In which the bromancer Brexits on endlessly about Britain, and the Ughmann takes to the Catholic Freudian couch for endless confessions ...

 

By focussing on the lizards of Oz, the pond misses out on many moments of sublime stupidity.

There's Bret Stephens in the both siderist NY Times on 24th March ...

The War Is Going Better Than You Think (* intermittent archive link)

And there he is on 16th June 2026 ...

Iran Found Trump’s Bone Spur (*intermittent archive link)

Relax, it's still going better than you think, and Stephens is there to save the day. It was a right and just war, and the debacle had nothing to do with him, he and other neo cons were just betrayed.

Anyone wanting to find someone who wanted to make the bromancer look like a marvel of consistency and insight couldn't do better than evoking Stephens' wondrous ability to get it wrong.

Speaking of the bromancer, he was at the top of the far right world early in the weekend, safe in his retreat into battering the British, as if his celebration of Brexit had done no harm to that wasteland.

This was just as well, because the One Nationisation of the rag continued at an alarming rate ... and lordy, long absent lordy, the reptiles seemed to think that a Brexit down under might be a jolly good thing, though who we might Brexit from left the pond a tad bewildered.

It was a newbie to the pond, one Nicholas Jensen, allegedly the lizard Oz's commentary editor, and clearly a man of such infinite stupidity that he intended to leave Stephens and the bro in his wake ...

The pond wasted nine precious minutes of its life and still didn't discover who we were supposed to be Brexiting from ... so a teaser trailer will suffice ... and the intermittent archive can do the rest...

Here you go ...

The revolution that began with Brexit has arrived — and the establishment is powerless to stop it
One Nation has done what a decade of stagnant politics could not: made Australia’s body politic feel tremulous, urgent and dangerously alive.
By Nicholas Jensen

To get to the Hansonite meat, and a hint of what a Hansonist Brexit might mean, you had to endure a lot of Nick blathering about his time in England in Brexit days and when you finally arrived, it was simple-minded peak capitulation to One Nation and Pauline ... showing just how deep the One Nationisation rot has set in to the rag ...

...Like MAGA and Reform, One Nation is fuelled by similar laments for the loss of a certain kind of society. It is galvanised by animus and grievance, yet it is striking to observe, as many commentators have since the Farrer by-election, that these sentiments are often simultaneously expressed in an atmosphere of celebration and euphoria. As with most populist movements, the sense of loss exists in an intimate relationship with a spirit of hope and revival. That tension is vital to understanding One Nation’s rising support, and the appeal of its leader, Pauline Hanson.
Hanson is dismissed as having few skills beyond the virtues of plain speaking and authenticity, but that analysis misses a deeper, more salient point. Hanson understands the vernacular of patriotism intuitively; she speaks fluently in the language of values and culture in a way the vast majority of the political establishment cannot. This, perhaps more than anything else, is Hanson’s most formidable asset, her deadliest weapon. She has made it her own and wields it boldly, as evidenced in this week’s National Press Club address.
One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson calls out the Albanese government’s lies during her National Press Club address. “The government is not telling the truth; the Prime Minister and the Treasurer are desperate, and they keep saying that anyone who opposes the budget measures is opposing the opportunity for young people to get into housing,” Ms Hanson said. “Another lie, but how else do you describe it?”
Whenever Anthony Albanese and his colleagues talk earnestly of “progressive patriotism”, the public senses its superficiality. Deep down they suspect it is an ersatz version of patriotism. Increasingly, they see Hanson as offering the real thing. When the Prime Minister says, as he did last week, while attempting to explain the dramatic poll surge for One Nation, that “it’s the economy, stupid”, he wasn’t merely regurgitating a hackneyed political cliche. He was effectively surrendering the battlefield of culture and values to Hanson.
Just now, the shape and character of Australian politics is changing beneath our feet, perhaps forever. Like the populist ruptures that roiled and electrified Brexit Britain and Trump’s America a decade ago, One Nation has injected a new intensity and urgency into our body politic. A stagnant political culture, long starved of big ideas and obsessed with its own material abundance, suddenly feels tremulous and dangerously alive.
Nicholas Jensen is The Australian’s commentary editor.

That's not commentary, that's moronic adulation ...

If the reptiles keep this sort of nonsense up, they'll discover what it's like to be the dog that finally caught the car ...

As for the bromancer, it's always best to remember that he was there for the ruination of Britain by Boris and sundry other frauds, and so to begin the bromancer coverage with another flashback ...

Wait, there's more, even if the steak knives are stuck somewhere in customs...

Brexiteers fighting for liberty and the people’s will
This stoush symbolises a version of the clash of forces playing out in some measure in every main Western democracy.
By Greg Sheridan

And so on, and the pond apologises for dragging that mouldy old cat out of the grave.

Enough of these preliminaries, time to get down with it, with Count Binface, foxes, raving loonies, and the bromancer, and it helps to retain a sensa huma...

The header: The battle for Britain as civil wars rage on left and right; Even left-wing magazine The New Statesman has declared it a ‘failed state’.

The caption: British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, left, with Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham during Mental Health Awareness Week. Picture: Getty

If it's a failed state, where are the bromancing Brexiteers to take the credit for helping conjure up that failure?

Health warning: this is a nine minute read, and it's a real struggle.

The only upside is that it isn't about King Donald and his hapless dealings with Iran, or any of his internal ructions, or even about such follies as the greening and dissolution of the reflecting pool.

The bromancer has realised Faux Noise has made the disunited states a disaster zone, and so he's taken comfort and refuge in the disaster sometimes known as little Brexiting England ...

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, has won a huge victory in the Makerfield by-election, winning more votes than Reform UK, Restore and the Conservatives all combined.
He will now march to Westminster and the prime ministership.
Keir Starmer is destroyed. Like Macbeth assassinated by Macduff, the march from Burnham Wood spells doom for Labour’s king.
Equally significant, and completely unforeshadowed, was the Conservatives’ win in the Aberdeen South by-election in Scotland, which they took from the Scottish Nationalists.
This is a heroic breakthrough for Kemi Badenoch. It’s the first electoral victory for the Conservatives under her. It’s the first time the Conservatives have won a by-election in five years.
It’s proof, in the only currency that really counts, that Badenoch’s leadership can deliver votes to the Conservatives. It’s a huge boost for the Opposition Leader.
Burnham will take the leadership and get a honeymoon, which may well be short-lived as the problems he will face are intractable if approached from the left, raising the prospect of an early election, though such an option is full of risks. Badenoch is back in the contest in a big way.
Nonetheless, the underlying contradictions remain.
Britain is a nation in terrible if hopefully temporary decline, while two fierce civil wars are being fought before the Great War of the two opposing trends of British society comes into full conflict.
Whatever the turbulence following this week’s by-elections, the structures of deep British division have been building for years and could well explode.
There’s a civil war on the left and a civil war on the right. Like all civil wars, it divides families. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the immensely urbane, courteous and decent former senior cabinet minister under Boris Johnson, the soul of the conservative Conservative, finds that his teenage daughter has joined Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

As the Moggster will later return, can the pond please borrow from John Crace, who described him as "the idiot's idea of a thinking man", as in Rees-Mogg breaks broken news to a horrified house:

...Next up was Jacob Rees-Mogg, the idiot’s idea of a thinking man, to provide details of the Commons’ business for the coming week. “The government is committed to leaving the EU on October 31st,” he smirked. And how was it planning to do this? By debating the environmentally friendly way to give a cockapoo a haircut and introducing legislation to force the French to drive on the left-hand side of the road. That way there might be fewer delays at Calais post Brexit.
Of the withdrawal agreement bill there was no sign. “They seek it here, they seek it there,” Rees-Mogg laughed, working himself up into a state of visible arousal at his own Divine Comedy. For a man who used to pride himself on his sincerity and probity, lying and S&M cosplay have become second nature. He must have a very accommodating arrangement with the priest at confession.
There’s civil war on the left side of politics too. The UK Greens are the most extreme left-wing green party in the democratic world. Their leader, Zack Polanski, one of the weirdest political leaders in captivity (he was previously a hypnotist who thought he could enlarge women’s breasts), is seriously challenged for the leadership because he’s too “pro-Zionist”. But these are bagatelles. Both civil wars involve the biggest political battalions.

Ancient history, and so it's back to the idiot thinking he's in the company of a thinking men ...

Keir Starmer and the fight on the left
On the left, Keir Starmer is a dead Prime Minister walking. His party, with a landslide majority, is in a mess. All the challengers, Andy Burnham and the others, have accommodated the idea of moving further to the left.
But there’s a raging civil war on the left. Labour’s primary vote is low, way behind the right-wing Reform. A strong challenge to Labour is being mounted by Polanski’s Green Party. The UK Greens are extreme and repellent. They differ from the Australian Greens in one key respect. They’ve become the quasi-Islamist party. The Greens are not only the party of inner-city middle-class white radicals, like most Green parties, they’ve become the party of Islamist solidarity and rage.

The reptiles flung in a snap ...Sir Keir Starmer and Andy Burnham at Old Trafford in May. Picture: Getty

Thank the long absent lord the English retain a sensa huma and that the second season of Ludwig is due in August ...

It can't be that bad. That furry suit must have cost a motza ... and as for the lavish expenditure on the dust bin and the silver cape, it's a country full of luxury items...

At the recent local elections the Greens won more than 440 new seats, to take them to more than 1350 in total. They could steal dozens of Labour seats at a parliamentary election.
The left’s third big force is the radical nationalists. In the devolved “home nations”, left-wing separatist nationalists rule – the Scottish Nationalist Party in Edinburgh, Plaid Cymru in Cardiff and Sinn Fein in Belfast. Each is committed to leaving the UK. Rees-Mogg fears the next election could deliver a “Frankenstein coalition of Labour, the Greens and the Nationalists”.
The SNP would have great leverage. Scotland could realistically break away from the UK. Vast social change, structural political and power transformations, could be enacted to make reversal of left hegemony extremely difficult. The stakes are astronomical.
Reform and the battle for the right
But equally there’s a life-and-death civil war on the right. Kemi Badenoch is doing a spectacularly good job leading the Conservatives. But the party is still a long way behind Reform, and in many polls Labour as well. It holds 116 of 650 House of Commons seats. Informal estimates suggest in an election today it could lose a third of them. And that’s with a popular leader.
People are re-examining the 1930s classic The Strange Death of Liberal England. The Liberals had been a giant political party – of legends William Gladstone, Herbert Asquith, David Lloyd George. Yet they were eclipsed and politics became primarily a fight between the new Labour Party and the Conservatives.
The party threatening to displace Tories today is Farage’s Reform, which is populist, dynamic, growing its membership rapidly (270,000 members now) and has been leading national polls for more than a year.
But Reform itself is being challenged on the right by the new upstart party Restore, led by Rupert Lowe, 68, a former businessman who was previously elected as a Reform MP. Many of Restore’s policies are much the same as those of Reform and the Conservatives but its rhetoric is frequently more extreme. There are reports that white supremacists and neo-Nazis donate to Restore.
Lowe and Farage fell out spectacularly and their personal enmity is an important dynamic of politics now. Restore could score enough votes to cost Reform dozens of parliamentary seats in Britain’s first-past-the-post voting system.
Nonetheless, some pundits believe an election today would make Reform the biggest party and the Conservatives the second largest, with the two forming a governing coalition. However, there’s every chance the right’s divisions, lack of a deep organisational base and supportive institutions, not least government institutions, could cost it government.

The reptiles added to the burden with AV distractions ... Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage claims the British public is increasingly aware of a “two-tier Britain”, adding that the country now faces a profound “trust issue” with its politicians. “You haven’t just got an economic crisis, you haven’t just got a social crisis … but you’ve also got now a trust issue,” Mr Farage told Sky News host Paul Murray. “People don’t trust politics, people don’t trust politicians. “After the awful cases, the attempted beheading in Belfast, the horrible death of that young student in Southampton, people now realise we’re living in two-tier Britain. “We’re now being judged by our ethnicity and some groups are treated with more favour than others. This is really, really serious; there couldn’t be anything more divisive in society.”

There couldn't be anything more divisive than Nige, which is why a sensa huma and a British appreciation of irony is essential ... (do Reform and Restore ever play the Monty Python splitters game?)

First, how fair is it to say the UK is a nation in decline if not crisis, and there’s every chance of things getting worse?
For a start, this is a judgment widely shared in Britain itself.
Consider left-wing magazine The New Statesman. It detests Tories, Reform and right-wingers, it typically backs Labour governments. It listed a cover story recently under the heading: “The failed state”. On its cover ran the strapline: “Everything is broken. Nothing changes. Voters are mad as hell.”
British welfare spending has run completely out of control. It now exceeds the total revenue generated by income tax. The unemployment rate fell this week by 0.1 per cent to 4.9 per cent. That seems modestly encouraging. But there are a million youngsters, aged 18 to 24, engaged in neither employment nor education or training. While unemployment dropped a tiny fraction, the actual number of people getting pay dropped by tens of thousands.
Britain has a national debt roughly equivalent to its gross national product. It pays nearly twice as much on interest as on its defence budget. This is partly because of the debilitating effects of a plainly insane welfare system. Two people living together can, if they shrewdly maximise their benefits, receive the equivalent of more than £70,000 ($131,700) a year in welfare, twice the average wage. That’s a huge disincentive to work. The welfare bill is projected at £400bn by decade’s end.
Sick and tired
Through the week a doctor recounted in the press serving for years on panels reviewing people’s claims to special benefits. One rule for a maximum benefit was not being able to walk independently for 20m. He would watch people park their cars 100m down the road, walk jauntily to their interview, state they were unable to walk 20m and receive maximum benefits. People can claim mental distress on Zoom interviews. Social media schools them well on what to say and typically they get the benefits. Much of this is an unresolved hangover from disastrous Covid measures.
The breakdown of the traditional family has fiscal consequences. On any given day there are 13,000 people, who are not sick enough to be in hospital but for whom there are inadequate care arrangements at home, occupying hospital beds in the UK. Almost everything the family once did, the state now does, but it does it at enormous cost and very badly.
Britain has been definitively unable to control illegal immigration. In the 12 months to March this year, 44,000 immigrants arrived illegally. Nearly 100,000 asylum-seekers are accommodated in hotels or group houses paid for by government. This greatly angers local residents. It also angers those trying to get social housing. It’s one of the main issues driving voters directly from Labour to Reform.
Britain has also gone backwards on defence capability. It had a full-time professional army of 170,000 under Margaret Thatcher, 100,000 under Gordon Brown and just 70,000 today. John Healey resigned as defence secretary last week because Starmer, having failed to make puny savings in the welfare budget, could not secure adequate funds for defence. Al Carns, the armed forces minister who also resigned, wrote: “Britain spent a decade choosing to be smaller in the world.”

And at this desperate moment the bromancer revealed he was part performing pundit, part tourist and part player, and not much of a journalist ...

I spent many hours this week in London’s clubland, around Mayfair and Piccadilly, exploring the civil war on the right. At Mark’s Club in Mayfair I met James Orr, the head of Reform’s policy unit. It’s extraordinary Reform can attract someone such as Orr. He is simultaneously associate professor of philosophy of religion at Cambridge University.
I find these London clubs full of mysterious narrow corridors, quaint and poky spaces, walls decorated with spectacular paintings and an atmosphere of remarkable good cheer. Whether for reasons of privacy, or to spare members witnessing an act of journalism, Orr and I speak in a small, curtained space.

At this point, the pond should note that Orr is barking mad, and a loon who move in the Peter Thiel/JD Vance circle of couch-molesting weirdness.

For some ore on the real Orr, try... James Orr and the Messianic Transatlantic MAGA Alliance Trying to ‘Save’ Britain
Peter Jukes and Nafeez Ahmed reveal how James Orr, Nigel Farage’s new head of policy is the key religious and ideological linkman for Palantir’s Peter Thiel and Sir Paul Marshall’s GB News

...the story of Dr James Orr, the lawyer turned theologian, sits at the centre of a clandestine transatlantic nexus of faith, finance, think tanks, seminars and seminaries, media companies and conference events — and an apparently catastrophic view of politics.

The reptiles then showed a revealing snap ...The writer Greg Sheridan with James Orr, head of Reform’s policy unit, at the Marks Club of Mayfair in London. Picture: Supplied

Was that the best they had? 

The bromancer looks terrible, awful slumped over posture, eyes barely open, ragged and depleted, as if entering end times, making the pond wonder if any mockery was worth it, as nature ravaged the man...

Second thoughts, he's still poisoning the well ...

Orr is an immensely smart guy. Attracting folks like him is a big part of Reform’s momentum. He lists the five key issues driving support for Reform: immigration; rejecting net zero; crime and justice; the dispossession of the working class and of working Brits generally; and the need for (qualified) pride in Britain’s history and culture. He makes two devastating analytical points about these issues: “The trends are our friends. None of these problems is going to be solved by a Labour government.” His second point is even more devastating.
Much of the mess in these issues was caused by the Conservatives in their 14 years in government. Theresa May took the insane step of legislating a hard net-zero target by 2050, which has given Britain the highest domestic energy prices in the world.
Voters had been hugely motivated to take back control of immigration. This was a vital factor in the Brexit vote that saw Britain leave the EU. Yet in one year under Johnson, in the post-Covid rebound, just under a million immigrants arrived.

In the nick of time there came a relieving AV distraction ... Andy Burnham said Labour had a “final chance to change” after his decisive win in the Makerfield by-election set up a showdown with Sir Keir Starmer. Allies of Mr Burnham called on the Prime Minister to hand over power after he defied national trends to increase Labour’s share of the vote in a seat where Nigel Farage’s Reform UK made sweeping gains in last month’s local elections. The Prime Minister has insisted he will not quit and will fight any leadership challenge.

The bromancer kept mining this Orr for loony ore ...

All this leads Orr to emphatically reject any kind of deal with the Conservatives: “No. Not at all. We are doing at least as well in Wales, and in Labour heartlands, where the Tories have never had a presence. And I don’t think more than a handful of Tory MPs really believe in their hearts what we believe, policies like withdrawing from the European Court of Human Rights.”
Such European entanglements have prevented Britain from running the kind of border control policies that enjoy settled bipartisan support in Australia. Orr’s message on the Tories is simple. They had 14 years to deliver on these issues but they governed more like a moderate Labour Party than as Conservatives. Badenoch herself once said to me that the problem with the Tories in their last term in office was that they “talked right but governed left”.
Orr outlines a wide range of Reform’s proposed spending cuts, everything from civil service numbers to foreign aid and the whole vast panoply of net zero subsidies and expenditures.
If Reform does gain government, its vulnerabilities will be psychodramas, personality clashes and a general lack of people who know how government runs. But its intent is clear: the root-and-branch transformation of British government and society.
Tories still in the hunt
Yet the Tories are by no means out of the hunt. Badenoch is the most popular political leader in Britain. She is passionately committed to ending net zero, withdrawing from the ECHR, combating identity politics, restoring pride in British history – all the things Reform wants. And she pushed for these when she was a Conservative minister.
Rees-Mogg, one of the most impressive Conservative thinkers (who lost his seat at the last election), argues for a Conservative-Reform electoral alliance. He is the most charming and courteous of men and explains his thinking to me over lunch at the more staid Boodles Club near Piccadilly (though in accordance with club rules, our formal interview takes place off-site).
He points out that if you extrapolated the local elections to national results, you would see Reform on perhaps 27 per cent and Conservatives on 20 per cent. Aggregated, that’s potentially landslide territory for the right. He thinks the two parties should avoid running against each other, with each concentrating on their geographic zones of strength.

A most impressive thinker? Perhaps for the idiot's idiot ...

Cue another John Crace sketch from ancient times...

Rees-Mogg's dim brand of banter entertains no one but himself
Leader of the house’s unctuous insincerity fails to hide the fact he hasn’t a clue what’s going on

...Since joining the cabinet, lying has become second nature to the leader of the house. Power has corrupted him and what integrity he might once have had is now shot. Everyone knew that Saturday’s possible emergency session was entirely dependent on whether Johnson agreed to desperately negotiate himself back to a permanent Northern Ireland backstop with a customs border in the Irish Sea – the prime minister is one of the few people who could haggle the price up in a carpet shop – to give himself a deal on which the Commons could vote and save him the embarrassment of having to “die in a ditch” by writing an extension letter to the EU.
But time and again Rees-Mogg argued otherwise. “Oh, no, no, no, no,” he said, chuckling to himself while oozing unctuous insincerity. “The honourable member had referred to ‘running a bath’ when surely he meant ‘drawing a bath’.” Weirdly, Rees-Mogg labours under the impression that this kind of bantz is clever. One can only imagine he rewatches his greatest hits on the BBC’s Parliament channel alone at night in a state of mild sexual arousal. Whatever gets you off.

Ancient times, ancient Moggie follies.

Cue a snap of the Moggster lad with his squeeze, Jacob Rees-Mogg and wife Helena arrive as far right activist Tommy Robinson addresses the Oxford Union at the Oxford University on June 17. Picture: Getty

It was beyond time for the bromancer to wrap up proceedings, and to reveal that he was in fact a contra player and performer rather than a journalist ...

Something similar was done at the 1918 election, in an alliance of Liberals and Conservatives, in a successful bid to thwart Labour.
Why are people so ready to abandon the traditional parties?
Rees-Mogg: “People feel they haven’t had sensible governments, or governments that take notice of them. They feel that they’ve had governments which are more concerned with international agreements and which have not stood up for them (the British people).”
You get the sense that British politics can’t go on as it is because the nation is being governed so poorly. But there is a fundamental contradiction between the left-wing view of Britain and the conservative view of Britain. The clash will get more intense. Inevitably there will be some compromise and some qualified results. But I get the sense there is big political conflict ahead, and that over the next five to 10 years one side of this argument or the other will prevail convincingly.
Man the battle stations.

Man up? Junket up ...

Greg Sheridan is in London to appear as a panellist at next week’s ARC Conference. Flights were included in the invitation.

At least it was a different kind of swamp ...

What else?

Well for the sake of completeness, the pond should report that the dog botherer was this week performing Australian Daily Zionist News duties...

Bondi lit the fuse’: The massacre that turned middle Australia against the political class
The attack has reshaped the landscape, but major parties haven’t grasped what is coming.
By Chris Kenny
Associate Editor (National Affairs)

The pond suspects a greater Israel is coming, with the ADZN cheering on the ethnic cleansing.

It's there at the intermittent archive for those who want it, but the pond preferred as a bonus the alarming prospect of the Ughmann in a sadomasochistic fervour about a good caning ...

The header: Urge to correct the wicked and improve the good has moved from classroom to cabinet room

Smoking is merely one of a growing catalogue of habits, preferences and personal choices that governments have decided require official supervision.

The caption for the weird illustration: There are large and small campaigns against vaping, drinking, gambling, plastic bags, plastic straws, gas appliances, petrol and diesel cars, wood heaters and excessive air travel.

This Ughmann outing took a bigly six minutes, and indulged his tragic habit of dwelling in the past, so that the hive mind could play the role of shrink, and watch as he lay on the couch and unburdened himself of traumatic childhood memories.

The tedium of it all ...

Education was different in the 1960s and 70s. In some ways better and in some ways worse.
One of the ways it was worse was the routine flogging of children, sometimes for no apparent reason. All manner of weapons were deployed for this task, from sticks to canes to leather straps.
Being an army brat who moved every two years during primary school, I encountered all these tools of torment in the education systems of Queensland (Brisbane, then Townsville), the ACT (twice) and South Australia. Routine interstate moves also highlighted the foibles of federation because, much like rail gauges, each jurisdiction had decided to chart its own course on everything from school holidays to handwriting.
Each had its own cursive writing workbook where you had to carefully copy the local Platonic ideal of each upper and lower-case letter and were flogged for deviating too far from the norm.
There were some similarities between states but more than enough differences to make it easy to fall at the hurdles of running writing. A lot of the trouble revolved around the correct way to render the lower-case “r” and “f”, as there were three different takes in three different states. Arguing that you had just mastered the loop on the left of the “r” in Townsville was met with scorn in the Adelaide Hills hamlet of Woodside, where no such loop existed. There was no dispensation for delivering a perfect South Australian “f” in Canberra, where the NSW cursive bible ruled.
By the time our family arrived in the ACT in 1971, having passed through the education systems of Queensland and South Australia in the space of a single year, my handwriting had become an ecumenical litany of letters, some of my own invention.
A Catholic boys primary school in the early 70s was no place for innovation. I got an inkling of what was in store when Mum took my older brother and me shopping for the school uniform. The only good thing about the SA public school we had just left was the lax dress code, where students could wear civvies like jeans and T-shirts.

The pond trusts this Freudian indulgence has helped the Ughmann, as the pond bit its tongue about its time with the Dominican nuns, and a snap revealed where all this was heading ...The state’s determination to rid the nation of smoking has pitched excise duties so high they have spawned a thriving black market in contraband fags.

Smoking! Shades of the IPA's glory days.

As the Ughmann has set the Freudian pace, here's a few pond memories. 

Smoking managed to kill off one grandfather with lung cancer, in a way that the Somme trenches hadn't managed. Lung cancer also killed off the other one. 

Emphysema killed off the pond's father, and made his final years a living hell by way of an inability to breathe. The pond can still vividly remember another uncle dying of COPD, struggling, gasping, as he tried to suck in air, only to fail at that task a few days later.

Since then the pond has taken the view that the cost of tending to people doing themselves harm should always be factored in to the equation.

It's not about their health, it's about the cost they inflict on others, much the same as if you decide to drive on the wrong side of the road, take out assorted vehicles and people, and expect insurance will save you from any penalty.

Nah, many might be in the insurance pool, but we also have a duty to ding you for your naughty ways.

Meanwhile, there's still more personal stuff from the Ughmann to endure before we get there, as the pond idly wondered if the Ughmann still kept smoking, still kept doing himself self-harm, and had begun to be ravaged by all the diseases smoking can give you. Did he ever use public health care? Or did he have the decency to pay for private insurance and burden like-minded chums/

Never mind, he really is the perfect example of a mind ruined by Catholicism ...

By contrast, Marist Brothers Canberra had decided the primary school uniform had been perfected in Edwardian London and we were required to wear a ridiculous short-brimmed cap born on the cricket grounds of England. It served no useful purpose in an Australian summer beyond being a place to sport the metal badge bearing the school crest. The rest of the outfit was a shirt and tie, a blazer, shorts and long socks.
The blazer seemed to hail from Oxbridge rowing clubs, and the shorts and long socks were drawn from an age when exposing a boy’s knees to sub-zero winter days was deemed character-building.
In the 70s, Marist College enforced its dress code with military rigour. Floggings for uniform violations were routine. Punishments flowed if your cap was askew or missing a badge, if your tie was not straight, if you did not have elastic garters to hold up your socks, and all these fashion crimes were measured in blows counted from one to six of the best.
Uniform misdemeanours were just the tip of an iceberg of infractions for which the rod was liberally employed. If some anonymous crime was discovered, the culprits were told to out themselves or risk collective punishment being dispensed to the whole class.
At least one of the brothers understood that the punishment of the innocent with the guilty required an explanation and excused it with the aphorism that it “makes the good boys better and the bad boys good”.
Perhaps that was true for some. What it did for others, like me, was develop a kind of criminal genius for evading capture and a firm conviction that the burden of proving any alleged malfeasance rested with the prosecution.

And where did all this lead? Yes, to that pathetic delusion of boys that somehow smoking was exotic, and made them the summit of masculinity and charm, bad boys on the prowl, looking for bad times, or more likely, tragic nerds wondering if a smoke might end their incel days ...

One moment is etched on my memory. Being the 70s, some of us were committed smokers by early high school and engaged in this most illicit of pleasures wherever we could.
There were several places around the school grounds where you could smoke unseen, but taking risks was part of the fun of it.
One morning the PA crackled to life and there was a school-wide message from the principal.
“Yesterday on the bus to Rivett some boys were seen smoking,” he said. “We have your names. If you come down to the office now I will go easy on you. But if I have to come and get you then the consequences will be much worse.”
I watched in amazement as two boys stood and volunteered themselves for the gallows. I thought, “If you have got my name you can come and get me.”
No one ever came.
We now live in more enlightened times when it comes to the management of children. Though sparing the rod does seem to have spoiled more than the odd child, I would not endorse a return to the era when terror was considered an essential teaching aid.
The larger problem now is that state and federal governments have decided to infantilise us all, with all manner of legislative encouragement to ensure we make better choices and become better humans in service of the state.
The same urge to correct the wicked and improve the good has moved from the classroom to the cabinet room.
The state’s determination to rid the nation of smoking sprang from the laudable aim of preventing unnecessary deaths. But in pursuing that goal the federal government has pitched excise duties so high they have spawned a thriving black market in contraband fags that is hosing money into the coffers of organised crime.

The reptiles introduced a snap to remind the hive mind that this was an IPA/big tobacco view of the world ... Tobacco smugglers have been stripped of more than 2.5 billion cigarettes and thousands of tonnes of tobacco at the nation’s borders, costing the federal government more than $4 billion in lost duty.

How they've fought every step of the way, from labelling to availability, all so they can kill of their customers, but not before bleeding them dry ...

The Ughmann continued his crusade, with the pond wondering whether he might get on to crusading about the urgent need to liberalise the availability of crack and other forms of cocaine, with perhaps a little heroin and morphine for good measure (how unfair that the pond has to head to hospital to get a shot of morphine. And where are the soothing gummies?):

The Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates that about 80 per cent of tobacco consumed in 2025 came from illicit sources, up from 12 per cent in 2017, which is a policy triumph only if the aim was to hand the market to criminals.
Any sensible government would recognise this error and correct it. But no, like a temperance crusader who mistakes every unintended consequence for proof that he has not gone far enough, the state remains committed to the cause.
Smoking is merely one of a growing catalogue of habits, preferences and personal choices that governments have decided require official supervision.
There are also large and small campaigns against vaping, drinking, gambling, plastic bags, plastic straws, gas appliances, petrol and diesel cars, wood heaters and excessive air travel.
The problem is not any individual measure. It is the cumulative effect. Everywhere you turn there is some government, regulator, department, authority, commission, agency or taxpayer-funded activist hectoring you about how you should live, what you should drive, what you should eat, how you should heat your home, how much water you should use and how often you should fly.

From the desire to kill everyone with lung cancer or other diseases related to smoking, the Ughmann manages to turn himself into a terrified fear monger, alarmed on many levels ...

The state is restlessly seeking new ways to intrude in our lives.
In the UK the Climate Change Committee, which advises the government, says to help achieve stringent new climate targets Britons will have to eat 25 per cent less meat. In a statement from the British Energy Minister’s office the public is assured these targets will succeed “without telling people how to live or behave”.
That, of course, is a lie. The state will find ways of making Britons comply in the task of saving the planet one vegan burger at a time. It is already succeeding by conjuring an economic environment in which many people can’t afford meat.
We are now living with the soft despotism Alexis de Tocqueville feared was the destination of democracies.

Hang on, hang on, it's the British government that's conjuring an economic environment simply to deny punters  meat in their diets?

What does the Ughmann make of King Donald and his minions, devoted climate science denialists all, who nonetheless have managed to produce a spike in meat prices?

Soaring US beef prices likely to rise further thanks to trade tensions and disease outbreaks

You don't have to accept climate science to cause a rise in beef prices, but the reptiles carried on being alarmed ...In Australia, a Climate Change Authority report says shifting from red meat to other protein sources could help reduce emissions. Picture: Zoe Phillips

Eek, a meaningful snap of a moo cow, which might fit into the pond's thesis on the place of moo cows in cinema (cf Twister)

In the final gobbet, the Ughmann successfully managed to carry on like a pork chop ...

In Democracy in America, de Tocqueville warned of the risk of a system that could evolve into an “immense and tutelary power”, promising security, comfort and prosperity while gradually taking responsibility for more and more aspects of life.
“It would resemble paternal power if, like it, it had as a goal to prepare men for manhood; but on the contrary it seeks only to fix them irrevocably in childhood,” he wrote.
“After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot break through to go beyond the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them …
“Habitually it is moderate, benevolent, regular and humane; it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting; it does not destroy, it prevents birth; it does not tyrannise, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupifies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”
As CS Lewis wrote: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.”

May be better to live under robber barons? But then CS Lewis was always a silly man, scribbling silly Xian fairy stories, full of moral busybody-ness and Xian triumphalism ...

The pond would rather have lived in the time of prohibition, and the attempts by omnipotent banners to take grog away from punters.

At least then you got Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, celebrating the joys of gay marriage.

And after a goodly time away from King Donald, trust the immortal Rowe to remind the pond of the madness that the reptiles have helped produce ...

Keep that sensa huma ...

In which Our Henry yearns for blut, Killer Creighton kills off EVs, and of course there's a Groaning ...

 

This morning the reptiles of Oz were wildly excited by the alleged death of the alleged "death tax" (remember to always use scare quotes when making things up), allegedly the result of an allegedly astonishing reptile jihad.

This wasn't the reason the pond rose with the cockies of the 'Gong to rush to the lizard Oz to gaze in awe on the rag, but for those who care, the whole platoon of reptiles assigned to the task could be found in the intermittent archive.\:

FLIPPIN' NOT ENOUGH
Brutal rejection of the Albanese-Chalmers budget backdown
Business groups, tech founders and a former Labor premier have united to dismiss the Albanese government’s capital gains tax concessions as a ‘patch-up job’ with ‘devastating consequences’.
By Greg Brown, Matthew Cranston and Jared Lynch

From ‘lies’ to ‘certainty’, Labor’s CGT change that makes no money 
On June 4, Jim Chalmers described concerns expressed by business owners over proposed tax changes as ‘rubbish’. A fortnight later, he backed down.
By Matthew Cranston

EXCLUSIVE
Labor’s just put a ‘ceiling on ambition’
Capital gains tax changes promise small business relief but may starve mining companies of capital and disproportionately hit female founders.
By Julie-anne Sprague and James Dowling

Mining industry blasts government’s tax changes as a ‘kick in the guts’

Jim Chalmers has handed tech start-ups a tax lifeline while leaving the industry that ‘finds the mines of the future’ out in the cold – and critics say Australia will pay the price.
By Perry Williams, John Stensholt and Brad Thompson

Labor axes ‘death tax’ but the damage is done

The move always smacked of overreach. Now it’s official, raising tax on testamentary discretionary trusts was a mistake.

By James Kirby

Associate Editor – Wealth

What a line up, what a jihad.

When the reptiles go on a jihad, you can never accuse them of being half-hearted, with reptiles dragooned into the fray, shrieking at the hive mind.

Of course others of the Graudian kind tend to see things differently.

The CGT ‘backflip’ is more tweak than transformation. Labor hasn’t changed its mind on housing
Dan Jervis-Bardy
Do the concessions undermine the original objective of helping young Australians buy their own home? No.

But none of that was what got the pond going.

Even the revival of perhaps the most ancient and revered reptile jihad still doing the rounds - Higgins! - failed to move the pond, except to the intermittent archive.

EXCLUSIVE
Million dollar question: what happened to Brittany Higgins’ $2.4m payout?
More than $1m of the $2.4m Brittany Higgins received in her compensation payout is yet to be located by her appointed trustee in bankruptcy, with just $3000 remaining in the account.
By Stephen Rice

The boiling rice - just asking questions - didn't even need Dame Slap's help to get wildly overcooked about that one, but to be fair, it did feature an entirely irrelevant and astonishingly crude collage featuring a wedding snap.

Frankly Frank, you should give the game away and leave the graphics to AI ...

By this point regular correspondents will know the real reason for the pond's enthusiastic embrace of the lizard Oz.

How was Our Henry, esteemed hole in bucket repair man, coping?

How was the valiant Zionist, and noble crusader, dealing with everything?

Please, stand back, allow the pond a little indulgence:

The header: The West no longer wants to invest in real war with all its costs; We have substituted money for blood. Protecting our troops is entirely desirable; but as the fiscal costs soar, opposition to wars soars with them.

The caption for the depressing snap, which thankfully avoided the need to show dead Iranian schoolgirls: Flag-draped coffins of US war casualties aboard a cargo plane returning to the US.

Lordy, long absent lordy, Our Henry was deeply depressed about the will to fight, and sounded just like that German documentary Eine Symphonie des Kampfwillens , at least if you turned the symphony into a requiem for the will to fight:

While the full details of the agreement between the US and Iran remain to be seen, its broad outline confirms what has long been clear: the West has lost the will to fight. Seduced by the fantasy of wars that cost no lives, require no sacrifices and harm no civilians, it has condemned itself to premature capitulation.
We demand wars that resemble peace – or, at worst, a televised cage fight: never fatal for those who wage them, painless for those who watch them. But war is neither a spectacle nor a defective form of peace; it is the opposite of both. And it is precisely because it wreaks death and destruction that the credible threat of “the calamity of warre” can, in Hobbes’s famous phrase, act as life’s “most violent master”, teaching states and peoples alike to treasure peace and fear its loss.
Yet every element of the mindset in which we are trapped undermines that effect. The logic is inescapable. Convinced that war must be without victims, we have become willing to incur almost any financial cost to avoid bearing fatalities.

Poor valiant crusader, perhaps made even more depressed by the way that the reptiles stripped him of all snaps and AV distractions.

The pond felt the need to cheer him up with the odd 'toon ...

Being Henry, a little history celebrating "blut und boden" always comes in handy ...

In the Korean War, the United States spent roughly $16m, in today’s dollars, for each of the 36,500 lives it lost. By the war in Afghanistan, that figure had reached $1.4bn. In this year’s confrontation with Iran, it exceeded $3bn per American fatality – a 200-fold increase compared to Korea, capping a decades-long trend across the Western world.
We have, in other words, substituted money for blood. Protecting our troops is entirely desirable; but as the fiscal costs soar, opposition to wars soars with them.
Moreover, that bargain’s costs appear not merely in the ledger but in the conduct of war itself. Determined to minimise casualties, Western militaries increasingly rely on stand-off warfare through the massed application of air power. In reality, air power can destroy territory; it cannot secure it. Yes, adversaries can be bombed into submission. But that requires devastation on a scale that causes enormous civilian casualties.

Hey, sh*t happens, as noted in the both siderist NY Times ... (sorry, paywall):

Our Henry was hampered, constricted, by saucy doubts and fears. What a tragedy we can't do a dinkum sort of do like we use to do in world war days:

The only alternative is troops on the ground. Yet combat in densely populated areas, against enemies who regard civilian deaths as a propaganda tool, entails civilian-to-combatant fatality ratios on the order of those seen in Gaza – roughly two civilians for every enemy fighter killed – or even the four to five experienced in Iraq.
Both options – devastating air power and brutal urban combat – have become politically untenable. And nor are Western societies, which seek security without suffering, willing to bear the economic sacrifices major wars involve.
Nowhere are the consequences more evident than in Europe. Like the children of Peter Pan’s Neverland, Europeans have persuaded themselves that reality yields to desire. Germany stands out as the only major Western European country in which a majority appears willing to contemplate reductions in social expenditure to finance rearmament – and even that majority evaporates when specific cuts are proposed.
Elsewhere, resistance to explicit welfare-defence trade-offs predominates: 50 per cent in France, 53 per cent in Britain, 57 per cent in Spain and 61 per cent in Italy oppose reducing public services or other government spending in order to increase defence outlays.

 Quelle catastrophe. What was it that bloody useless bible once said?

...they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.

O dammit, it's come to pass, the worst of the worst stalks the impotent land ...

Those preferences translate into budgetary choices: the four largest EU countries today spend eight dollars on pensions for every dollar they spend on defence – and pension spending becomes harder to curb as the population ages. The aversion to sacrifice extends beyond money: having wished away the realities of war, Europeans remain fiercely opposed to participation in serious military operations.
The American situation is more complex. Gallup finds that 64 per cent of Americans say it is important that the United States remain the world’s number one military power. Yet support for military predominance should not be confused with support for military intervention.
In February, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 63 per cent opposed sending US troops to defend Ukraine, despite majority support for military aid. Similarly, during the Iran crisis, only 14-28 per cent endorsed deploying US ground forces.
The result is a striking paradox. The United States, buoyed by public support for military predominance, accumulates an extraordinary military arsenal – but one that shines far more than it serves. Meanwhile, the gulf between American defence spending and that of its allies continues to widen.
In the 1950s, the spending asymmetry was large but it rested on a massive wealth gap. The United States spent far more because it was far richer; however, allies such as Britain – then devoting 7.6 per cent of GDP to defence – were exerting themselves almost as hard as the United States, where defence spending amounted to 8 to 10 per cent of GDP.
Today, the combined GDP of America’s allies exceeds that of the United States, yet the spending asymmetry remains stubbornly large. It now rests almost entirely on an effort gap, as high-income allies – Australia among them – devote a much smaller share of their national income to defence.
That only fuels Americans’ sense that – as George Washington observed in his Farewell Address, which is still read out in the Senate each February 22 – “there can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favours from nation to nation”. And the resentment the gap creates makes it harder still to persuade Americans to engage in complex, risky and potentially prolonged military operations that benefit the West as a whole.
The political consequence is that presidents, in trying to justify deploying American military force, promise vast outcomes from operations whose actual objectives are necessarily much narrower. Moreover, the character of the post-Cold War world aggravates that mismatch. For almost half a century, American strategic thinking was shaped by a concentrated, existential confrontation with the Soviet Union; the challenges that now demand military action are diffuse, localised and deeply entrenched.

Who or what to blame for this rampant sort of impotence? This gormless refusal to bung on a bloody do?

Our Henry knows ...

The grandiose, almost messianic, promises of painless success are therefore increasingly detached from the realities they are meant to address. When the easy triumph fails to materialise – as it invariably does – it reinforces what Louis Hartz identified in The Liberal Tradition in America (1955) as a characteristic American tendency: to “oscillate between fleeing from the rest of the world”, including the responsibilities it imposes, “and embracing it with too ardent a passion”.
Donald Trump has undoubtedly intensified that tendency. A politician who confuses showmanship with statesmanship and dresses vulgar opportunism in the language of high principle, he acts as a weathervane that amplifies, rather than just reflecting, the oscillation in public opinion. But can anyone believe the other “leaders” – such as Macron, Merz and Starmer, who relentlessly warned of the dangers Iran posed, merely to urge capitulation the moment crude oil prices started to rise – are, for all their greater polish, any better?

Why just for a moment there it sounded like Our Henry was channeling Pete Kegsbreath: Pete Hegseth blasts NATO members and announces review of US forces in Europe

Let's face it, only mad mullahs know how to do a jihad right...

The Iranians may be fanatics, but they are not fools. They may be Islamists, but they are also faithful Leninists, believing that “for a revolutionary, peace is only the continuation of war, waged by different means”. And above all, they know one big thing: there is no Neverland. It would be a tragedy if we discovered that only when it was too late.

Um, is it worth noting that the entire thing was a folly best stood clear of? 

One that did nothing for Iranians, sensible dissidents or regime sheep, or the world economy, but instead has enabled the mad mullahs in ways they could only have dreamed of before King Donald got going...

And with that splendid bout of mourning for days of war mongering past, it's time for a 'toon.

While on the subject, the lizard Oz editorialist knew who to blame. He (or she) was at one with Our Henry, blaming those gutless wimps who blinked at the thought of a world depression or a middle east in meaningless flames ...

The header: EVs migh (sic, so and thus) feel right for the wealthy, but they will destroy our planet; Imagine the damage should net zero zealots replace two billion-odd, mostly internal combustion engines, with EVs.
The caption for a terrifying sight (at least to the hive mind): Robotic arms work on the assembly line of new electric vehicles at factory in China. Picture: Getty Images

Killer Creighton could only muster a three minute read, and he was also stripped of all AV distractions and snaps, but bear with him, because he was keen to give Pauline some tips on how to tackle climate change (which doesn't exist. Allegedly.)

As a user of EVs,  the pond took particular pleasure in this shriek of pain, this howl of IPA anguish, and just let it roll ...

Pauline Hanson’s broadside against net-zero policies in her Press Club speech on Wednesday included a subtle dig at electric vehicles, products the government wants everyone to pay for – whether they want to or not.
The One Nation leader pointed out how their plastic interiors are still made from petroleum and other fossil fuels, putting the lie to the zero-emissions claim so beloved of their proponents.
She could have gone a lot harder on EVs, which are as dependent for production on subsidies and climate change fanaticism as solar panels and wind turbines.
They are also devastating – and vastly worse than ordinary combustion engine cars – for the environment. And by that, I mean the environment we actually live in, as opposed to the imaginary doomsday one decades hence that is projected by climate models unless we all buy EVs and slash emissions to zero.
High-income EV buyers, many of whom would honestly believe they are helping the planet, should be appalled that their shiny new BYD is in fact destroying the environment at a faster pace than their neighbour’s Ford Ranger.
The International Energy Agency itself says EVs require at least six times the mineral content of a conventional car during production, including graphite, nickel, lithium and cobalt.

You have to admire Killer's ability to cherry pick, and fling around the names of nasty minerals, while avoiding mentioning the way that lithium ion phosphate batteries (LFP) contain no cobalt and don't rely on high-nickel chemistries (see the actual report, for which the reptiles provided no link)

In this context, weight is an entirely meaningless measure, so naturally Killer deploys it ...

No wonder EVs weigh up to 500kg more than traditional cars.

Killer then does a reptile classic. Pick on a small consultancy which has pandered to its client base with scare stories of this kind...

EV myths, real numbers: driver misperceptions around EVs

Under the hood: The untold environmental impact of EVs (electric vehicles)

It's easy to see the cut of their jib, which is why Killer cut to them.

Sadly for the scare mongers, once you've tried an EV, it's hard to go back, unless you like feeding gas guzzlers from your hip pocket rather than from solar, and unless you like cars to match Harley Davidson sounds, what with the size of your exhaust pipe being a good indication of the size of your penis.

Roar away Killer, and perhaps attach a set of truck nuts ...

Melbourne-based Frontier Economics, an independent economics consultancy, is researching “whether Australian consumers should be protected from unknowingly supporting environmental damage through their purchase of EVs, especially from manufacturers who source raw minerals from suppliers who have poor environmental practices”.
In a 2025 research note titled Under the Hood, it wrote of the untold environmental impact of EVs, pointing out how the planned shift to EVs would “drive a massive increase in mining activity … along with other significant environmental impacts associated with mining”.
“Meeting this demand will require significantly more mining activity and place greater environmental pressure on mineral-rich locations – oftentimes in locations far away and out of sight of EV consumers,” Frontier Economics reported.
Indeed, imagine the damage to Earth should net-zero zealots actually try to replace the world’s two billion-odd vehicles (overwhelmingly powered by combustion engines) with EVs, and then update their batteries every few years. Literally hundreds of massive new mines that irreversibly destroy their surrounds will be required around the world.
Indeed, as Frontier points out, hundreds of thousands of hectares of Indonesian rainforests are set to be wiped out around Weda Bay, where China sources much of the nickel required to assemble EVs using electricity generated by coal-fired power stations.
“The government prohibits the importation of illegal, unsustainable logged timber to prevent Australian consumers from unintentionally contributing to environmental harm,” Frontier economists also point out. Yet the same government says nothing about the permanent destruction of pristine areas of Africa, Chile, The Philippines, Indonesia and even Papua New Guinea stemming from mindless EV boosting. Carbon dioxide isn’t the only thing worth conserving.

Now what could cap all this? Government intervention, and taxation, as only a free market IPA stooge could want ...

If One Nation were looking for a tax increase that would inject some industrial and environmental sanity into Australian policymaking, it should roll out a road user charge on electric vehicles, which would raise more than $300m a year by 2028, according to the Parliamentary Budget Office. As it stands, EV drivers don’t pay fuel excise, which is meant to contribute to the upkeep of roads.

Perhaps realising he'd gone too far, Killer hastily promised to help out the gas guzzlers by doing a DOGE ...

One Nation could also tear down a complex array of state and federal government tax credits, stamp duty exemptions and subsidies totalling thousands of dollars for vehicles that flow only to EVs, equalling rates of support per car that earlier governments provided Ford, Holden and Toyota to make cars here, according to a report in The Australian last October.
Inefficient no doubt those subsidies were, but at least we got some full-time well-paid jobs out of them. Quite aside from the accelerated, permanent environmental damage to poor nations that EV subsidies and tax breaks encourage, the benefits accrue mostly to China, a nation that arbitrarily slaps embargoes and quotas on our exports when it feels like it. The Albanese government has helped supercharge Chinese EV manufacturers’ share of the domestic EV market to almost 60 per cent last year from about half that in 2024. These are vehicles numerous experts across the US, UK and Australia have worried could be shut down by embedded kill switches from mainland China.

Throw in a bit of generalist climate science denialism ...

Science and economics are providing inevitable wake-up calls to the net-zero fantasies seemingly in every country except Australia, where governments are ploughing on with ludicrous, obscenely expensive and globally pointless emissions targets of which EV take-up is a critical part.
Just as climate change has fallen well down voters’ concerns compared to only a few years back, EVs will once again become a niche product for higher-income earners. Taxpayers will ultimately baulk at the absurd cost of providing charging infrastructure, just as they will quadrupling the nation’s transmission lines to make way for wind turbines that work only a fraction of the day.

...and bob's your equivocating Killer uncle...

Debate rages over whether greenhouse emissions from EVs or combustion engine vehicles are greater in total over their entire life cycle.
But there’s no debate over which type of car causes more environmental damage in the here and now. If buyers cared more about the planet they live in, the EV bubble will burst sooner.

Debate rages?

Professor of Economics at the University of Birmingham Robert Elliott acknowledge that while an EV initially had a higher manufacturing carbon footprint, “a long-lasting electric vehicle can quickly offset its carbon footprint, contributing to the fight against climate change – making them a more sustainable long-term option.

Nice alarmist, hysterical try Killer, just no carbon-producing cigar... 

Perhaps you need to make bulldozer noises to attract Pauline's attention ...

And now some correspondents might be wondering if the pond had overlooked the latest Groaning from Dame Groan.

How could you think such heretical thoughts?

There'll always be room for Dame Groan in this inn, though it was so familiar the pond thought a few screen caps could do the job.

If anyone wants to catch the text for a cut and paste, it's at the intermittent archive ...

Sad to say, it's just the usual jihad jeremiad.

It's all such familiar stuff that Dame Slap really needs to find new components for her word salad.

Henry VIII provisions? Fiascos? 

What happened to the good old days of "we'll all be rooned"? 

The old biddie's now so hysterical she's running out of word puff ...

A better way? The pond knows what that means, it being code for the new era of One Nationisation at work in the lizard Oz.

It was time for the immortal Rowe celebrating the new and better way ...

So much winning, on so many fronts...

In which the perils of being Pauline and King Donald are bigly featured, being bigly birds of a like-minded bigoted feather ...

 

With One Nation having wholeheartedly embraced the policies, attitudes and positions promoted by the lizard Oz these past few decades, the mutual admiration society, and the One Nationisation of the hive mind continued apace early this morning.

The pond hopes that the frenzy will soon fade, because it's already well past the point of existential ennui.

Brownie emerged from the murk to lead with an alleged "news" item ...

ONE NATION
Hanson goes to war with Labor, Islam and trans agenda
Pauline Hanson has launched a battalion of policy wars with Labor and the Coalition by pledging massive cuts to government spending while ending the ‘transgender insurgency’ and Islamic fundamentalism in Australia.
By Greg Brown

Transphobia, Islamophobia, Laborphobia, and climate science denialism! What's not for a reptile to love wholeheartedly?

Brownie put forward an immortal sentence, presumably meaning we must all become reptiles:

“Under the failed policy of multiculturalism, all cultures are allowed equivalence to ours,” ­Senator Hanson said. “Surely ­opposing that is not racist, it’s ­common sense. We cannot be a multicultural society. We are a multiracial society, but we must be monocultural.”

The pond wasn't sure what it meant. 

Did it mean monocultural like tykes v. proddies v. evangelicals v. deeply weird Xian nationalists, or did it mean the monocultural harmony of little England, Ireland, Wales and Scotland? Or was it just meaningless blather of a bigoted kind, and so at one with the reptiles?

Down below Brownie, Geoff chambered yet another round ...

COMMENTARY by Geoff Chambers
Taylor invisible as Hanson emerges as unofficial opposition leader
Angus Taylor struggling to be heard as Pauline Hanson takes on Anthony Albanese
Angus Taylor is struggling to be heard. At a press conference on Wednesday, he received just one question from the lone journalist present.

The poor old beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way was swatted to the curb ...

...While Taylor is trying his best, he is struggling to be heard. There is a handful of Liberal MPs led by Tim Wilson, Andrew Hastie and Garth Hamilton who are showing they are prepared to go head-to-head with One Nation. Speaking at a press conference in southern Sydney ahead of the ABS on Thursday releasing updated net overseas migration data, Taylor received one question from a sole journalist who asked him what he expected from Hanson’s address.
“Scrutiny matters, and, frankly, One Nation is yet to give this country a credible plan,” Taylor said. “Right now, I’m every day subjecting myself to the press, having press conferences like this, and answering those hard questions because they matter. But most importantly, laying out that credible plan for our country. A plan for lower taxes, for more aspiration, for an economy that grows and provides opportunity for hardworking Australians, for affordable and abundant energy, for housing ownership that is within reach for young Australians, for putting Australians first.”
Just four months into the job, Taylor is grappling with a rejuvenated Hanson who has mastered the art of opposition deflection and soundbites. When quizzed about One Nation policies and funding, it is easy for Hanson to shift focus back to the unpopular major parties.

Steady, they're on the job ...

Over on the extreme far right of the digital edition, Jenna did her best to show that her male colleagues were rank amateurs when it came to hagiography by invoking Maggie Thatcher.

Pauline Hanson is no longer the Karen in Chief, she’s Thatcher from Queensland
Maggie Thatcher said ‘the cocks may crow, but it’s the hen that lays the egg’. Having waited 30 years for credibility and poll success, Pauline Hanson isn’t counting her chickens yet.
By Jenna Clarke
Culture Writer

That's culture?

No, that's a gigantic suck ...

The pond could only swallow a bit of it, because Jenna didn't hold back with the gushing, a gigantic squirt of devotion ...

... Her oration wasn’t groundbreaking, it was refreshing.
Unlike the major party leaders, she actually knows her audience.
No fence-sitting like Angus Taylor and no talking out both sides of her mouth like Anthony Albanese.
It’s why her language, which some scoff at for its “bogan” simplicity, is so successful.
Oxley is a long way from Oxford.
As a single mother of four children, she’s used to vacuuming, not living in one.
The 72-year-old used phrases like “sick to the back teeth”, opted for the word “dear” instead of “expensive” and simplified — with varying levels of success — fraught topics like foreign aid and energy policy.
While every government representative appears to have been created in a petri dish on Sussex Street, Hanson sounds, according to various and successive polls, relatable to the majority of Australians right now.
Buried in her bluster and away from the pathetic protests, were some kernels of legitimate vote winning ideas, such as allowing pensioners, veterans and students to earn as much as they like without having their benefits impacted.
It’s wrong to say she is of the “extremist far right”, she’s extreme.
Always has, always will be.
If politics seems like a circus right now, and Australia is indeed going down the same path as other democracies like the US, maybe Pauline could be the ringmaster voters want in order to rein in the clowns of Canberra in two years time.

That abject devotion, that pitiable grovelling on bended knees, is the sound of reptile surrender.

Did any reptile attempt a fight back?

Not really. 

The lizard Oz editorialist attempted a token gesture, but no one reads what the lizard Oz editorialist has to say, and the few no ones who do probably couldn't give a toss up against the gushing Jenna ...

Please, make room, bear with the pond ...

Put it another way ...

Now that's the way to treat reptiles.

Did the lizard Oz editorialist read gushing Jenna?

And why did the pond feature the editorialist and send most of gushing Jenna to the intermittent archive?

It's because the lizard Oz editorialist shows the schizophrenia that now saturates the rag, as the reptiles simultaneously cheer on the Hansonites, while at times remembering that once they used to blather about Ming the Merciless and picket fences...

The hapless reptile even tried to downplay the Paulinist embrace of reptile positions:

..Senator Hanson has diagnosed the full impact of the wayward energy transition on cost-of-living pressures and put her cards on the table in support of coal, oil, gas and nuclear as well as rooftop solar. Her mantra, with echoes of Donald Trump, is “Dig, baby, dig” but the details and reality of implementation can be frustrating.
The rise of One Nation reflects a trend towards populist leaders in other parts of the world. Senator Hanson credits the defeat of the voice to parliament referendum as a wake-up call where citizens rediscovered their own voice. 

Uh huh...didn't she mean they discovered a reptile voice?

Pearls of wisdom also arrived to ask questions ...

The header: Pauline Hanson’s outsider status remains her precious superpower;Those at her speech hoping for more specifics on plans to ‘grow the pie’ and pay for her promises would have been disappointed.

The caption for the snap, a reminder of Pauline's uncanny resemblance to Martin Luther (thank you Ughmann): One Nation leader Pauline Hanson speaks at the National Press Club on Wednesday. Picture: Getty Images

The reptiles were, in their usual way, incredibly discreet. There was no snap of a rogue kind to start off the droppings of pearls of wisdom:

And the pearls of wisdom only managed to run for a measly three minutes.

They were polite in delivery, and while there was talk of mixed signals, there were clear indications that some of the signals were right and just ...

On Wednesday afternoon Pauline Hanson gave her first National Press Club address, a debut 30 years in the making.
Her speech was passionately argued and uncompromising. Hanson covered familiar policy ground: she spoke about immigration and housing, our national identity and values, the cost-of-living crisis and energy, the tax hits announced in the budget and even what she called “the transgender insurgency” in Canberra.
On immigration, she sent mixed signals. Pragmatically, she linked our high intake to the housing crisis, yet in an unscripted moment she commented bitterly about “floods” of people coming here; an echo of her maiden speech in 1996. She called for Islamic “hate preachers” to be deported and said people who weren’t willing to embrace our Judaeo-Christian traditions should not be allowed to settle in this country.
A little oddly, perhaps, she expressed disapproval for the fact that a quarter of Australians speak a language other than English in their homes (even though many of them, I suspect, would subscribe to the values she upholds).

He suspects? That's the sort of deeply researched point that makes the lizard Oz such a sociological marvel.

The reptiles then interrupted with an AV distraction, with the thumb again shorn of unseemly images ... Will Glasgow reports from Pauline Hanson's Press Club event in Canberra

The pearls of wisdom allowed the talk of the hoax of climate change to go unchallenged, which was right and proper considering that the lizard Oz has been climate science denial central these past couple of decades:

Hanson grew visibly angry when talking about the Australians forced to seek help from the Salvation Army and other charities, blaming “the hoax” of global warming and heavily subsidised wind and solar energy for our cost-of-living crisis.
She pledged to end every net-zero related grant, subsidy and mandate the government has on its books and build two coal-fired power stations and one nuclear one.
Hanson confined herself to motherhood statements on economic policy questions.
She said she had always argued against “escalating debt”, compared Jim Chalmers’ spending record unfavourably with Paul Keating’s and pointed out – correctly – that this was contributing to inflation and higher interest rates. In response to one question, she said she would not seek to interfere with the Reserve Bank.
Those hoping for more specifics on her plan to “grow the pie” and pay for her promises would have been disappointed.
Hanson’s political rise this year has been spectacular but remains poorly understood by many. We are told variously that it was prompted by the Bondi Beach terrorist attack, or economic pain people are feeling, or the progressive cultural assault on this country. All of these explanations have merit.

The reptiles interrupted with another AV distraction, this one generously offering to the hive mind an IN FULL viewing of the entire 48'06" minutes: One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson makes her first National Press Club address since entering politics over 30 years ago.

Talk about helping the Hansonites infiltrate the hive mind in a bigly way...

And then it was on to a billy goat butt from the pearls of wisdom and an explanation of the phenomenon.

It turned out that it was the hijacking elites, the Beijing-like Covid response to Covid (shades of Killer Kreighton!), the net-zero crusade, rampant furriners, and elite attacks on Australian values, there being no 'leet, none at all, in the lizard Oz.

In short, it was the pearls of wisdom showing he knew how to regurgitate Hansonism 101, as the reptiles of Oz have done over the years ...

But at the heart of this political upheaval – which we are seeing in the US, Britain and many other advanced countries – is something deeper and more disturbing. It is the hijacking of our politics by the political and bureaucratic establishment during the past decade or more.
This has given us numerous disastrous policies, including pandemic-era lockdowns modelled after Beijing’s, a net-zero crusade that is hurting our growth and living standards (with no discernible environmental benefit), an uncontrolled migration system (appropriated by money-hungry universities) and elite attacks on Australian values.
While each of these things is bad enough, what too few people – even today – acknowledge is that they were foisted on the electorate. They were not demanded by the community. They were not debated and voted for during election campaigns. Their costs and risks were not assessed by a competent and professional public service. They were not scrutinised by a sceptical media.
Instead, they were presented to us as unarguable moral and economic imperatives, sanctioned by experts, by science, by the direction of history or by all right-thinking people – take your pick. We were told by our leaders that if we so much as questioned them, we were mentally deficient or morally reprobate.
Hanson understands this anti-democratic malaise acutely. In the most powerful part of her speech, which much reporting seems to have missed, she drew a strong link between herself and everyday Australians. 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 in this. I couldn’t agree more.
Hanson’s outsider status is her superpower. Not only has it given her an immunity from establishment criticism – about the way she talks and acts, the detail and credibility of her policies, and the quality of some One Nation candidates – but it has allowed her to gain strength from these attacks.
For many Australians, criticism of her National Press Club speech will be a further reason to rally to her cause.

And after that set of ringing endorsements by the pearls of wisdom, there came a last feeble billy goat butt, one likely to be entirely ignored by the hive mind:

But here is the problem. If Hanson is right to call out our political and bureaucratic leaders, it does not mean she has the answers or – if she finds herself in a position of power – the capacity to repair the deep economic and cultural damage they have caused.
This is not a question of competence. By any measure, Anthony Albanese and his Treasurer cannot claim this mantle. Neither can many of those in the Coalition, judging by their performance when last in government.
All the same, it is one thing to give voice to popular frustrations or hopes but quite another to meet these demands successfully in government or coalition. After all, if outsiders succeed in gaining the power they seek, they become the establishment.
David Pearl is a former Treasury assistant secretary.

The pond would have liked an invisible deity to exist so that it could offer a silent prayer for that "former".

Who cares about having the answers?

Did King Donald have any answers?

Do the reptiles think they have any answers? 

They have bigotry and stupidity as their super powers ...

And speaking of King Donald, the reptiles were all over the Iran deal early in the morning.

But the analysis and commentary on offer was pitiful.

Instead of the bromancer, the reptiles sent in Jack ...

The header: Iran’s victory claims are a delusion amid the ruins; Iranian generals have declared triumph from the rubble as the regime prints its first-ever 10 million rial note – worth one Happy Meal.

The caption for the uncredited collage, featuring a snap and fatuous imagery: A giant billboard depicting the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his son, the supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, with Arabic writing that reads: ‘Thank you Iran.’ Picture: Anwar Amro/AFP

Jack spent four minutes celebrating the way, or perhaps clinging to the mad King Donald dream, that the mad Mullahs had been given a sound thrashing:

In the wake of almost any armed conflict it is unsurprising that the surviving combatants on either side will claim victory. They can both be wrong but they can’t both be right.
In the US, celebrations have been muted despite President Donald Trump’s buoyant social media posts. Of course, Trump would probably claim the Battle of Little Big Horn was a stunning US victory against the odds.
A lot of ink has been hurled on to the front pages of newspapers around the globe, claiming Trump’s objectives – which initially centred on regime change in Iran, then moved to wiping out the Iranian civilisation, such as it is, before finally resting on prohibiting the Iranian regime’s desire for nuclear weapons – have not been met and may never be met.

Celebrations muted?

That's one way of putting it. Other ways include ...

Trump in Defeat
The president went to war triumphant and will likely leave greatly weakened.
By Jonathan Lemire

Trump Does Not Understand the War He Lost
The president’s comments at the G7 summit revealed that he doesn’t understand the war he started—or the words that come out of his own mouth.
By Tom Nichols

Sssh, don't disturb Jack's dreaming, even as the reptiles flooded the Jacked up zone with assorted AV distractions, with the first backing up Jack: Deakin University Global Islamic Politics Chair Professor Greg Barton discusses the severe economic impact of the war in Iran on the Iranian people. “Iran has been devastated by this war; the economy is really on its knees, the 92 million citizens of Iran are really suffering, more than they have for decades,” Mr Barton told Sky News Digital Presenter Gabriella Power. “It’s a really tough situation; Iran doesn’t have a conventional air force or navy to speak of; it’s got small, fast boats … but it does have the capacity to project force through ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones, cheap drones. “The regime has not gone away; if anything, it’s in its current form perhaps even more hardline.”

Jack was keen to emphasise that the mad Mullahs were on their knees:

But if it’s full-blown delusions one is after, look no further than the Islamic Republic’s surviving leadership.
Speaking from a pile of debris that was Iran’s military operational headquarters at Khatam al-Anbiya and surveying the smouldering wreck that was once the Iranian military, a chipper Major General Ali Abdollahi claimed “the humiliated … enemies have no option but to accept defeat and surrender before a people inspired by God and the soldiers of the Almighty”.
Moments after emerging from his spider hole, the Speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (also one of the leading Iranian figures in the peace talks), declared Iran had taken “a long step towards final victory”.
Summoning up the memory of Iraq’s propaganda minister, Comical Ali, predicting a fiery apocalypse for US troops while they sauntered into Baghdad unopposed, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi stated that Iran “defeated the US on the military battlefield”, adding: “Iran’s armed forces will always have their hand on the trigger to confront the conspiracies of the enemies.”
The regime’s state news agency, Mehr, also was in a celebratory mood, pointing to the cash and prizes as the spoils of war it thinks are headed the regime’s way. Reports quoted from a 14-point memorandum of understanding that seems to be a fiction of Mehr’s own making, claiming the regime would be the recipient of “the release of $US24bn ($34bn) in frozen Iranian assets during the 60-day negotiation period” that begins after the framework deal is signed.
The details of the MOA between the two nations have not been fully published and negotiations are expected to begin in Switzerland on Friday. That hasn’t stopped the predictable skiting, bluff and bullshit from this most appalling government.

MOA? Well it's probably no big deal to talk that way about the MOU, no more than King Donald talking about "nuclear dust".

The reptiles next rolled in JD, sans couch: US President Donald Trump is currently in Evian-les-Bains, where leaders are meeting for the annual G7 Summit. During remarks alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, Trump said that an agreement had been signed. In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, US Vice President JD Vance commented on this. “On the one hand, if they continue to try to rebuild their nuclear program, this deal ensures they will never have the resources in order to do that,” Mr Vance said. “On the other hand, if the Iranians are willing to give a long-term commitment along with proper verification to giving up that nuclear weapon, we are willing to welcome them into the world economy, to lift some sanctions and to turn over a new leaf in that relationship.”

Being something of a couch lover, Jack followed up with more talk of mad Mullahdefeat:

According to US Vice-President JD Vance, that money has been set aside to pay for infrastructure reconstruction in the Gulf states caused by missile and drone strikes inflicted by Iraq during the four-month war.
In the Iranian capital, Mehr news agency also showed a gigantic mural – an advertising format much beloved of the mullahs – that claimed: “The US was forced to sign an agreement to end the war.”
It’s not all victory garlands, fist pumps and self-congratulation in Iran. One hardline MP, the deputy chairman of parliament’s national security committee, reportedly has described the draft peace deal as a document that would turn Iran into an American colony.

There came final AV distraction celebrating the way that the mad Mullahs had met their match, with an air about of state regime media, otherwise known as Faux Noise ... Iran's leaders are splashing propaganda posters across Tehran boasting of national unity and victory over a global superpower, just months after crushing protests with mass killings and as war worsens economic pain for their people. This report produced by Jillian Kitchener.

As for the poor hapless Iranian dissidents sold down the river by King Donald and his acolytes, Jack had a few consoling words. Not to worry. According to Jack, it'll be regime change by Xmas ...

Meanwhile, anti-regime Iranians continue to dwell in despair. One anonymous Iranian who despises the mullahs and their corrupt regime initially had supported US military action. He was left to ponder what the US attack had achieved since it did not lead to political change in Iran: “Our hope was that the ruling system would change. But apart from misery, inflation and further damage to the economy, what benefit did it have for people?”
Blanket propaganda and collective delusional disorder aside, the regime is overseeing an economy that had been mired in recession before February 28 and is now teetering on the brink of depression. GDP growth in the Islamic Republic has gone from a single negative point to negative 6.1 for the year to date.
Before the conflict the Iranian currency was hardly humming along but the war forced a 40 per cent reduction on the rial. Ten thousand rials will get you 10 Australian cents.
The flatlining currency shows no sign of any real recovery. To avoid grim scenes of Iranians pushing wheelbarrows full of almost worthless cash, the regime has printed a 10 million rial note for the first time. It’s worth the price of a Happy Meal in Australia.
Numismatists with a penchant for collecting worthless currency can add the freshly minted note to their collections alongside Iraq’s 10,000 dinar note issued by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2002 before the world came to pay him a final visit and Zimbabwe’s $100 trillion note, featuring so many zeroes it was exhausting just to look at it.
The biggest challenge to Iran’s corrupt and bloody regime comes in the form of food security.
There already were profound hyper-inflationary pressures in Iran before the war. While these have worsened only marginally since the war began, the cost of basic staples in Iran has skyrocketed. The price of cooking oils, rice and flour has shot up by more than 200 per cent.
Regime change in Iran was always unlikely by sheer force of munitions. Bombing raids and missile strikes by the US and Israel even may have shored up the mullahs’ ugly dominance of the Iranian people.
Food security is another matter and it is at crisis level. Hungry people are angry people. The most recent and compelling example was in Sri Lanka in 2022, when president Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned and fled the country amid critical shortages of fuel, food and medicine.
The Islamic Republic of Iran will be a tougher nut for its citizens to crack, but one certainty is that if enough hungry, angry people hit the streets, it’s time for the mullahs to grab their suitcases and flee, possibly to Russia where the best advice they can receive is to avoid standing in front of windows.
Clearly, the warring parties – one a military superpower, the other a regional middle power – have separate and distinct objectives, but mere survival is not triumph.

Mere survival?

That's what they're calling 300 billion dollars in the lizard Oz these days?

In an attempt to balance the simperings of Jack, the reptiles included a more lengthy analysis, borrowed from the WSJ.

It was a point by point breakdown, and the pond doesn't intend to add to the exegesis. 

Rather, it is what it is, but at least it doesn't rely on the vagaries of the intermittent archive:

The header: Annotated analysis of Trump’s Iran deal; The official agreement envisages trade relief for opening the Strait of Hormuz and limits on Iran’s nuclear program.
The authors: Laurence Norman, Alexander Ward and Summer Said
The caption for the snap: A man wave an Iranian flag in front of a billboard displaying the flag. Picture: Getty Images.

This outing was liberally sprinkled with AV distractions, and took a bigly six minute read (according to the reptiles), but at least it isn't Jack sounding jacked-up:

A senior Trump administration official read out President Trump’s memorandum of understanding to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and wind down the war with Iran in exchange for financial incentives for Tehran that will begin immediately.
Another official, speaking at the same event Wednesday, said Iran had asked the US not to release the text itself. The Wall Street Journal produced this transcript, along with Journal analysis of the crucial points.
The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran have jointly agreed in good faith on such and such a date on the following:
Paragraph 1 The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran and their allies in the current war, by signing this memorandum of understanding, declare the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and undertake from now on not to initiate any war or any military operation against each other, and to refrain from the threat or use of force against each other, and ensuring the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Lebanon. The final deal will confirm the permanent termination of the war on all fronts, including in Lebanon, and other provisions of this paragraph.
WSJ analysis: The inclusion of Lebanon is highly controversial in Israel, which is fighting a war there with Hezbollah. This official version includes tougher language on Lebanon’s sovereignty.
Paragraph 2 The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran undertake to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.
WSJ analysis: President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began the war calling on Iranians to overthrow the regime, a goal that faded as the government in Tehran held firm.
Paragraph 3 The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran commit to negotiating and achieving the final deal in maximum 60 days extendable with mutual consent.
WSJ analysis:The tough questions around Iran’s nuclear program and funds for reconstruction will be tackled in this second phase.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday (June 17) that Iran can access a $300 billion private fund "only if they’re doing things right" and that the United States has taken a lot of Iran's money which will at "some point" have to be returned.

Paragraph 4 Immediately upon the signing of this memorandum of understanding, the United States of America will begin the removal of its naval blockade and any disturbances or impediments against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and end the naval blockade within 30 days. During this period, the traffic of vessels will be in proportion to the numbers of pre-war traffic being restored by the Islamic Republic of Iran. United States of America further undertakes to remove its forces from the proximity of the Islamic Republic of Iran within 30 days after the final deal.
WSJ analysis: This is the meat of the deal, reopening the strategic Strait of Hormuz and pausing the war. The administration official said the deadline for removal of forces is after any final deal on nuclear and other issues.
Paragraph 5: Upon the signing of this memorandum of understanding, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles and demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will be reinstated. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.
WSJ analysis: Iran’s main obligation under the deal, lifting its chokehold on the strait. The updated version says Iran agrees not to charge fees for transit for 60 days and blesses an Iranian plan to work with Oman on the future administration of the strait, but says they must involve other Gulf states in the discussion.

President Trump issued a chilling warning to any country who would sell Iran a nuclear weapon, saying that they would "get nuked," themselves. Trump said that as part of the Iran p …

Paragraph 6: The United States of America undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, fully agreed plan with at least $300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The mechanism for the implementation of this plan will be finalised as part of a final deal within 60 days. All required licenses, waivers, and permissions needed for the relevant financial transactions will be granted by the United States of America.
WSJ analysis: A new twist on the economic benefits Iran could expect if it delivers on US demands on the nuclear front. Mr Trump says there will be no US funding for this effort. The updated draft says the US will grant sanctions waivers needed for investors to participate.
Paragraph 7: The United States of America undertakes to terminate all types of sanctions against the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the United Nations Security Council resolutions, i.e. IAEA Board of Governors resolutions, and all unilateral US sanctions, primary and secondary, in an agreed upon schedule as part of the final deal. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America acknowledge the critical importance of the sanctions termination issue above mentioned, and expressed their intentions to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.
WSJ analysis: The big carrot, an end to economically crippling sanctions if Iran meets American demands. In the updated version, the US recognises the urgency of the issue for Iran.

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday (June 17) that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could use a "softer touch" in Lebanon in comments made at the close of a G7 summit in France.

Paragraph 8: The Islamic Republic of Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear weapons. The United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran have agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpiled enriched material pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon in accordance with the schedule mentioned in Paragraph 7, with the minimum methodology to be downblending on site under the supervision of the IAEA. The two parties also agreed to discuss the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters related to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear needs based on a satisfactory framework being agreed upon in the final deal. The final deal will confirm the provisions of this paragraph. The Islamic Republic of Iran acknowledge the critical importance of nuclear issues above mentioned, and express their intention to immediately address these issues in the negotiations in order to achieve mutual agreement on them.
WSJ analysis: Iran repeats its longstanding pledge not to develop a nuclear weapon. The updated version includes more specific language on the disposal of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, with the senior administration official saying Iran has committed to destroy it. This version also specifically mentions future nuclear enrichment, with Iran acknowledging the urgency of the issue for the US
Paragraph 9: Pending the final deal, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran agree to maintain the status quo. The Islamic Republic of Iran will maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program, and the United States of America will not impose any new sanctions, and will not deploy additional forces in the region.
WSJ analysis: Freezes the nuclear standoff in place.
Paragraph 10: The United States of America undertakes that immediately upon the signing of this memorandum of understanding, and until the termination of sanctions, the US Department of Treasury will issue waivers for the export of Iranian crude oil, petroleum products, and derivatives, and all associated services, including banking transactions, insurances, transportation, etc.
WSJ analysis: A major up-front American concession freeing Iran to sell oil as it likes and reap the financial benefits.

In a speech at the G-7 summit in France, Trump said he was giving Iran 60 days to negotiate their agreement, or the U.S. would resume bombing.

Paragraph 11: The United States of America undertakes to make fully available for use the frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Upon the implementation of this memorandum of understanding, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will mutually agree on the procedures related to the release of these funds during the negotiations. Such funds, whether retained in the original account or transferred, shall be made fully usable for payment to any ultimate beneficiary designed by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States of America undertakes to issue all necessary licenses and authorisations accordingly.
WSJ analysis: The US will let Iran access some of its estimated $100 billion in frozen assets depending on progress in talks.
Paragraph 12: The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran agree that an executive mechanism will be established to monitor the successful implementation of this memorandum of understanding and the future compliance of the final deal.
Paragraph 13: After signing this memorandum of understanding and subject to the beginning of the implementation of paragraphs 1, 4, 5, 10 and 11 of this memorandum of understanding, and the continuing implementation of these measures, the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran will start negotiations regarding the final deal exclusively on the other paragraphs.
WSJ analysis: Limits the scope of discussion in the second phase, leaving out Iran’s ballistic missile program and its network of regional militias. The updated version expands the list of paragraphs to include Paragraph 1, the cessation of hostilities including in Lebanon.
Paragraph 14: The final deal will be endorsed by a binding resolution of the UN Security Council.
The Wall St Journal

Put it another, algae-laden, American flag green way...