonius will...say it ain't so ...

Meanwhile Polonius was still in the grip of uxorious yearnings and euphoria ...

The response demonstrates that Hanson can be quick and sharp. Quicker and sharper than some journalists in the room who were not contenders for best on the ground. Especially Sarah Martin of the leftist Guardian Australia who directed a question about Hanson’s daughter, Lee Hanson, who works for a NSW One Nation senator from her home in Tasmania. Apparently, Martin does not understand that some staff in national politics work from home.
As mentioned previously in this column, as recently as February, ABC TV’s Linton Besser referred to Hanson as a “one-time peddler of fish and chips from Ipswich”. In her NPC speech, Hanson chose to remind viewers/listeners that she “actually ran a small business”.
In The Saturday Paper on May 16, GetUp executive director Paul Ferris wrote: “Over the six weeks up to May 9, GetUp spent $600,000 campaigning against One Nation in the Farrer by-election. Then we lost, badly.” An own goal to be sure. Followed by another at the NPC on Wednesday.
One Nation can prevail over the smart-alecs in GetUp like David Sharaz, who is alleged to have activated the anti-Hanson poster. The party’s most difficult opponent will be the Labor Party.
On the morning after the NPC speech, Labor sent out perhaps its most talented headkicker – Queensland senator Murray Watt – to criticise Hanson.
Now that Hanson has laid down a range of political positions across several social and economic issues, the likes of Watt will have an increasing opportunity to challenge her in detail.
It’s a task more suited to Labor than the extremist Greens or some of the leading figures in the Coalition who do not resemble the likes of opposition figures such as Malcolm Fraser, John Howard and Tony Abbott.
Over the years, One Nation has experienced significant problems with poor candidate selection and staff appointments. Speaking to Paul Sakkal on Nine’s Inside Politics podcast recently, Hanson conceded she closed four branches because of the presence of what I termed, writing in The Australian in 1989, the Lunar Right.

Just to make sure that Pauline kept up her hive mind profile, the reptiles slipped in yet another snap... Hanson and her primary adviser and chief of staff James Ashby at the NPC. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Does she look like Martin Luther, or is it him? Please, Ughmann, help ...

And then came the big reveal ...

Hanson told Sakkal, “I’m being infiltrated by these extremists; so it’s all the time happening with One Nation, they set us up all the time.” That’s the downside. The upside is that Hanson’s chief of staff, James Ashby, who has a background in the LNP in Queensland, is one of the best political operatives going around.
One Nation’s social media by far outperforms its political rivals. Moreover, it can be quite funny. Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain videos first aired in 2021 and the series is in its fourth season. Its animation style is sometimes compared to South Park.

So it was Polonius doing that line ... Its animation style is sometimes compared to South Park.

And yet there was still no citation, no mention of the 'somebody' doing the 'sometimes' routine. (Could it have been 'anybody' talking about 'anytime'?)

Unless ... eerie music please maestro, perhaps it was Polonius trying to disguise himself as that somebody because it seems that Polonius liked the animation, as well as Gutfeld!'s comedy stylings ...

Hanson’s Please Explain is produced by Stepmates Studios in Melbourne – which is co-founded by Mark Nicholson and Sebastian Peart. Nicholson, who is a regular guest on Sky News’ The Kenny Report, has a fine sense of humour. What’s different about the Nicholson approach is that he laughs – not sneers – at his opponents. It’s much the same in the US where Fox News’ Gutfeld! program now has more viewers than any of the other late night talk shows.
The program sometimes errs with respect to taste, but it is invariably witty. Most of its targets are left-liberals (in the American sense of the term) but Greg Gutfeld and his guests sometimes laugh at conservatives.

Dear sweet long absent lord, is this what happens to elderly folk in their dotage, as they sit and watch Faux Noise and cackle about owning the libs?

Seems so, and it seems that Polonius thinks this is pretty sophisticated stuff ...

One Nation’s appeal is regarded by many media commentators as essentially attracting Australians in rural and regional areas, who do not have as many tertiary qualifications when compared with Australians in the city, particularly inner-city types. This is broadly true. But not entirely.
There is evidence that many professionals and well-educated Australians have become attracted to One Nation because they are disillusioned with the two-party political system.
After the South Australian and Farrer results, plus Hanson’s NPC appearance, One Nation’s performance will be subjected to greater scrutiny. Labor will be looking to take back lost supporters on social issues, while the Coalition will focus on economic matters where its strength lies. It’s a long way to go before Hanson is likely to return to the NPC and to the next election.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

The lizard Oz is now so far up Pauline's fundament, Polonius leading the way, that there's now no chance of sunlight.

Luckily the pond had saved an infallible Pope to celebrate Polonius's singalong ...

On the upside, thus far it hasn't been about the United States ...

And that thankfully was that, and all that was left to do was search for a bonus.

The pond won't have a bar of going off to Gondwana land with Gawenda...

COMMENTARY by Michael Gawenda
Jewish voters abandon Labor for Pauline Hanson's promised land
A constituency that once considered the One Nation leader unthinkable has become one of her most surprising sources of support.

If you're all in on ethic cleansing and a greater Israel, it sort of fits, as the Hansonofication of the rag rolls on apace.

And what to make of fools that seem to think that to defeat the Hansonites you must become one?

‘Wokeness is the enemy’: Labor’s Godfather fights to hold the centre
Senator Don Farrell has rebuilt himself into one of Anthony Albanese’s closest political protectors – and most powerful cabinet figures. Can he help Labor stem the rising tide of One Nation?
By Ben Packham

Sheesh, with this attempt to imitate the Swiss bank account man, the pond instantly achieved woke enlightenment ...

Here you go anti-woke Don ... swill on this ...

The pond ruled out Cameron on the basis that he was days late to the party where folks dissed the deal ...

DANGEROUS PEACE

Art of the bad deal: inside Trump’s ‘horrific’ surrender to Iran

How Trump's Iran ar ended in a weak pace deal for America

Critics from both sides of US politics have savaged President Trump’s peace deal as a surrender, granting key concessions before nuclear negotiations even begin.

By Cameron Stewart

Chief International Correspondent

Been there, done that ...

The pond also ruled out snappy Tom ...

Hanson’s Make Australia Monocultural Again sees migration fight shift from ‘how many’ to ‘who’
Unfortunately for Labor, the Coalition and reform advocates, the caravan has moved on – but are we ready to sort people by colour, creed and race?
By Tom Dusevic
Columnist

Sure, it was a valuable contribution to the Hansoning of the Daily One Nation Oz News, but there's only so much a bear can take.

The pond feared that snappy Tom might have provoked the pond into conducting a campaign to deport any and all of those currently working in any form for foreign owned News Corp, especially as all snappy Tom could come up with at the end was a fudge of the first water:

...Unfortunately for Labor, the Coalition and reform advocates it may be too late; the migration caravan has moved on. The conversation has shifted to questioning culture and values, while narrowing the definition of who can come to work, study and settle here. That ultimately leads to pulling apart decades of non-discriminatory policy, sorting people by colour, creed and race. Are we ready for that?

Okay, that's more than enough. Deport all workers beavering away for foreign owned News Corp!

The pond also ruled out the lizard Oz editorialist, providing a faint echo of the bromancer:

It's a funny old world when the reptiles are on the side of Sir Keir.

The pond left Sir Keir for reasons best explained by Owen Jones in The Graudian ...

This column does not express support for Palestine Action – here’s why
In Britain’s increasingly authoritarian society, any sort of protest can find itself at odds with the law. You might even go to jail

...Once a movement committed to non-violence has been designated as terrorists, then a Rubicon has been crossed. “Terrorism” has been emptied of any real meaning, and can be applied far more widely. Indeed, earlier this year, more than 70 peaceful protesters were arrested at a demonstration organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). None of this was direct action: they were deemed to have breached arbitrary restrictions by marching down Whitehall clutching flowers commemorating Palestine’s dead. The PSC leader, Ben Jamal, is among those being put on trial.

For an expansion of this, check out Parker Molloy ...

One of my favorite comedy sketches of all time is 2007 bit from The Whitest Kids U’ Know called “It’s Illegal to Say…” If you’ve never seen it, do yourself a favor and watch it before you read the rest of this.
The whole thing is Trevor Moore, sitting on a stool in front of a blank backdrop, delivering the most deadpan public service announcement you’ve ever seen. “Did you know,” he asks, “that it’s illegal to say ‘I want to kill the president of the United States of America’? It’s a federal offense. One of the only sentences you’re not allowed to say.” And then, of course, he spends the next minute saying it, over and over, in increasingly elaborate forms, while insisting the entire time that he’s only informing you that it’s illegal, not actually saying it
By the end he’s talking about mortar launchers and the best vantage point for hitting the White House and an “illustrated diagram,” each one “extremely illegal,” “ridiculously, horribly felonious,” and he’s letting you know all of this purely as a public service. The comedy is in how straight he plays it. He’s not winking. He’s basically your local news anchor warning you about a scam...
...Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom
Moore’s sketch was a joke about a country that would throw you in prison for the shape of a sentence, no matter what you meant by it. Britain has spent the last year running the real version.
Last June, activists with a group called Palestine Action broke into RAF Brize Norton and sprayed red paint on two military aircraft. That’s the kind of thing the group does, mostly property damage aimed at weapons manufacturers and military sites tied to Israel’s war in Gaza. Broken windows, spray paint. Days later, the British government, under the control of the Labour Party, proscribed it under the Terrorism Act 2000, which made it a crime not only to belong to Palestine Action but to “invite or recklessly express support” for it. The ban took effect at one minute past midnight on July 5, 2025. It was the first time a direct-action protest group had ever been classed as a terrorist organization in the UK, which dropped it, legally, into the same bucket as ISIS and al-Qaeda.
You don’t have to like Palestine Action to see the problem. Spray-painting a plane is a crime, and Britain has laws against that already. What it didn’t have, until last summer, was a rule that made it a terrorism offense to say out loud that you back the people who did it. Even the UN’s human rights chief, Volker Türk, called the ban a “disturbing” misuse of counterterrorism law.
And look at the word in the statute: recklessly. The whole fight in Elonis was over how sure the government has to be about what’s in your head before it can punish you for your words, and the Court raised the bar. Britain set a very, very low one. Reckless is enough.
Here’s what that looks like in practice. People have been arrested for holding cardboard signs that read “I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action.” One of the first taken in, on the day the ban took effect, was Rev. Sue Parfitt, an 83-year-old retired priest. At a single demonstration in Parliament Square last September, the Metropolitan Police arrested 890 people, 857 of them for supporting the banned group, the biggest mass arrest London had seen in decades. At an earlier protest, nearly half of the people arrested were 60 or older, and fifteen were in their 80s. More than 3,300 people have been arrested across the UK since the ban, according to Amnesty International. Terror-related arrests jumped 660% year over year, and 86% of them were tied to supporting Palestine Action. A law written for terrorists, used mostly on pensioners with poster board.

On the other hand, we're still not talking about King Donald ...

...and the pond decided to keep it that way by turning to the Angelic one, sounding very Catholic about AI ...

The header: Gen Z has become measurably ‘dumber’ than its predecessors across every cognitive domain; Alarming studies show AI may have already fatally corroded this generation’s ability to really think and, more important, to discern.

The caption: Pope Leo warns it’s necessary to ‘disarm’ AI but digital companies headed up by the likes of Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have already softened up Gen Z’s brains for even more AI. Artwork: Emilia Tortorella

Each time the pond looks at an increasingly appalling reptile collage, the pond thinks that the case for AI gets stronger. 

Well done, Emilia, you've provided a fine reason for a bot to replace you.

As for the Angelic one, she was all in with the Pope, as Catholics are wont to be ...

Everyone is talking about AI. Most commenters, including Pope Leo, are trying to discern the wider economic and social effects.
However, a lot of people in the scientific world, and perhaps a few in the education establishment, are worried about the already observed effects of the digital revolution on Gen Z (born about 1997-2010) and the obvious portents for the following generations when AI really takes over.

But then the reptiles slipped in a snap that conclusively proved that AI and stock images might not be the answer... A Deloitte report revealed Gen Zers spend more than 41 hours a week consuming digital entertainment and 61 per cent say they watch more user-generated content than traditional movies or TV shows.

Sheesh, just looking at that image, the pond went temporarily blind and felt its IQ drop a hundred points, in a way that even watching all series of Friends couldn't manage.

However, it got the Angelic one going...

Some alarming studies have surfaced showing AI has already had a disastrous effect.
Some neuroscientists have concluded Gen Z is measurably “dumber” than the previous generation. If true, it is the first time in human history this has happened.

Every generation seems to have one or more of someone coming along to wage war on the younglings, as Horvath did in his testimony, and the pond is inclined to believe him when it comes to the United 
States of America, anyone dumb enough to elect King Donald not just once, but twice, is truly in the stupid zone.

The only problem is that you can't blame King Donald on the younglings ... but do go on ...

According to neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath, who recently testified before the US Senate, test scores seem to prove it, showing Gen Z underperforms Millennials (also known as Gen Y) and Gen X across almost every cognitive domain: attention, memory, literacy, reading comprehension, numeracy, executive function and general IQ. Horvath described it thus: “It’s not just one weak spot … that’s the whole dashboard blinking at once.”
According to Horvath, the reason for this cognitive and intellectual decline is over-reliance on AI, particularly in classrooms.
Horvath blames digital technology being embedded into American classrooms. But this is not just an American phenomenon, it is worldwide, and Australia is not far behind. Videos and quick summaries have replaced reading, ChatGPT has replaced extended research and writing, screens have replaced human-led learning, bullet points have often replaced essays.
What this research tells us is that modern learning environments may be weakening the deep-thinking “muscles” humans once built naturally through reading, struggle and slow thinking. Digital environments train the brain to skim, not to think deeply.
This affects kids’ ability to really think but, more important, to discern. Snicker if you will about the silly young ones, but ask yourself: Why is it that a whole generation has been so easily bamboozled into bizarre notions such as the trans movement, or to believe that some facts of history, like the Holocaust or the Hamas attack on October 7, might not have even happened?
We have already seen some of the negative emotional impacts of the digital revolution on this generation, and there is a worldwide scramble to do something. The favourite “something” is to ban smartphones and social media for under-16s.
But we have lost the battle because digital companies have already softened up Gen Z’s brains for even more AI, not just with dodgy digital content, which is bad enough, but the way they do it.

To get the pond onside and make sure that it had a bout of nerd nausea, the reptiles showed off their snap of the Zuck ... Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg leaves court after testifying in February. Picture: AFP

Don't get the pond wrong. The pond has never been on Facebook, and rarely uses a phone and has a sense of the younglings' plight ...

But the pond isn't sure that believing in mythical cults of the Catholic kind is a way to shore up opposition to the bots ...

A recent sensational case in the US has produced an important ruling. The court found Meta and YouTube liable for harms, not for content, which is what keeps parents up at night, but because of the product designs themselves: aggressive algorithms, infinite scroll, autoplay and so on. This distinction between content and product design is often missing from analysis.
At first there were all sorts of reasons to account for this cognitive decline: Covid, poor teaching, lack of discipline, migration and language problems. Most of these factors are real, and some of them are propelled by parents and teachers also hooked on AI.
But none of this can explain the worldwide phenomenon. Declining academic performance is not just in the English-speaking world.
However, on the bright side, some psychologists have theorised that the tests are no longer fit for Gen Z. Standardised tests measure only certain types of cognition, and Gen Z does have great strengths in digital fluency, the ability to grasp technical aspects of AI. So on one level they have skills that make them technically prepared for the new world of AI industry, even if by cognitive intellectual measurements Gen Z kids seem less smart than previous generations.
Amber Beynon, a research fellow at Curtin University’s school of allied health, did a study about AI and screens and childhood development that refutes the doomsday scenario because AI is already shaping how young children interact with technology, from apps to interactive toys. Beynon claims: “The learning capacity of these AI technologies is at the next level – it’s incredible how it can personalise interactions from one child to another and remember interactions … it can benefit child development.” The problem is: What “benefit to child development”? And is this really education?

At this point, the pond had a temporary seizure ... ‘The whole dashboard blinking at once’: Gen Z underperforms Millennials and Gen X across almost every cognitive domain: attention, memory, literacy, reading comprehension, numeracy, executive function and general IQ. Picture: Mario Tama/Getty Images/AFP

That's not helpful, that's meaningless.

At least up your visual game so you don't use AI or a stock image library to spank the bots...

And here's the real problem.

The Angelic one somehow thinks that Leo is going to be able to stem the Grot Gemini Chat GPT tide, divert that rogue Sam Altman Open AI tide, or grapple with Anthropic ... as they sidle up to Wall Street and the Pentagon...

The pernicious effect of AI on young people’s emotions and moral capacity is real, because they think AI is real. Sometimes it seems weirdly so. Chris Olah of Anthropic at the launch of Magnifica Humanitas said. “We keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling … structures that mirror results from human neuroscience … internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief and unease.”

Uh huh, and some old codgers tell them Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny is real, and that there's a god who checks up on everything they do every moment of the day, and that masturbation will transport them straight to hell, without stopping on Go for a good time.

Olah’s address at the Vatican is the most important from within the tech world on the moral and cultural, not merely economic, implications of AI.
Gen Z’s thinking skills might be useful in many areas, but the type of thinking that can cultivate the ability to make moral decisions, deep thinking that lends itself to philosophy, might already be fatally corroded by the use of digital technology in this generation.
This is why Pope Leo has warned it is necessary to “disarm” AI, to separate the human from the machine. Current research into Gen Z’s thinking processes might indicate that we have already lost this battle.

Does the Angelic one know just how woke she sounds, how alarming she is to the likes of red wine-swilling Don?

And so to end with other pleasures ...