Tuesday, February 18, 2025

A severe case of relevance deprivation syndrome wafts in from the bush ...

 

Relevance deprivation syndrome...

It's what happens when they put you out in the back paddock and attach a warning to you ...




The pond can't vouch for any of the details in this posting ...

The case of the washed up politician
The term Relevance Deprivation Syndrome can be traced back to the Australian Politician Gareth Evans. (S/o to Nick Ellsmore.)
After a long career in politics, Evans felt a giant void from the loss of prominence, status and influence.
Relevance Deprivation Syndrome was then used to label other politicians, who were jockeying to stay in the public eye by writing letters to the editor, attending conferences and pontificating to anyone willing to lend an ear.
Relevance Deprivation Syndrome extends far beyond politicians and rappers.
It’s joining a board to avoid the nagging question “What do you do?” and to preserve the semblance of a high-status title.
It’s going viral on TikTok, decades after a bust of an NFL career.
And it’s the countless thirst-trappy posts on LinkedIn about the secrets of growing a 7-figure business (supposedly from “exited founders)

And so to the tragic irrelevance of rustic John Anderson, promised as a late arvo treat because of the pond's shameless indulgence in its house of Murdoch treat this morning ... (a Pfeffernüsse of undiluted pure ginger and icing pleasure) ...

The pond did wonder whether it was worth it, because let's face it, he's more Gunnedah than Tamworth, which is to say no bloody cigar, not even a cheroot ...

West embraces new era of reason, values over radical ideology, We have allowed identity politics to shape policy, prioritised ideological purity over practical governance, and witnessed the fraying of the civil discourse essential for a functioning democracy. But there is a shift under way.

Sorry, the pond should have put a warning at the start. 

This is really just a shameless piece of promotion, indulged in by the reptiles, The Alliance For Responsible Citizenship Conference in 2023. Picture: Parsons Media




Yep, it's going to be that sort of show ...

For too long public discourse has been driven by outrage rather than logic, emotion rather than evidence. Critical issues – economic stability, social cohesion and the future of our institutions – have been subordinated to ideological battles that do little to secure or improve the lives of Australians.
We have allowed identity politics to shape policy, prioritised ideological purity over practical governance, and witnessed the fraying of the civil discourse essential for a functioning democracy. But there is a shift under way.
Across the West, a new era is beginning to emerge. It signals the decline of radical ideology and hopefully the return of more reasoned debate. Recent decades have been marked by ever deepening divisions, cultural upheaval and an erosion of trust in institutions – even the ideas that were foundational to them – that were once so much the bedrock of our democratic societies.

Oh yes, it's a new era alright ... right across the west, the clarion call of the Swasticar ...



Would you like fascism with that?




Take it away Zoe ... The new world order is exactly what it looks like. Are we too frozen with fear to name it?

JD Vance’s decision, while in Germany, to meet the far-right AfD leader, Alice Weidel, yet decline a meeting with the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, would have caused more alarm, I feel, if it hadn’t come accompanied by so much other signalling. The vice-president of a nation engaged in tearing down its own institutions lectured the whole of Europe on its project to “destroy democracy”, which is absolutely textbook: he’s describing black as white, openly turning observable reality on its head. It’s unsettling, for sure, but that’s because it’s audacious, not because it’s complicated. It’s the simplest move of statecraft ever – show the world who you are, dare them to call you on it.
Meeting Weidel was the second simplest move – show the world who your allies are, dare them to mention it, or see if instead they turn themselves in knots trying to bring the AfD back into the fold, rather than accept that the postwar consensus has folded.
Like many people, I often feel as if I grew up with the Michael Rosen poem that starts: “I sometimes fear that / people think that fascism arrives in fancy dress.” In fact, it was written in 2014, but it was such a neat distillation that it instantly joined the canon of words that had always existed, right up there with clouds being lonely and parents fucking you up. Obviously, fascism arrives as your friend. How else would it arrive?
What I did not anticipate, when thinking that the whole suite of behaviours, from Nazi saluting to upturning reality, belonged well and truly to the past, was the sense of paralysis that would settle when fascism finally put its fancy dress on...

Or try Don Moynihan's DOGE Mismanagement Principles...

It is a fundamental error to believe that DOGE is a government efficiency project. Cutting 1 in 4 federal employees would cut federal government spending by 1%. Cost savings are incidental. DOGE is a political control project. Firing and terrorizing public employees is a means to weakening state regulation of private interests and strengthening a personalist presidency.

Put it another way ...


Sorry, sorry, the pond broke ranks because there's always too much reading done before a late arvo post, and besides, the reptiles had slipped in this as their AV distraction ...

Sky News host Peta Credlin discusses her day at the first ARC conference in Sydney and the “amazing array” of speakers who attended the event. The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship held its first conference in Australia providing a platform for renowned speakers and thinkers to address pressing issues. “ARC – or the Alliance of Responsible Citizens – is a new movement from the centre-right of politics and policy and thought, to start the pushback against defeatism, against wokery and let's be honest, the growth of socialism in our once proud West,” Ms Credlin said. “Its objective is to inspire ordinary citizens, businesses, think-tanks and more, to tackle the left's march through our institutions.”

Sorry, sorry, mention of wokery ...the pond has no alternative, it's contractually obliged ...




There was a still that went with the AV distraction ...




Is it just the pond? Each time it sees that seraphic smirk, the pond is haunted by ancient memories of aged sitcoms ...





Yes, yes, there's a definite resemblance ...

Is it politically incorrect to point it out? Is the pond too woke-free to care?

It has played out in our school curriculum, reaching deep into the halls of some of most prestigious universities. It may well be that we have passed “peak woke” but the question remains: Where do we go from here? Australians are searching for leadership that prioritises substance over spectacle.

Peak woke? Sorry, that incurs another penalty ... the pond is contractually obliged any time the word is mentioned ...




Where do we go from here? Down the rabbit hole with a rustic fuckhead suffering relevancy deprivation ...

There is an appetite for genuine conversation, for the restoration of a public square where those with a difference of opinion are not dragged to account. It is where the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship has an important role to play.
This week more than 4000 people from across 100 nations will come together at ARC’s second global conference in London to reject the notion that Western civilisation is in inevitable decline.
Our nations have faced crises before and emerged stronger because individuals and institutions had the courage to confront challenges rather than capitulate to them. The West can remain a beacon of prosperity and opportunity, but only if we rebuild the foundations of trust and reasoned governance. The good policy we are all looking for will always be the product of rigorous debate; it will not result from shouting, from scorn, from the belittling of others.
In an age of disengagement, where citizens feel increasingly disconnected from decisions that shape their lives, it is imperative to re-establish trust in the political process. This starts with leaders who are equipped and willing to speak truth to power rather than endlessly playing power games.
Through its themes – our story, social fabric, business and governance, energy and environment, and prosperity – ARC is committed to equipping today’s leaders with high-quality information while fostering a network of emerging leaders who will shape the future. ARC’s inaugural gathering in 2023 illustrated our capacity to tackle pressing issues – from the mental health crisis and family breakdown to the economic consequences of poor energy policy.

You don't have to be an expert in relevancy deprivation to realise this snap was coming, John Anderson at ARC 2023. Picture: Parsons Media




Eek, narcissist 'r us, and he's gesturing towards his sky god ...

Okay, it's obvious now that the pond isn't taking this seriously. There's a big gulf in thinking...




The pond just had to slip that one in before erupting into a tornado of guffaws ...

These challenges demand clear thinking, not reactionary policymaking. 

The pond isn't being totally fair. 

The rustic from Gunnedah (how they resent superior Tamworth) was blathering about life down under ...and when the pond uses "blather", it really means a thunderstorm of cascading clichés...

Bad policy has consequences and Australia is living through the results of years of shortsighted decision-making. If we want to rebuild, we must engage people again – not just in politics but in the broader conversation about what kind of society we wish to create.
This engagement must go beyond partisanship. It requires intellectual courage – willingness to debate uncomfortable truths and challenge prevailing orthodoxies.
The international debate about screen time versus playtime for children, which gained momentum following the 2023 ARC conference in London, is a prime example of how raising real issues can lead to necessary conversations. Similarly, the Sydney ARC conference opened a critical discussion about whether universal childcare is the best economic and cultural policy for Australia.
We must resist the temptation to assume that because some of the most extreme ideological battles are waning, the work is done.
We are only beginning to emerge from the fog of cultural confusion. We need to ask: What are the values, and even their driving beliefs, that we abandoned, and how do we restore them?
The so-called “new conservatism” is not necessarily conservative in the traditional sense – it is, in many ways, a reaction to the excesses of progressivism.
The growing disillusionment among many Western voters, particularly women who have turned against radical gender ideology, is not driven by ideology but by a deep concern for fairness, truth, and the wellbeing of their families.

At this point, the reptiles slipped in a snap of a deeply unhappy and traumatised woman, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.




It's hard to make fun of the traumatised, might be better to remind this blathering rustic of real world events...




Then came an even lower low, as the pond was reminded that the thoughts emanating from a  drug-addled, snake oil salesman mind could still be sold to suckers lurking in the bush ...

Nowhere is this clearer than in the crisis facing young men. Jordan Peterson has convincingly shown us how a generation of boys and young men are struggling – falling behind in education, disengaging from the workforce, and experiencing record levels of depression and despair. The response from too many institutions has been to ignore or dismiss their struggles or, worse, to frame masculinity itself as a problem. This is not sustainable for any society.

The pond hasn't been convinced by anything Jordan Peterson wrote or thought since before the days that Dame Slap picked him up as her pet of the month, and then dropped him...




Jordan really does bring out the very best in deep thinking ...

As for the Gunnedah rustic, how tiresome is this hillbilly?

If the pond said he began this final gobbet by blathering about "the long march through the institutions", how many would shriek more than enough already?

Enough all bloody ready ...

The long march through the institutions that once shaped Western civilisation – our universities, our media, our cultural establishments – has, in many cases, resulted in the betrayal of the very values they were meant to uphold. These institutions were designed to foster learning and advancement, yet they have too often become training grounds for division, resentment and identity politics.
We must restore the credibility of our institutions, re-establish the principles of open and honest debate, and build a society that values truth, responsibility, and personal agency.
Australia has a vital role to play in this moment of renewal. We can be a nation that leads by example – one that demonstrates how prosperity and social cohesion can coexist, how debate can be robust without being destructive, and how a confident nation embraces its history rather than rewriting it.

The point of course is that it's just rampant narcissism, relevancy deprivation and action man carry-on ...

The time for action is now, and ARC stands ready to be at the forefront of that conversation.

Sure, sure ...





Credit where irrelevancy syndrome credit is due...

John Anderson is a former deputy prime minister, and a board member of ARC.

Meanwhile, it being awards season, the winners are ...










Come on down, house of Murdoch, followed by a token Groaning from the mouse that didn't roar...

 

Why not start with the artwork for a proposed wrap-around that WaPo decided that Washington and the world didn't need to see ...




Interesting questions, but perhaps more interesting how these free speech warriors manage to induce abject silence ...

There was a second part ...




Poor fella that country ... democracy dies in the darkness of a billionaire's purse.




Happy fascist day. Drive it with pride ...




Whoa, as Uncle Leon might ejaculate when discussing a paternity matter, another distraction hovered into view.

Muh lud, can the pond suspend standing reptile orders to discuss crucial Murdochian matters? 

The request pertains to a piece by McKay Coppings in The Atlantic, Growing Up Murdoch, James Murdoch on mind games, sibling rivalry, and the war for the family media empire.

Relax, for those troubled by the paywall, it's at the archive here. (Who knows how long the service will last, but it's handy while it's there).

The piece is very long, and richly rewarding, and so the pond only wants to do a teaser trailer by showing a few highlights.

Our Henry would be delighted by both the Freudian elements and the invocation of Tolstoy and Shakspere in this gobbet:

...Now, at the Manhattan law office, James sat across the table from his father and prepared to be deposed. For nearly five hours, Rupert’s attorney asked James a series of withering questions.
Have you ever done anything successful on your own?
Why were you too busy to say “Happy birthday” to your father when he turned 90?
Does it strike you that, in your account, everything that goes wrong is always somebody else’s fault?
At one point, the attorney referred to James and his sisters as “white, privileged, multi­billionaire trust-fund babies.” At another, he read an unsourced passage from a book about the Murdochs to suggest that James was a conniving saboteur.
James did his best to concentrate, but he couldn’t help stealing glances at his father. Rupert sat slouched and silent throughout the deposition, staring inscrutably at his younger son. Every so often, though, he would pick up his phone and type. Finally, James realized why. “He was texting the lawyer questions to ask,” James told me. “How fucking twisted is that?”
When the session ended, Rupert left the conference room without saying a word.
James Murdoch likes to think of himself as a student of dynastic dysfunction. He quotes Shakespeare and cites Roman imperial history in casual conversation. He is not sure he agrees with Tolstoy’s dictum—“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Because when he surveys the literature on families wrecked by wealth and power, he mostly sees the same sad patterns in endless repetition.
The contours of his own family’s story are familiar to the point of cliché—the legacy-obsessed patriarch slipping into senescence and paranoia, the courtiers whispering in his ear, the siblings squabbling over their portion of the kingdom. “It’s all been written down many, many times,” he said. “The real tragedy is that no one in my family doing this bothered to pay attention.”

Each day the pond reads the lizard Oz, it thinks “How fucking twisted is that?”

On with more to delight our Henry by the conjuring up of Shakepere's King Lear:

...James had long ago internalized the edict that you never talk to reporters about the family. This was an inviolable rule of Rupert’s—one of the first things Kathryn had learned when she and James started dating. James hated the books and articles written by professional Murdoch chroniclers, which he mockingly referred to as “the canon.” It wasn’t until his father’s texts and emails came out in the trust litigation that James realized just how many insidious stories over the years—the ones that portrayed Kathryn as a meddling “former model” and James as a liberal dilettante—had been planted by Rupert’s camp. The revelation was liberating.
The couple’s motives in talking to me were surely mixed. Sometimes, they seemed fueled by raw anger at what they see as Rupert’s betrayal. Other times, they seemed preoccupied with reputation management—eager to present themselves as evolved, socially conscious billionaires, and distance themselves from certain unfortunate associations with the Murdoch name. (Rupert and Lachlan declined to be interviewed for this story, but a spokesperson objected to what he called a “litany of falsehoods,” noting that they came “from someone who no longer works for the companies but still benefits from them financially.”)
James also seemed compelled, in part, by a desire to add his chapter to the literature of family dysfunction, in hopes that some future family might take the lessons more seriously than his own had. During our first meeting, he told me about a document that one of his father’s lawyers had written, which included a quote from King Lear: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”
James and Kathryn found it darkly amusing. Did Rupert and his lawyers not realize that the famous line uttered by the mad king is aimed at Cordelia, who turns out to be Lear’s only honest daughter?
“The whole point is that the crazy old man doesn’t know that Cordelia is telling him the truth,” Kathryn told me. Her husband studied a spot on the table in front of him.

Who'd have guessed that the dirty Digger's lust for power would even lead to him cheating at Monopoly?

 ere's another one for the Freudians:

...Kathryn was living in Australia at the time, and James was in New York, so for their second date, they met halfway, in Hawaii. For their third, James invited Kathryn to meet his family on his father’s 158-foot superyacht, Morning Glory, off the coast of Australia. They were already talking seriously about their future, and the trip was a chance for Kathryn to see what she’d be getting into.
The experience was enlightening. She caught Rupert cheating at Monopoly (he just smirked and shrugged), and observed constant sniping—at one point, Anna got up and left a family dinner in tears. Lachlan had brought along his latest girlfriend. When they got into an argument, Kathryn recalled, Lachlan shaved his head, jumped off the boat, and swam to shore. “He has a weird, dramatic side,” James told me. (A spokesperson for Lachlan denied James’s version of events.)

Then there's the self-styled pirates and gamblers routine. Ahoy me hearties, channeling Blackbeard and Long John as role models:

...Sky was profitable, but stagnant. Among Brits, it was widely seen as a price-gouging service that bought Premier League soccer rights and ransomed them to resentful subscribers. Its internal culture was macho and belligerent. The predominant mentality, James recalled, was “Everybody hates us and we don’t care.”
Early on, James laid out his vision for a new, respectable Sky. The company was going to have a set of “values,” he told executives, and would adopt the best practices of a modern workplace. “All these grumpy, old English guys were looking around like, ‘What the fuck is this guy talking about?’ ” James told me.
He pushed out Sky’s CFO and several other executives. After hearing that an employee had gotten drunk at a Royal Television Society banquet and thrown a dinner roll at the former director-general of the BBC, James ordered a manager to sack him. James told me that when the manager resisted, he had to explain why “being a dick in public when you’re an ambassador for the company” was a fireable offense.
Under James’s leadership, Sky’s brand image improved and subscriber numbers grew. “He took what was this Aussie-inflected cowboy operation, and turned it into a respected, high-growth company,” Matthew Anderson, an executive who worked with James at Sky, told me.
But James could feel Rupert’s ambivalence. He had succeeded in large part by rejecting the corporate ethos cultivated by his father. Rupert had a well-known management modus operandi: Hire aggressive executives, give them their own fiefdoms, and let them run wild. It was central to the Murdoch mythology—the empire built on instinct, run by a shrewd band of self-styled pirates and gamblers.

Is there climate change and gay marriage in the Freudian divorce courts?

...In London and New York, James told me, the pattern was the same: Nobody seemed to listen to the in-house lawyers if they could help it, and human resources was an afterthought at best. “When I’d say things like ‘compliance,’ they’d be like, ‘Oh my God, he uses business-school speak!’ ” James recalled. “And it’s like, ‘No, it’s the English language, and it’s kind of an important idea.’ ”
Rupert, for his part, seemed to resent his son for what he saw as a preoccupation with respectability, according to former News Corp employees. His misgivings were exacerbated by his apparent belief that Kathryn had indoctrinated James in fashionable left-of-center politics. The caricature periodically popped up in press coverage of the family: the witchy, liberal daughter-in-law casting a spell on Rupert’s impressionable son.
It was true that Kathryn was becoming more political. An awakening came, of all places, at a News Corp retreat in Pebble Beach, California, where she listened to Al Gore deliver his famous presentation on climate change. Soon after that, Kathryn went to work for the Clinton Climate Initiative. She also became more outspoken while sparring with her in-laws.
Once, during an argument over gay marriage, Rupert asserted that allowing same-sex couples to wed would be an affront to the institution.
Some people would say the same thing about divorce, Kathryn told her father-in-law. Rupert was then on his third wife.
Still, Rupert couldn’t afford to push away his younger son. Lachlan had left the company in 2005 after a series of confrontations with his father’s lieutenants in New York. The final indignity came when Lachlan, who was in charge of Fox’s TV stations, delayed green-lighting a police series developed by Roger Ailes, the CEO of Fox News. Ailes went over Lachlan’s head to Rupert, who reportedly told him, “Do the show. Don’t listen to Lachlan.” After years of being undermined by his father, who seemed conspicuously uneager to retire, Lachlan had had enough. He resigned and moved his family back to Australia.

How about racism, wild conspiracy theories and sexual misconduct in the house? Sure thing ...

To replace Ailes, James wanted to hire David Rhodes, the president of CBS News, who’d gotten his start at Fox News. He thought Rhodes could clean up the network’s culture and instill more rigorous editorial standards. Lachlan was fiercely opposed. After letting the brothers squabble for a while, Rupert announced that he would run Fox News himself as interim CEO.
To James, the result was predictably catastrophic. Under Rupert’s nominal supervision, the Fox News talent was free to run wild. Tucker Carlson, whom Murdoch had promoted to prime time, began airing monologues about the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory (aided by a head writer for the show who was later revealed to be posting racist content under an online pseudonym). Other hosts publicly sounded off about the injustice of the accusations against Ailes.
In January 2017, the anchor Bill O’Reilly settled a $32 million lawsuit with a former on-air analyst who’d accused him of sexual harassment. When news of the payout became public later that year, Rupert and his sons said they hadn’t been privy to the dollar figure, but they did know a settlement had been reached, and had decided to renew O’Reilly’s contract anyway.
In June 2017, British regulators punted on approving the Murdochs’ second bid for Sky, James’s longtime dream acquisition. The regulators cited antitrust concerns, but James thought he knew the real reason: He was now presiding over a company that was known around the world as a scandal-ridden propaganda machine for Donald Trump.

Are there Nazis in the house? You know, in the light of the lizard Oz reptiles going full Zionist:

...Then, in August 2017, torch-bearing white supremacists marched through Charlottes­ville, Virginia, chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” In the days that followed, the cable-news channel that James ostensibly ran spent hours defending Trump, who had asserted that there were “very fine people” marching with the neo-Nazis.
James wanted to say something to his employees about Charlottes­ville. But he also knew how it would look to his father and brother: pious, nagging James once again shoving his personal politics in everyone’s face. He dreaded the prospect of arm-­wrestling with Lachlan over every word in the statement, as the brothers had earlier that year when they issued a companywide memo responding to Trump’s travel ban. (James had wanted to reassure their Muslim employees and oppose the policy; Lachlan insisted on watering it down.) Maybe, James thought, it wasn’t even worth trying this time.
Finally, Kathryn asked a clarifying question: “If you’re not going to stand up against Nazis, who are you going to stand up against?”
James decided to put out his own statement without consulting Rupert or Lachlan. In an email sent to friends, and promptly leaked to the press, he denounced the protesters in Charlottesville as well as Trump’s reaction to them. “I can’t even believe I have to write this: standing up to Nazis is essential; there are no good Nazis,” he wrote. He and Kathryn would be donating $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League, and he encouraged others to join them.
The couple thought Rupert might speak out, too. He had long considered himself a proud opponent of anti-­Semitism, and had even once been honored by the ADL. But Rupert remained silent, as did Lachlan.

Rupert remained silent, as did Lachlan?! 

Bold as brass in their braying in the lizard Oz, except when it might interfere in the accumulation of brass ...

Then there's the inhouse gossip and a crack-up as big as the Ritz, a dangerous exploration of greed, morality, and the secret horrors of the ruling class. 

Sorry, F. Scott-Fitzgerald didn't have the copyright on that yarn:

...The final phase of the Murdoch-family crack-up, as best James could tell, began with a woman named Siobhan McKenna.
A longtime friend and confidant of Lachlan’s, McKenna served as his managing director in the family trust. Her fierce loyalty had helped make her one of the most power­ful media executives in Australia—CEO of News Corp’s Australian broadcasting arm, chair of the Australia Post, and managing partner at Lachlan’s private investment firm.
In the summer of 2023, McKenna approached Lachlan with a proposition: She believed she could devise a plan that secured Lachlan’s future control of the companies and permanently sidelined James without necessitating an expensive buyout. Lachlan, intrigued, told her to start working on it. (McKenna did not respond to requests for comment.)
On September 14, 2023, Rupert, Lachlan, and a consortium of Fox and News Corp executives gathered to hear McKenna’s pitch for Project Family Harmony. The family trust, they all agreed, was untenable as it was currently structured.
Lachlan had by now spent years building the case to his father that James was plotting a coup. In the fall of 2022, an unauthorized biography of Lachlan had been published in Australia containing an incendiary quote from an anonymous source about James’s purported plans: “Lachlan gets fired the day Rupert dies.” When the quote made international headlines, Lachlan told Rupert that James’s camp was responsible. A few months later, in January 2023, the Financial Times ran a story detailing “how the scions could battle for control” of the family trust after Rupert was gone. Once again, Lachlan pointed the finger at his brother.
As it turned out, according to evidence that would later surface at trial, James had no involvement in either story—but Lachlan did. It was McKenna who had, with Lachlan’s approval, spent more than 14 hours giving anonymous interviews to the biographer. And Brian Nick, an executive at Fox, had anonymously briefed the Financial Times. (Nick denied providing information to the Financial Times.) But to Rupert, the stories only confirmed that he needed to act decisively.
In October 2023, Kathryn told James that she thought he should reach out to his father and brother. They’d barely spoken in years, and though she didn’t yet know about their plans for the trust, she worried that Rupert and Lachlan were sinking too deep into their own conspiracy theories. James never got around to calling them. Later, he would wish he’d taken her advice.
Over several weeks that fall, the participants in Project Family Harmony explored a range of aggressive options to neutralize James. PowerPoints were prepared; legal memos were produced. James was rarely invoked by name in these materials; he was referred to as “the troublesome beneficiary.”
Rupert ultimately decided that the best course was to negate the voting power of James and his sisters. To do this, Rupert would have to amend the Murdoch family trust to give Lachlan unilateral control after he died. And because the trust was irrevocable, with amendments allowed only if they were in the interest of the beneficiaries, Rupert would have to show, in effect, that disenfranchising three of his children was actually best for them.
McKenna drafted talking points for Rupert to use when discussing the amendment with his children. New directors were also secretly recruited to the trust, including Bill Barr, the two-time attorney general and a personal friend of Rupert’s, and a pair of lawyers who had scant experience with trust management but had the advantage of being politically connected in Nevada, where the inevitable litigation would play out.

Want final confirmation of how weird it all was, and continues to be?

A month after the trial’s conclusion, while the commissioner was still deliberating, James decided to reach out to his father. The trial had gone well for him and his sisters; their lawyers were confident. Still, he knew the damage to his family might never be undone. Thanksgiving was approaching, and James was feeling sentimental. Maybe, he thought, his father might be open to a personal appeal, especially now that he looked to be on the verge of defeat.
James, Liz, and Prue wrote their father a letter suggesting an alternative course. “Thanksgiving and Christmas are upon us and the three of us wanted to reach out to you personally to say that we miss you and love you,” they wrote. “Over and above any other feelings all of us may have—of upset and shock—our unifying emotion is sorrow and grief.”
Maybe they could try to talk things out without lawyers and probate commissioners—and reach a compromise they all agreed on: “We are asking you with love to find a way to put an end to this destructive judicial path so that we can have a chance to heal as a collaborative and loving family.”
A couple of days later, Rupert wrote back. He’d read his children’s testimony from the trial twice over. “Only to conclude that I was right,” he told them. He instructed them to have their lawyers contact his if they wanted to talk further. “Much love, Dad.”
On December 7, the commissioner issued his ruling. Rupert and Lachlan had lost.

PS much love, big Daddy, PPS, talk to my lawyers, and only to them you bastard child ...

Paragraph after paragraph were pure delight.

James and Kathryn were usually cautious when I asked about changes they would want to see at the family’s news outlets. But I got glimpses of their thinking. Once, over dinner in Washington, Kathryn told me she wasn’t sure if Fox News could still be reformed. “It doesn’t have a clear purpose in the ecosystem anymore,” she said.

Sorry, it does have a clear purpose - the installation of a king and a billionaire oligarch atop the American system of government - but the pond will cede Jimbo's WSJ point.

On another occasion, I asked James if The Wall Street Journal ’s editorial page might serve as a model for a more responsible Fox News. He winced and said he hoped they could do better than that. 

So that's why the lizard Oz reprints WSJ pieces. They can't do any better than that. The pond winced at the reptile shame of it all.

At this point The Bulwark crept into the story, with a link to another Coppings in The Atlantic

Naming and Shaming the Pro-Trump Elite,The Bulwark’s writers are the new outlaws of conservative media. (archive)

The reptiles, it turns out, are revolting:

At various points, both of them mentioned their investment in The Bulwark, which was founded as an organ of Never Trump conservatism, as proof that they weren’t categorically averse to “center right” media—though, of course, re­inventing Fox News in The Bulwark’s image might be the surest path to a viewer revolt.

And so - spoiler alert - to the closing, and here again the ghost of Henry descended with delight into the pits, what Hadrian turning up to offer a totally douchey metaphor (at last a new word for our Henry - prize douche):

The one thing James has said consistently is that any reforms he might seek would focus on corporate and editorial governance, not political orientation. Fox News, he thought, could still report from a conservative perspective without, say, giving a platform to unqualified doctors to spread medical misinformation during a pandemic, or misrepresenting an oil-company shill as an expert on climate change. James believed this wasn’t just the right thing to do, but the fiscally prudent one: Allowing Trump’s former lawyer Sidney Powell on air to spread voting-machine conspiracy theories had already cost Fox three-quarters of a billion dollars, and an even larger defamation suit was still pending. (James stressed that reforming the outlets would require support from the board.)
For now, James is left struggling to answer the question he found himself asking in the courtroom—how did we let it come to this? His 93-year-old father will, despite his most fervent wishes, die one day. And when he does, he will leave behind a family at war with itself—a bevy of estranged children and ex-wives exchanging awkward greetings at an expensive funeral.
Last year, James told me, he reread Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar’s 1951 novel about the titular second-century emperor of Rome. “I hate to use Roman emperors as a metaphor, because it’s totally douchey,” he told me in a moment of self-deprecating clarity. But when he came across a passage about a dying ruler in search of an heir, James felt that he suddenly understood something about his father. He committed the paragraph to memory, and quoted it repeatedly in the time we spent together. Hadrian’s imperial predecessor is “refusing to face his end.” Hadrian pities him: “We were too different for him to find in me what most people who have wielded total authority seek desperately on their deathbeds, a docile successor pledged in advance to the same methods, and even to the same errors.”
For decades, James realized, Rupert had tried to turn his children into vehicles for dynastic ambition—walking nodes of immortality. In the process, he’d wrecked the family. Now, at 52, James seems as if he is trying to disentangle himself from the character he once played in the Murdoch story.
One day late this past fall, I met James in his office. The trust trial had recently concluded, and he was tired and uncharacteristically disheveled—bags under his eyes, hair askew. He recounted the beats of the courtroom drama in between stifled yawns, but eventually lost interest. He seemed to have something else on his mind. He told me about a commencement speech he’d once given at a small university in Europe, where he told the graduates never to get themselves into a position where other people were defining success for them. It was good advice, he thought, and he wondered how his life would have been different if he’d taken it himself.
“My kind of regret—” he began, before hastily correcting himself. “I try not to have regrets, because I’m so lucky.” His eyes drifted toward the window, and for a moment, he looked strangely small at the end of the long conference-room table, almost like a little boy. “I used to paint a lot,” he told me. “I thought about being an architect. I did film animation in school.”
He was struggling to express what he wanted to say. “I had a story—” he tried, but started over. “In my head, there were so many—” He stopped again, and seemed to give up.
Maybe it was hopeless. Maybe nobody wanted to hear a rich heir from a powerful family complain about his father. History had plenty of those.

Coulda been, shoulda been, woulda been, and dear sweet long absent lord, even those Reader's Digest highlights were a long read ...

The pond thought about sending this teaser out on its own, so long it was ...

Dammit, it took considerable powers of concentration for the pond to focus on the lizard Oz this day ... but dammit, maybe one reptile now, and one later in the day ...

First the usual survey of what titillated the alleged "news" division ... which is to say what propaganda could they dish up ...




Aw, down at the very bottom, simpleton Simon was sounding sad ... what the country needs is rampant inflation and high interest rates ...

Over on the extreme far right, the usual suspects battled to be top of the world, ma ...




Phew that's a relief. 

The pond can get away with indulging Jimbo and the Swasticar. 

Just Simpleton Simon on top, and down at the very bottom, weird rustic bush boy Johnny. He can easily be made to wait in the corner, become a late arvo treat ...

All that's needed is a standard serve of Dame Groan and the pond is home free ...

Even better, there's no loud keening or wailing or groaning this day from the Dame this day. 

Why not even a mouse stirred, and certainly the mouse was adverse to roaring ...

The real reason why Australia should keep shtum on US tariffs, We may want to stay quiet before the US movers and shakers realise that China is Australia’s largest trading partner by a country mile.

Sssh, be very, very quiet. Stand well clear, US President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office as he announces reciprocal tariffs. Picture: AFP




Dame Groan was on mute this day, cranked down to one from her usual eleven. Not even renewables or nuking the country surfaced to disturb the calm ...

It’s hard to keep up. Most newly elected heads of government take a while to get going, but US President Donald Trump really has hit the ground running.
Each day there are several new executive orders as well as important foreign policy announcements.
Mind you, we shouldn’t really be surprised about most of these policy initiatives since he made his intentions completely clear before being elected. On tariffs, for instance, he declared his love for the word and signalled his plan to impose tariffs on goods imported into the US.
Not only is he keen on the revenue that tariffs would generate – he has even established a new office, the External Revenue Service (that’s a little play on the Internal Revenue Service, the equivalent of our Australian Taxation Office) – he also wants to level the international trade playing field as he sees it.
In the normal modern course of events, the revenue from the imposition of tariffs is generally reasonably small, dwarfed by revenue from income tax, for instance.
But Trump’s determination to continue the tax cuts that he enacted in his first term comes at a high price. Lest the fiscal position of the US deteriorate even further (and place upward pressure on interest rates), there is no alternative but to seek out other major sources of revenue.

Dear sweet long absent lord, it was so serious the reptiles even wheeled in another simplistic Simon as an AV distraction:



Former federal trade minister and ANZ Head of APAC Engagement Simon Birmingham discusses whether Australia could be exempt from the Trump administration’s global steel and aluminium tariffs. “I think they [the Australian government] have some strong arguments that they can and do appear to be making, such as in terms of the AUKUS card and the extent to which Australia is in a strong position,” Mr Birmingham told Sky News Business Editor Ross Greenwood. “It should be underestimated the degree of difficulty for any Australian government in terms of the Trump administration this time around, where you have some serious purists who have clearly lined their arguments up in advance to try and apply those tariffs as broadly as possible.”

Hush now ... the mango Mussolini has a point, and Dame Groan is tempted to praise him, perhaps fearing his wrath ...

This point needs to be borne in mind when considering the endpoint of the claims by various countries for exemptions or other concessions in relation to the new suite of tariffs.
Trump regards international trade as a win-lose situation and a trade deficit with a country as indicating that the exporting country is taking advantage of the US in some way. He clearly skipped the classes when the theory of comparative advantage was being explained; it’s not clear that he has any intention of ever retaking them.
One way around this may be to start with exchanges between sellers and buyers located within a country. There is no doubting that mutual benefit is generally the result as sellers vie for customers by offering value for money goods and services. International trade is essentially an extension of that proposition.
But Trump has a point that the distortions to international trade are considerable.
Those who argue for a “rules-based” international trading system with the World Trade Organisation as final arbiter often sound naive. In any case, multilateral trading rules have been in retreat for some time as many countries enter into bilateral trade deals, including Australia.
Having said that, it’s not always clear these bilateral trade agreements – often euphemistically called free trade agreements – are worth the paper they are written on.
Australia has a free-trade agreement with China but that didn’t prevent China from imposing massive tariffs on wine as well as lower ones on barley and lobsters. China’s reasons for doing so had nothing to do with trade but a breakdown in the cordiality of bilateral relationship between the two countries.
The imposition of these tariffs directly violated the agreement but nothing happened.
Eventually the Chinese government relented, which illustrates that the citizens of the tariff-imposing country often are harmed by the action more than the exporting country, although Australia’s wine industry was badly damaged.

Ah the perfidious Chinese and then a snap with a mysterious caption, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese may be better to maintain a low-key relationship with Trump. Picture: Martin Ollman




May be better? Than whom or what? The pond pressed on, hoping for a clue, a decoding, by Dame Groan ...

Getting back to what is happening in the US, the blanket 25 per cent tariffs to be imposed on Canada and Mexico – there was a lower rate for oil and gas – have now been stayed for a period. Trump demanded that these countries do more to stem the flow of illegal migrants and fentanyl to the US, again issues that are unrelated to trade. In other words, tariffs are being used as a political-geostrategic weapon as well as an economic measure.
Trump’s announcement of a 25 per cent tariff on aluminium and steel last week was greeted with considerable dismay here, in part because Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister had been able to negotiate an exemption in 2018 from a similar Trump initiative. It’s not clear at this stage whether an exemption will be forthcoming this time, in part because there seems to be some dispute as to whether Australia complied with an informal agreement to cap aluminium sales to the US made in 2018.
The details matter less than the seeming determination of Peter Navarro, a key adviser to Trump on this matter, to press on with the tariffs on aluminium and steel without exemptions.
But the fact is we are talking small beer when it comes to Australian exports of aluminium and steel to the US – about $1bn in total. We are one of the smaller exporters of these products to the US, with China and Canada the main ones.
An important political conundrum has now emerged. Should the Australian government seek to use some of its political capital with the US – there is clearly a fixed reserve of it – and negotiate an exemption or concession for these two products? Should we talk up the importance of our alliance with the US in general and AUKUS in particular? Would it be wiser to keep our powder dry to negotiate on the bigger matter of the imposition of reciprocal tariffs, something that has now been proposed by Trump as well?
After all, if there are no exemptions from the aluminium and steel tariffs, all our competitors in the export game are in the same position. The low value of our dollar is also helping at this stage.

Talk about a mouse putting the best spin on things, even the sight of an ogre didn't startle the mouse, Defence Minister Richard Marles, Britain's Defence Secretary John Healey and former US defence secretary Lloyd Austin talk AUKUS. Picture: AFP




Meanwhile, on another planet ...




What could possibly go wrong?

Sorry, the pond wanted a little aerial excitement. This Groaning is exceptionally tepid, such a dull mouse ... doing her best to bite her tariff tongue, showing no artistic flair ...




See how she labours in the garden of tranquility in her final gobbet ... 

Oh there might be problematic perturbations, but the Groan will abide ... King Donald I can piss on her tariff rug, but she just wants Walter - or is it Donny? - to just shut the fuck up ...

The reciprocal tariff idea is much more far-reaching and potentially problematic. What is being put forward is that the US will impose tariffs on other countries in proportion to the barriers, both tariff and non-tariff, that affect the sale of US goods and services in that country. Included in the calculation will be value-added taxes (GST) that exempt exports.
Compared with the aluminium-steel announcement, this is massive. Apart from the almost impossible task of calculating the non-tariff assistance given to local industry, it defies logic to include a GST in the calculation.
Exports are exempt for good reason. The GST is a tax on local consumption. Exports are free of the GST because the importing country can then levy taxes on these imports as they see fit. It is completely compliant with WTO rules, although that probably doesn’t impress Trump.
The point here is that Australia is probably at the end of the pack when it comes to the imposition by the US of reciprocal tariffs, in part because the US runs a trade surplus with us, one of the few countries where this is the case. If it were to come to pass, it may turn out that our low GST rate is a plus. Don’t forget that in many parts of the world the rate of GST is as high as 20 per cent.
We also may want to stay relatively quiet before the US movers and shakers realise that China is Australia’s largest trading partner by a country mile. By selling all that iron ore and coal to China, we have facilitated China selling cheap goods into the US.
There are occasions when the less said the better. This may be one of them, even though the political timing is not great.

Sheesh, it's all Australia's fault. 

What a relief ... just don't tell the bromancer, we'll never hear the end of it ... next thing he'll be calling for a ban on selling all that iron ore and coal to China, thereby ruining the United States and the chance of a war with China by Xmas ...

Meanwhile, hushed like a clever mouse, the pond sees the immortal Rowe has observed a different kindnof terror stalking the greens ... and quivering mice shaking in the bunker ...





Monday, February 17, 2025

In which the bromancer offers a gigantic billy goat, and the Caterist acts like a gigantic fascist billy goat...

 



The pond wanted to begin with this effort by Portuguese cartoonist Zez Vaz as a form of therapy. 

Every time the pond sees a Swasticar on the road these days the temptation is to give it a Sieg Heil ... and somebody somewhere would get agitated by this acknowledgement of current realities...

The pond would also like to give a Sieg Heil to Google, owner of Blogger, and so of this site - how naïve the pond was back in the early days when "free" worked on bums and bloggers alike. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

What a ripper read was the Graudian story Revealed: Google facilitated Russia and China’s censorship requests, An investigation has exposed the tech firm’s cooperation with autocratic regimes to remove unfavourable content.

Shameful, contemptible, but what can the pond do, except turn to its usual herpetology studies ...





The reptiles were in full campaigning mode, and over on the extreme far right the usual suspects were out and about ...




The pond has only the time and patience for two reptiles this day, so the pond decided to ignore the ever-so-predictable squawkings of the tiresomely repetitive Major Mitchell...

After the tedious blather about renewables came this overly familiar punchline ...

The International Energy Agency on January 15, referring to its latest paper on nuclear energy titled ‘‘The Path to a New Era for Nuclear Energy’’, said: “It’s clear today that the strong comeback for nuclear energy that the IEA predicted several years ago is well under way, with nuclear set to generate a record level of electricity in 2025.”
The IEA says “more than 70 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity is under construction globally”, and more than 40 countries plan to expand nuclear power.
The IEA paper flagged the potential of small modular nuclear reactors, which Bowen has bagged, and says “as the world’s second largest source of low emissions electricity after hydro power, nuclear today produces just under 10 per cent of global electricity supply”.
Note here that nuclear and hydro each produce more power than either wind or solar separately.
People interested in a non-ideological approach to power can find material on a new website, C2NAustralia.com.au (Coal to Nuclear). Run by structural and nuclear engineer Bruce Wymond, it supports renewables, argues opposition to nuclear is ideological and looks for bipartisan approaches to the move away from coal.

What was funny about that? 

Not the worship of SMRs - such a fatuous bit of predictable Major foppery.

Nah the laughs came when the pond saw that the reptiles refused to provide a hot link to the website recommended by the Major.

They couldn't even stump up an active link! 

The reptiles are so obsessed with keeping their punters inside the hive mind that they refuse any activity connected to the outside world, a bit like Mennonites dealing with a measles outbreak ...

That said, nothing much has changed in the SMR world since Graham Readfearn wrote about them back in 2022... (yep, that's an actual active link, feel free to leave herpetology studies and browse)

See how easy it is, reptiles, to link to the real world?

With the Major out of the way, the pond could turn to the study of a pond favourite, the bromancer, out and about with Australia, not Europe, is the big freeloader of US power, The real lesson for Australia to understand is that every tough bit of scolding Trump has applied to feckless Europeans, in terms of defence capability, applies to us only a hundred times more strongly.

This bout of public self-flagellation was worthy of Percy Grainger with a whip or an Opus Dei type with a cilice, dressing it up as "corporal mortification" ...

Naturally it began with a snap of the supplier of the cilice, with the bromancer fearing what Daddy might do ... US President Donald Trump has been talking tough to Europe, but is yet to turn his attention to Australia. Picture: Getty Images via AFP




There'll be no mention of other feats of the mango-coloured Napoleonic monster...




Typically that came from the movies rather than history, as noted in Trump suggests he’s above the law with ominous Napoleon quote, Trump’s allies and Elon Musk are attacking checks and balances with threats to the courts.

The president — whose efforts to gut federal funding, fire thousands of aid workers and unilaterally redefine the 14th Amendment were blocked in federal courts across the country in recent days — invoked a quote often attributed to Napoleon, who justified his despotic regime as the will of the people of France.
The quote from a president with his own imperial ambitions appeared to come from the 1970 film Waterloo, in which Steiger’s Napoleon states that he “did not ‘usurp’ the crown.”
“I found it in the gutter, and I picked it up with my sword, and it was the people … who put it on my head,” he says. “He who saves a nation violates no law.”

And so on, but back to the bromancer lashing himself and the country ...

Australians are in serious danger of drawing all the wrong conclusions from the Trump administration’s harsh lessons and tough, plain-speaking to its European NATO allies.
The lesson is not to acknowledge the unsatisfactory nature of some of Donald Trump’s words and actions. Nor to have a national nervous breakdown about what threatens to be quite marginal US tariffs on us (given the tremendous economic self-harm of our own policies).
The real lesson is to understand that every tough bit of scolding Trump has applied to feckless Europeans, in terms of defence capability, applies to us only a hundred times more strongly.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told NATO that Europe’s security would no longer be America’s No.1 priority. European nations had been freeloaders on America for too long. As sure as night follows day, a US administration will eventually say the same thing to Australia, but with more justification, and much more devastating consequences.

At this point, the reptiles put up a snap of an allegedly hard drinking, sexually fraught former weekend Fox host as a model to follow, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has told NATO that Europe’s security was no longer America’s No.1 priority. Picture: AFP




As usual, the bromancer offered up a massive billy goat butt for starters ...

The challenge is not to tut-tut about Trump. We can do that as much as we like. The Australian national challenge is to recognise the changed strategic reality and work out what we do, on our own responsibility, to preserve our own national security.
Don’t get me wrong. Some of what Trump has done is appalling and tragic. Negotiating about Ukraine without Ukraine there is horrible, and repeats the worst mistakes of the past. Giving major concessions to the Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, such as that Ukraine can never join NATO, is bad in principle and as a negotiating tactic. A widening fissure between the US and European NATO nations weakens the West. Ukraine deserves support.
I wish Donald Trump were Ronald Reagan. But there it is.

Actually bro, the challenge you always fudge is the need to tut-tut about the Cantaloupe Clown ...and the pond routinely gets you wrong, because you're a wretched quisling, lickspittle, fellow travelling sell out.

In reality, the bromancer can sense his dream of a war with China vanishing by Xmas, and with it his chance of being appointed Reichsmarschall des Australisch Reiches by the mutton Dutton.

Now on with the truly creepy crawly abasement to the new Napoleon and his minions...

But let’s also be absolutely clear that every criticism Trump, Hegseth and Vice-President JD Vance make about Europe is true, devastatingly true. Collectively, Europe creates sterling narratives but does nothing. It talks like Winston Churchill, governs like Bernie Sanders. It writes cheques without funds, knowing Washington will have to cash them. US presidents have been making such complains for decades. Some say Trump is entitled to make such complaints, but he’s gone too far. That analysis is hopeless. It completely absolves Europe of adult responsibility. Russia has a smaller economy than Italy. Yet Italy, Germany, France, Britain, Spain and all the other NATO Europeans, whose combined economy is bigger than the US, can’t deal militarily with Russia.

The next snap was so appalling, the pond did its best to minimise the toxic shock, US Vice President JD Vance tells the Munich Security Conference that Europe’s greatest dangers come from within. Picture: Getty




Creepy crawl to him bro ...

Many Europeans at the Munich Security Conference spoke eloquently about the need to support Ukraine indefinitely, about Ukraine joining NATO, etc. All sentiments I’d agree with, but what are the facts? If you add the five biggest European donors to Ukraine together, the US has given Ukraine 50 per cent more military aid than that cumulative total.
Both Russia and Ukraine are in Europe. Trump, rudely but not without reason, asks: Why should American blood and treasure defend Europe, when Europe will not defend itself?
Similarly, Vance’s tart but honest assessment that Europe’s greatest dangers come from within – uncontrolled immigration, the loss of belief by European societies in their own purpose, the intensely undemocratic and anti-security way in which the EU, and other international bodies, ruinously constrict national governments. Vance spoke in a venerable American tradition of providing leadership on core political values to wayward Europeans.

FFS, consorting with the neo-Nazis of the AfD is leadership on core political values? You need to get outside the barking mad fundamentalist monastery more often bro ...




No need to go there, or the pond would be here all day, remembering 1938 and the fate of Czechoslovakia ...

Joe Biden spoke the language of open-ended security commitments, but no one really believed Biden could take decisive action about anything. Trump’s words and some of his actions starkly reveal underlying truths.
So what about Australia?
Britain, where I’ve spent the past couple of weeks, is having a distressed debate about the state of its much-diminished armed forces.
Yet Britain, apart from Poland, is the best of the considerable Europeans. It spends 2.3 per cent of its GDP on defence, which is much, much bigger than Australia’s effort. It’s surrounded by allies, it has an independent nuclear deterrent, yet everyone involved in security in Britain recognises its defence effort is woefully, woefully inadequate.
The quite ideological, and quite left, Labour government of Keir Starmer has pledged to raise defence to 2.5 per cent of GDP.

Tragic. The bromancer seems to think it's all about some minor lift in defence spending, as if Brexit dilapidated Britain was still some sort of effective military power, Britain, under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has pledged to raise defence to 2.5 per cent of GDP.




Over the weekend, the pond's logarithms served up The Navy With More Admirals Than Warships ...

Then came the bromancer's real fear ... his war with China by Xmas as a fast-disappearing dream ...

How does Australia compare? We face, in China, an infinitely more capable strategic competitor than Russia. We face the worst strategic circumstances since World War II. Apart from New Zealand, which has no defence capability to speak of, we have no nearby allies.
In the last completed budget year, our defence spending did not even reach 2 per cent of GDP. Our defence capability has gone badly backwards under Labor.
Like Europe we’ve had decades of warnings, but our feeble, tiny defence force is less capable today than it was three years ago. We have just three capable war ships and they are by no means tier-one combatants. The Albanese government has made one big decision about our most capable service, the air force, which is to cancel the fourth squadron of F-35 jets.
We should have vastly more of everything in defence.
We could, by following an asymmetric military strategy, make ourselves a very tough nut indeed. We do none of that because, like the Europeans, we won’t make a tough resourcing decision. All the security cheques we write are meant to be cashed by our great and powerful friend, Uncle Sam.
We consume vastly more American security than Washington consumes Australian security. We’re not in the US alliance to please Washington. The US alliance is the alpha and omega, the absolute totality, of our security policy. We’ve chosen to be impotent.

So the bromancer is going to do it alone, boost defence spending, save Taiwan and defeat the Xi dragon.

In your phantom dreams, bro ...

Actually it was the liar from the shire's delusional mob that set that pathetic submarine course in action, and there's no need to deflect that with a snap featuring Defence Minister Richard Marles, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for Defence Industry and Capability Delivery Pat Conroy have left our tiny defence force less capable today than it was three years ago. Picture: NewsWire/Philip Gostelow




The bro did his best to hang in with the neo-Napoleon ...

Our reaction to potential American tariffs is grossly overblown. We could learn something from the Brits’ phlegmatic reaction. The US has often enough applied rough tariffs to security partners, such as Japan in the 1980s. Tokyo didn’t destroy the alliance over these trade actions because the alliance is overwhelmingly in Japan’s interests.

Oh there's been some grand FAFO'ing of late, as in the NY Times Trump’s Funding Freezes Bruise a Core Constituency: Farmers, A rapid-fire array of directives by the Trump administration have left farmers and businesses in rural America reeling. (archive)

And how about How Trump’s Medical Research Cuts Would Hit Colleges and Hospitals in Every State, Changes to a key funding formula will reduce research grants at hospitals and universities by billions — and may discourage future research.

And that's only scratching the surface, but the bromancer pressed on regardless ...

Much that we tell ourselves about security is a lie. We claim to have been with the Americans in every military engagement since World War I. It’s not literally true and it’s not remotely true in spirit. We normally make tiny, niche contributions, with very little military risk, and do so early to maximise political advantage. Our strategic purpose is never to have meaningful military effect but only to ingratiate ourselves with Washington. Our only military contribution today is to invite the Americans to use northern Australia.
The one piece of admirable rat cunning the Albanese government has displayed, and it’s entirely consistent with our strategic history, is to donate several billion dollars to the Americans and the Brits for nuclear submarine building.
As this column has argued before, these subs may never arrive. Even if they do, it will be far too late to affect today’s dangers. But it’s as near as can be to effectively a national bribe, to ask the Americans and, less crucially, the Brits, not to call out our obvious defence delinquency.
More than 100,000 Americans died defeating Japan in World War II. They secured Australian freedom. No other nation has done anything like that for us. One day a president will ask: Why should American blood and treasure defend Australia, when Australia will not defend itself?
We have no answer to that question.

There's a pretty obvious answer to that question. 

If the bromancer's going to rely on Captain Bonespurs to save him, say hello to Neville Chamberlain.

Meanwhile, bro, take a look at what's happening in the world outside the hive mind ...




There's a whiff of Gillary in that dish ...





It requires a special kind of ostrich, of the bromancer kind, to hide head in sand and avoid seeing that head, neigh that globe, on the chopping block ...

And so to the contemptible Caterist.

The Caterist is always contemptible, but he was truly, grossly contemptible in today's outing, JD Vance’s home truths too hot to handle for Euro-elite, For the Euro-elite, the new US administration is the sum of all fears. The 47th President is not merely some kind of second Trump, but the actual Donald Trump with an agenda.

The reptiles began with a terrifying snap, US Vice President JD Vance speaks during the 61st Munich Security Conference. Picture: AFP




The Caterist - is he a neo-Nazi at heart? - was on board from the get go...

In early 2022, on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kamala Harris assured delegates at the Munich Security Conference that the US alliance with Europe was rock-solid.
“That’s great,” conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger remarked. “But is it for good? Many in Europe are fearful of a time where maybe some kind of a second Trump could be looming in the future.”
For the Euro-elite, the new US administration is the sum of all fears. The 47th President is not merely some kind of second Trump but the actual Donald Trump with an agenda.
On Friday, Trump’s Vice-President, JD Vance, was greeted with nervous applause as he took the podium at the Munich conference. Harris’s 2022 speech focused on an external enemy. Vance, on the other hand, was there to talk about the enemy within, the woke forces undermining the common principles of freedom and democracy that underpin the post-war trans-Atlantic alliance.

The reptiles helped out with an AV distraction, blathering about Orwellian thought control ...

Sky News host James Morrow claims US Vice President JD Vance delivered a “banger” of a speech in Munich where he criticised the “values” of European governments. “Vance is right; free speech is in retreat across Europe, and every week on this program, we bring you new examples of the Orwellian thought control apparatus being brought to bear on a population beset by terrorism and knife crime but where the real problem for the authorities is thought crime.” “The whole speech was an absolute tour de force, a banger. “What Vance was saying to the Europeans is this – you are making yourselves unrecognisable, culturally, politically, socially, and running against all the values of liberty and enlightenment that once made you European.”

Oh shrink it down, shrink it down as much as possible ...




What to say about this? Perhaps a cartoon ...




The pond needed that ... no one wins reading the Caterist, because the Caterist keeps on getting deeper into bashing the 'leets, apparently on the basis that oligarch billionaires are no longer 'leet ...

“The threat that I worry the most about vis a-vis Europe is not Russia,” Vance said. “It’s not China. It’s not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.”
If Europe was to defend itself against foreign enemies, it must first be clear about what it was protecting. “What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important?” he said.
Vance illustrated Europe’s retreat from liberty by detailing the case of Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old British Army veteran who was found guilty in Bournemouth Magistrates Court of praying within 150 metres of an abortion clinic. The court reasoned that his silent prayer amounted to “disapproval of abortion” because, at one point, his head was seen slightly bowed, and his hands were clasped. Smith-Connor’s moving defence that he was praying for his unborn son, who had been aborted 22 years ago, cut no ice. He was ordered to pay costs of £9000 ($17,800).
Vance illustrated the elite’s apparent contempt for democracy by pointing to mass migration.
“No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants,” he said. “All over Europe, they’re voting for political leaders who promised to put an end to out-of-control migration.”
The elite had gone further by refusing to deal with democratically elected parties they didn’t like. In France, President Emmanuel Macron contrived to deal Jordan Bardella’s Rassemblement National out of any meaningful role in government, despite that party winning the largest share of votes in the legislative election.

Inevitably the diviner of the movement of flood waters in quarries zoned in on climate science, in the form of Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.




Like everything in the lizard Oz these days, so tiresomely predictable ...

The centre-right and centre-left parties in the European parliament used a similar strategy to sideline a bloc of patriotic conservative parties in elections in June.
In Germany, the SPD, in cahoots with the nominally centre-right CDU, will try to use the same tactics to neuter Alternative fur Deutschland after next week’s Bundestag election.
The excuse in every case is that the leper parties are dangerously far right; if not fascist, then fascist adjacent. Vance drew attention to the arrogance at the heart of this argument. “Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters,” he said. “There’s no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle, or you don’t.”
After almost 18 minutes of uncompromising criticism, Vance tried to soften the atmosphere with a joke. “I say this with all humour,” he began. “If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.”
Vance paused in anticipation of laughter. There wasn’t any. Deutsche Welle reported: “The tension in the room was almost palpable.”

That's partly because (a) it isn't funny, (b) Vance is only funny when you think he's fucking a couch, and (c) climate science isn't a punchline ...

But the Caterist was right on board ...

Vance’s speech would have been uncontroversial had it been printed as an article in the National Review.
Yet Europe’s oligarchs are ill-prepared for such insubordination. They attend conferences such as this one to have their egos stroked, not to listen to home truths from a self-confessed hillbilly.

So Uncle Leon isn't an oligarch, instead take a squiz at German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Picture: AFP




The pond has noted before the Caterist's tendency to hang off the teat of populist authoritarian autocrats of the Viktor Orbán of Hungary kind, exemplified by the onion muncher, the Caterist and Rebecca Weisser all being "visiting fellows" at the Danube Institute ...a grand gathering of the pampered 'leets with snouts in authoritarian autocrat's trough ...

That's how you get this kind of line ...

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz accused Vance of unacceptably interfering in the imminent elections on behalf of AfD, a party he said was linked to the Nazis. 

Hang on, hang on, the AfD literally came from neo-Nazism, and still exudes a Nazi air...per the BBC ...

...The latest controversy comes after the Alternative for Germany (AfD)'s Maximilian Krah told journalists that SS members weren’t automatically "criminals".
"It depends. You have to assess blame individually. At the end of the war there were almost a million SS. Günter Grass was also in the Waffen SS," he told La Repubblica and the Financial Times, referring to the German novelist who wrote The Tin Drum.
"Before I declare someone a criminal, I want to know what he did."
The SS, or Schutzstaffel, were a Nazi paramilitary group active in the 1930s and 1940s. Among other crimes against humanity, SS members played a leading role in the Holocaust, the genocide of six million Jews and others during World War Two.
In response to the remarks, France’s far-right National Rally (RN) announced it would no longer sit with the AfD in the European Parliament.
RN leader Marine Le Pen told French radio that "it was urgent to establish a cordon sanitaire" between the parties.
"Cordon sanitaire" is a term used by some political parties to reject cooperation with movements viewed as too extreme. It is often used by French politicians to rule out working with Ms Le Pen's RN.
"It’s time to make a clean break with this movement," she added.

Has the Caterist fewer scruples than Ms Le Pen? 

Of course he has ... (though to be fair, she has rediscovered her roots of late, and would have soon hooked up with Adolf back in 1933) ...

Yep, the Caterist was all in on the triumph of the neo-Nazis ...

Yet Scholz’s attempt to grasp the moral high ground emphasised the draining authority of Europe’s political class, which has struggled to come to terms with the popular fury driving support towards parties such as the AfD in almost every European democracy.
Scholz’s SPD is running a distant third at 16 per cent in the latest polling, seven points behind the AfD. The Chancellor’s approval rating is 20 per cent, according to a recent Newsweek survey comparing the popularity of national leaders. Macron is on 18 per cent. Trump, by contrast, has never been more popular. Newsweek puts him at 52 per cent.
Vance sees the European old guard’s intolerance of dissent as a sign of weakness. “To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words, like misinformation and disinformation,” he said. They “simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way”.
Nick Cater is a senior fellow at the Menzies Research Centre.

How Adolf would have enjoyed their company, and they his ...

And so to end with a few cartoons devoted to domestic matters. 

The pond has been avoiding the reptiles in election campaign mode, and with good reason ...