It's February, and the reptiles are back in full featherless flight ...

 

Once again essential reading in the Weekly Beast from the venerable Meade, featuring the Daily Terror - learn maths and multiplication done in the Terror way- with the gutter tabloid also starring by getting in the way of an investigation with an explosive leak...

It's a relief that others offer up guides to the Murdochian hive mind universe, because exhaustion has already set in at the pond. 

They're all back from the January break, and blathering away at great length in a full press February...

See? "Ned's" been given prime space with an unendurable, eyeball torturing gif. 

Why they wanted to feature the mango Mussolini - an incredibly stupid man, most notably and recently and deeply offensively over an aeronautical disaster - will be revealed in due course.

Over on the extreme far right, the rest of the reptile pack were at it, howling into the ether like rampant ectoplasms ...

Sheesh, the bromancer in a state of wild-eyed paranoid hysteria, the Ughmann back to do his climate denialism schtick, the Angelic one offering bromides, and prattling Polonius, never to be given a starring TV role, wandering in other alleged echo chambers, apparently unaware he's in one all his own.

The pond needs to pace itself, and save a few for a meditative Sunday, but it's inescapable, the waste, the inhumanity - the reptiles timed "Ned" at 11 minutes and the bromancer at 10! 

That's almost a lifetime wasted. Best get on with the wasting ...

On the upside, the bromancer was in a state of abject panic, almost 2.0, and that's always fun, DeepSeek forces the world to face its end game as China takes the lead, In this brave new world, whoever controls AI wins. After this week, as Cold War 2.0 took a nasty turn against the West, it appears China is frighteningly close to doing just that.

Speaking of hideous gifs, the reptiles opened with a power-punching explosive one, of such extraordinary banality that it was a relief to turn it into a still ... 

The world changed this week. The release of the Chinese artificial ­intelligence DeepSeek chatbot wiped nearly a trillion US dollars off American technology stocks. But it did something much worse than that. It demonstrated that in one of the few areas of hi-tech where it was thought the US had a decisive advantage over China, it has not much advantage after all.

No one given a credit, and just as well, anything to avoid the shame ...

It did however send the bro into a wild-eyed frenzy ...

Cold War 2.0, a kind of a virtual Cold War fought out mainly in the shadows and in cyberspace, just took a nasty turn against the West. Russia’s Vladimir Putin claims that whoever controls AI controls the future. Donald Trump said the DeepSeek release was a wake-up call that should cause US com­panies to have a “laser-like focus” on winning.
That ain’t the half of it. In time, AI will affect every part of life. Medical cures and treatments. The management of critical infrastructure. The way you relate to all your devices. The way businesses run, not just their inventories and supply lines, but their routine work. Computers already do a lot of routine work. AI can perform much more complex tasks. AI will end up being part of every business, every organisation.
And, of course, AI will be central to militaries.
So whether Washington or Beijing leads in AI matters profoundly in ways we can hardly yet imagine.
But wait, there’s more. Much, much more.

By golly, the bro knows how to intimidate and threaten. 

Much more bromancer having a panic attack, riddled with anxiety and nervous tics?

Wait, there's more, much, much more, and even more tangerine tyrant, captioned DeepSeek demonstrated that in one of the few areas of hi-tech where it was thought the US had a decisive advantage over China, it has not much advantage after all. Picture: AFP

The bromancer likely isn't going to mention the deeply offensive aeronautical follies, the latest including the dragging of a trans pilot into the fuss, and a furious flip-flop ...

If the pond wants to look at that sort of event, it will revert to blancolirio on YouTube, or some of the other names listed in a Reddit post ...

For the bro, the pond is more in the mood for a Hydeing, Oh, I'm sorry, tech bros - did DeepSeek copy your work? I can hardly imagine your distress ...

I once saw an episode of America’s Dumbest Criminals where a man called the cops to report his car stolen, only for it to turn out he’d stolen it from someone else in the first place. I couldn’t help thinking of him this week while watching OpenAI’s Sam Altman wet his pants about the fact that a Chinese hedge fund might have made unauthorised use of his own chatbot models, including ChatGPT, to train its new little side project. This is the cheaper, more open, extremely share-price-slashing DeepSeek.
As news of DeepSeek played havoc with the tech stock market, OpenAI pressed its hanky to its nose and released a statement: “We are aware of and reviewing indications that DeepSeek may have inappropriately distilled our models, and will share information as we know more,” this ran. “We take aggressive, proactive countermeasures to protect our technology.” Oooooooooh! I want to say “welcome to America’s Dumbest Tech Barons”, except I can’t, because I think we all know that no law enforcement is coming to get Sam for the stuff he’s alleged to have made unauthorised use of first. That was the good type of alleged theft, whatever the claims of all the lawsuits belatedly trying to claw something back for the alleged copyright victims of his firm’s own inappropriate methods.

And so on, but the pond isn't here for fun, the pond is here to suffer with, by and for the bro...

And the bro is in deep distress, with his war on China taking a shocking turn, and even worse, the hapless bro, or should the pond give him his correct title, Reichsmarschall des Australisch Reiche, didn't see it coming ... and so his already feeble brain is exploding ...

The other technology Washington thinks it’s ahead in is quantum computing. AI is in its early stages of real world application. It will grow much more powerful. As yet, the world doesn’t have reliable quantum computing. Such a computer uses quantum mechanics to speed up processing beyond what we can even imagine now. Your smart phone has more computer capability than Apollo 11 had when it landed on the moon. Quantum computing will make your smart phone look like a Neanderthal cave tool.
Combine AI with quantum computing, and the results will explode our brains if not our cities. Militaries now are devoting a lot of attention to how birds and insects fly in swarms, staying in broad ­formation.
With even a feeble imagination you see swarms of relatively cheap but deadly drones, combining AI and quantum computing, overwhelming the defences of any ship, base or building. AI-powered drones that can work out what the defence will do. Quantum computing that reacts fantastically faster than any human being. Think of hypersonic missiles similarly empowered.

What about climate science? Nah, when the bro gets over-excited, the circuits fizzle and the brain fries, and dread visions stalk the hive mind, With even a feeble imagination, you can see AI-powered drones that can work out what the defence will do. Picture: Getty

The bro is haunted this day ...

In the AUKUS Pillar Two agreement, the US, UK and Australia agreed to work on six key technologies: artificial intelligence, quantum computing, electronic warfare, advanced cyber, hypersonic missiles and undersea capabilities.
Beijing, Moscow and others are doing the same.
Many observers (including me) noted that DeepSeek recalled the dramatic first Cold War Sputnik moment of 1957. Communist Russia put a satellite into orbit before the US. It shocked and distressed Americans, but also galvanised them. They won the subsequent space race, the associated technology race – and, eventually, the Cold War.
So here are two early, curly questions:
Will the West, specifically Washington but also its allies including Australia, galvanise an ­effective response?
And what if Beijing gives us a new Sputnik moment in quantum computing?

Cue cornball, but huge image, as if size is all that matters, Communist Russia put a satellite into orbit before the US. The Soviet satellite Sputnik I is pictured on October 09, 1957. Picture: AP

And yet here's Vlad the impaler struggling with inflation, interest rates - Steve Rosenberg is always good for a press review - and the mango Mussolini, and unable to knock off Ukraine

But when you're determined to be gloomy, the bro is your man ...

Silicon Valley thinks it’s ahead in quantum computing and will be the first to launch and commercialise in the next few years.
But we don’t really know where the Chinese are up to in quantum. What if we get a series of Sputnik moments?
Way back in 2015, Beijing announced its Made in China strategy, under which it wanted to replace the US as the dominant force in hi-tech by, oh gosh, 2025.
Justin Bassi, head of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, points me to ASPI’s Critical Technology Tracker. ASPI established this in 2023 and it’s an intensely useful tool (incidentally, isn’t it ­bizarre that the Albanese government apparently wants to muzzle, inhibit and ultimately destroy all this good work by ASPI?). It follows the most often cited research papers in 64 critical technology areas.
Bassi tells me the Chinese have now surpassed the Americans in 57 out of 64 areas. An ASPI paper concludes that the top five international institutions in machine-learning (a form of AI) are in China. Western firms once had a decisive advantages in electric vehicles, solar cells and smart phones, but all of these have been lost to China.

Now a sight to terrify the bro even more, In 2015, Beijing announced its Made in China strategy, under which it wanted to replace the US as the dominant force in hi-tech by 2025. Picture: AFP

There the bro was, deep in his leather chair, a nicely dry sherry to hand, planning his war on China, and the cunning fiends launched a feint which completely caught him by surprise, what with it having been devised only yesterday, or perhaps in 2015 ...

“What DeepSeek shows is that China’s trillions of dollars of investment in research are paying off in commercialisation,” Bassi tells Inquirer. Beijing approaches these technologies strategically and unites every national effort, commercial and government, defence and civilian, towards achieving dominance in them. Bassi thinks the West must similarly take a much more focused approach, with deep government involvement.
Says Bassi: “Too many Western governments have held on to the view that the free market will prevail. But the market has been overtaken. There’s a country which has bought the market, which has stolen the market, which has subverted the market. We keep on having wake-up calls and then we keep going back to sleep.”
Government has been central in Western tech­nological advances. If the world is to have any chance of zero-emission energy it will need to expand nuclear. This energy source came about entirely because of allied efforts to beat Nazi Germany to ­nuclear weapons during World War II.
In 1958, Dwight Eisenhower created the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, partly in response to Sputnik. The US space program had immense technological spin-offs for the US and the world, not least the creation of the internet.
Technological breakthroughs come in all shapes and sizes. But Big Government, properly deployed, is an engine for technological change, especially if it works in partnership with lots of smart scientists and engineers.
Former Labor leader and long-time defence minister Kim Beazley even drolly argued there was one irrefutable argument for socialist economic development – the Pentagon. In recent IT breakthroughs, the Pentagon played a minor role. Silicon Valley were the masters of the universe. With the election of Trump, and with their long disappointments in China, these companies seemed at last to embrace something of their natural national security role.
But DeepSeek, though only one app, has blown up the assumptions of that world.
DeepSeek is disruptive in a host of ways. The Chinese company claimed it trained the DeepSeek chatbot for just $US6m ($9.6m), a fraction of the cost of US models, to which its performance is comparable. Nvidia, which supplies the sophisticated chips that were thought essential for AI, suffered a market capitalisation drop of nearly $US600bn in response to DeepSeek. It was thought everybody needed Nvidia’s chips to get to technology’s cutting edge.

Oh the disruptions, DeepSeek is disruptive in a host of ways. Picture: Getty

If only it would disrupt cornball images from Getty... but it keeps the bromancer in a state of deep AI panic, a kind of hyperdrive that will take him into an EV state of shock ...

The Biden administration had banned the sale of those chips to China. DeepSeek claims it didn’t need those chips at all.
Now, many, many folks in the IT world take both those Chinese claims with a huge grain of salt. That $US6m figure might be as reliable as China’s published defence budget. And it’s not hard to imagine China getting hold of Nvidia chips despite the sanctions.
But whether they did it by pure innovation, or “grey trading” in chips, the end point is the Chinese produced AI of comparable quality to the American product. This now presents countless secondary problems. If the Chinese can sell AI much more cheaply than the Americans, it could come to dominate much of global AI use.
That’s disastrous for three clear reasons. One, the Chinese state will have access to any data its AI companies come across. It will hoover up an enormous amount of data on everybody. This data in aggregate, and sometimes individually, has strategic implications. Using AI in business is not like doing a Google search. It means you’re putting a whole lot of probably confidential information through AI, which can steal all that information.
Second, Chinese AI will always promote Communist Party propaganda. With DeepSeek it’s blatant in many respects. Ask it about the Tiananmen Square massacre or human rights abuses in China and you’ll get pure propaganda.
People might know that and discount for it. But what if you’re innocently asking for facts about Australian or US politics? You might get superficially plausible answers that swing towards Beijing’s purposes.
The Chinese, Russians, Iranians and others already make huge trouble in Western societies through their manipulation of social media. Russian intelligence was highly active in propelling early iterations of Black Lives Matter. If the Albanese government ever musters the courage to announce the site of an east coast nuclear submarine base, Chinese bots will work overtime to run anonymous, or misleadingly sourced, social media campaigns against it.
Third, the more our societies use Chinese-made internet-connected products, the more vulnerable we are not only to surveill­ance and propaganda, but in the event of any hostilities, the take-down of critical infrastructure.
Anthony Albanese’s government seemed as bewildered as anyone by DeepSeek, but Science Minister Ed Husic rightly foreshadowed national security concerns about it. He thought it would raise the same issues as Huawei, which Canberra banned from involvement in our 5G network, and TikTok, which Canberra has banned from any government-owned devices.
But still there is the strongest sense that we are making ad hoc, reactive, uncoordinated, one-off responses whereas Beijing has a clear plan and bends every sinew of national power to that end.
Alastair MacGibbon, of CyberCX and the former head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre, tells Inquirer we’ve moved from an era when things we frequently used were made in China, when China was the world’s factory. Now, many things we use are “controlled in China”. These new appliances are always connected to the net, need routine software upgrades which they get automatically, or remain in communication with the manufacturer. They’re all potentially vulnerable to manipulation by Beijing.
Says MacGibbon: “The issue in banning Huawei (from 5G) in 2018 was not concerned mainly with surveillance, but what if China one day just blocked our 5G through some software upgrade. The era of things controlled by China may have passed a tipping point in terms of the safety and survivability of our society. What if all the driverless vehicles just cease functioning? All these electric cars – they are a danger for us.
“Everyone just talks about price. The government doesn’t have the wherewithal to discuss it (the security issues) and just leaves it alone.”

Time for a threatening snap to assault the bro and the hive mind senses? You betcha ... All these electric cars made in China are a danger for us. Picture: AFP

And if EVs weren't enough, time for a TikTok tirade ...

MacGibbon, like many others including Bassi, believes we need to rethink fundamentally some of our ideas about technology: “The free and open internet is a fiction. China has shown it can cut its own people off from that but then spew its toxicity into it for everyone else. We fight with both hands tied behind our backs.”
MacGibbon, who knows these issues as well as any Australian, has reached a profound and sobering conclusion: “We have to have two internets – theirs and ours. That is a heretical concept.”
It certainly is. It contradicts every happy assumption and glad, optimistic cliche ever uttered about the internet. In the current US discussion about TikTok, MacGibbon points out that ownership really is a furphy, so is the idea that American information from TikTok is stored in America and thus safe from Chinese intelligence authorities, or that Australian information might be safely stored in Singapore. “The question is – who gets access to the information? The engineering, and the algorithm, will still be in China.”
MacGibbon believes we should clearly and publicly distinguish between different countries in our regulations. Suppliers of concern should be restricted – and, in some areas of technology, banned outright. The problem is that governments are typically scared of ­offending China.

As soon as something's mentioned, the desolate remnants of the lizard Oz graphics department know what to do, In the current US discussion about TikTok, the idea that American information from TikTok is stored in America and thus safe from Chinese intelligence authorities is a furphy, says former head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre, Alastair MacGibbon. Picture: AFP

Hmm, is the bro going to wonder whether an extremely stupid man poses an even greater threat than Xi? Not bloody likely, it's up to the Cantaloupe-in-Chief to save us ...

Everything depends on the US. If Washington bans a Chinese technology, its allies feel they can do the same. As every new Chinese device or commodity with any kind of security connection comes along, the US and its allies go through extended political misery before banning them, at least from government. Australia banned Chinese-made drones from the Defence Department, ripped out Chinese made surveillance cameras from Australian government properties, banned Huawei from 5G, banned TikTok from government devices. But the security vulnerability which private citizens face from such devices is huge.
This isn’t just from the Chinese state. Cheap technology is easily hacked by anyone. There is a roaring business on the dark web of vision from hacked children’s bedroom cameras. On the dark web you can be specific in requests, asking, say, for continuous vision from the bedroom camera of a two-year-old girl of Asian background.
But the threat from the Chinese government is, of course, much greater. Former FBI director Chris Wray testified to congress that the Chinese had placed “malware” in critical US infrastructure such as water utilities, oil and gas pipelines, power grids and much else. This was designed to knock out such infrastructure in any conflict.

Effective action? You mean sign a flurry of orders which are either impractical or will immediately get held up in the legal system? Yep, that's the right stuff ...Effective action will need to be large scale, co-ordinated and Washington-led. Picture: AFP

You know ...

And for the icing on the cake, cue Jimbo for a word ... not to mention disgraced mugwump Mike ...

Senator James Paterson, the opposition’s home affairs spokesman, agrees with MacGibbon on the need for fundamental change, saying: “We are connecting far too many things to the internet with no serious security.”
The sheer range of Chinese cyber attacks, malware insertion, systematic hacking attacks, data hoovering, information manipulation, phony social media accounts used for activist purposes, means that effective action will need to be large scale, co-ordinated and Washington-led.
Says Paterson: “The landing point we’ll probably end up with will be a bifurcated tech world, one US-led and one China-led. That’s where we’ll end up but it will take leadership and time to get there.”
Mike Pezzullo, the former secretary of the Home Affairs Department and before that a senior Defence official, sees the enormous military consequences of the new technologies: “Quantum computing combined with advanced AI will rule the world.” He nominates weapons such as underwater unmanned vehicles, empowered by AI and quantum computing, and hypersonic missiles similarly enabled. Potentially most dangerous of all: biotech. AI and quantum computing could lead to cures for many diseases, but as Pezzullo speculates, they could “also develop deadly viruses preloaded with an antidote so it only affects certain peoples”.
This is a Brave New World. It’s vital for us, and for human civilisation, that the US and its allies dominate these technologies, or at least stay equal with any other player. The Americans are making some effort. But this was a bad week. There’s not much sign any US allies, assuredly including us, have much of a clue. You can rest assured, in Beijing they work on it day and night.

Not so much a bad week, as a bad Saturday, because the bromancer shows signs of being on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Is there someone left in the public service able to help him?

It was a relief to turn to the Angelic one, and discover it was just a three minute read, and she was exuding hope ...Our values give us cause for optimism amid the terror, fear, Despite all the violence and hatred, I am still optimistic about Australia.

The reptiles gave her only a few snaps, including Students arrive at Mount Sinai College in Maroubra, Sydney, for some their first day at school, to find anti-Semitic graffiti sprayed on walls. Picture: Julian Andrews

No one and nothing could dent the Angelic one's optimism ...

Some weeks ago, I wrote a column about Australia and why I am optimistic about our country. The reaction was, to say the least, negative.
The comments were all very pessimistic, especially our social cohesion.
Yet I am still optimistic about Australia. As the rabbi of Newtown’s synagogue, Eli Feldman, has said, the majority of Australians believe in a fair go for all.
Australia is “not falling to bits … A few rotten apples are puncturing the country’s peaceful multicultural society”.
The recent discovery of a caravan packed with explosives intended for a Sydney synagogue, the latest in a series of outrages, has cast a new pall of pessimism over the nation. Perhaps we should ask how can we still be the exemplar of freedom and harmonious multiculturalism after what seems to be, let’s face it, terrorism? Where does this violence come from?
I do not think this is sheer anti-Semitism.
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw has revealed the offenders could be local criminals being paid by overseas actors in crypto­currency.
This is about fracturing the Australian community through fear and intimidation. It is a classic terrorist technique.
These actions have not grown from some weird wellspring of anti-Semitism in the general community.
Protesting is one thing, burning a synagogue or a childcare centre, defacing someone’s home, is quite another. This type of crime requires organisation, and lines of communication. This is, as Anthony Albanese has said, “aimed at dividing the community”.
Dividing who? The Muslim community from everyone else, the Middle Eastern Australian community from each other, and further dividing naive people who want to keep on marching down George St, despite the ceasefire, from people who think it is a waste of time. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Australians of any ethnicity and religion just want all the violence and the protests to stop. If there is one thing Australians of all backgrounds really cannot bear, it is people bringing their grievances on to the streets whether about Israel and the prosecution of the war or anything else. People have a right to protest, but to hear people say they will continue to march despite a ceasefire makes one wonder who these fanatical people are.

Yes, peeple, stay out of the Angelic one's sight, and never mind the way that the Murdochians have been stoking a frenzy of fear ... with an AV insert just to prove it ...Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “never wanted to hold a national cabinet meeting in the first place”, claims Liberal MP Julian Leeser. “It took a synagogue firebombing to get him to establish the AFP Operation Avalite,” Mr Leeser told Sky News host Caleb Bond. “It took the firebombing of a childcare centre to get him to establish a national cabinet meeting despite the fact his own anti-Semitism envoy called for this.”

Ah Caleb, another monstrous Murdochian growth the pond never bothers to note, down there with Sharri, full disrespect ...

Meanwhile, the Angelic one kept trying to swim against the Murdochian tide ...time then for some mindless speculation...

Yes, there is blatant hatred of Jews, by some people, but there are also obviously professional agitators who might have links with overseas terrorist organisations.
We know agitators were in the universities when this began. Some have been involved in marches, and who knows what else?

And then the Angelic one does a deep Henry-style dive...

Who remembers what happened before October 7, 2023 and the war in the Middle East?

What, you mean the Nakba? Nah, silly billy, never that ...

Who remembers the stabbing of Bishop Mari Emmanuel, a Christian Assyrian bishop? Where did the young man who was charged get the motivation and the information?
We know organisations in Australia have links with overseas groups that are fanatically against Israel.
The Palestinians are desperate and isolated, and after Gaza was destroyed they have understandably gained great sympathy and credibility in the West.
No one wants to see children dying and families homeless.
Ironically, however, it is Israel that in world opinion is now even more isolated. In fact, if we go back to the original October 7 incident that sparked this war, we know the immediate reason for the Hamas attack was to break down the Abraham Accords – and Hamas will continue to do all it can to stop that historic diplomacy.
However, these latest attacks against Jews, aimed at Jewish facilities and even ordinary people’s homes, are not designed to further the Palestinian cause in Australia.
Terrorist groups are not really aiming at that.

The pond never visits the Angelic one in search of clarity. 

Try to make sense of these competing thoughts ...

Ironically, fewer Australians will be interested in the Palestinian cause the worse this gets, but it might have the desired effect of causing division and fear.
More of this terrorist activity will further isolate Israel, and those who support Israel, but, overall, for the Australian population in general, it is already adding to ongoing concerns over crime and security.

Time to wrap it up, with the Angelic one standing valiant and proud ...

A Freshwater poll in January showed law and order had jumped into voters’ top priorities, overtaking the environment and climate change in importance but still below the cost of living.
Whether the people who organised this latest outrage are “a few rotten apples” or a much more dangerous grouping is unknown at this stage.
However, despite everything that is happening, we should not feel too pessimistic, and we should stubbornly stick to our values: respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual; freedom of religion (including the freedom not to follow a particular religion), freedom of speech and of association; commitment to the rule of law; democracy whereby our laws are determined by parliaments elected by the people; equality of opportunity for all people, regardless of race, or national or ethnic origin; a “fair go” that embraces mutual respect; tolerance; compassion for those in need; equality of opportunity, and; the English language as the national language and as an important unifying element of Australian society.
Excuse my optimism, but I tend to think Australia still embraces those values. As a result, we live in a magnificent, fortunate multicultural country that will be so for a long time to come.

Oh yes, the English language. None of that wog talk please... that's the Telemundo spirit, recycled in the Beast in U.S. Citizens Reportedly Detained After Being Overheard Speaking Spanish ...

Serves 'em right, speak English or you can bugger off back to England ...tell 'em Angelic one ...

Indeed, indeed, inspiration everywhere ....

And that brings the pond to "Ned" and as noted, the reptiles promise an 11 minute read. 

The pond will understand if students wish to avoid this "Ned" Everest, a particularly tedious climb. 

Perhaps it's best to end with the starry-eyed Angelic one, anything rather than endure Donald Trump’s agenda won’t work for Anthony Albanese or Peter Dutton, His muscular, nationalistic mission to ‘make America great again’ will excite and horrify many Australians and throw an unpredictable factor into our electoral equation.

The unimaginable horror of new lizard Oz graphics returned with "Ned" - the most feeble of gifs assaulted the pond's eyeballs. 

Luckily the pond could summarise the end point of the gif that accompanied this text: Donald Trump has declared a new age of transformation and restoration. While Trump’s revolution will not sweep Australia, its impact will shape the mood and tenor of the coming Albanese-­Dutton election contest.

A revolution? A lying fraud and con artist and snake oil salesman is a revolution? Haven't we been to that well many times before?

As if to prove the point - thought crimes in action - "Ned" turned to the onion muncher as some kind of sage, full of insights worth quoting at length.

Never mind, best leave base camp and start the climb...

And suddenly the flabby fast food fiend who cheats at golf and applies mango girlie make-up and coifs his hair is weirdly "muscular" ...

Only in "Ned's" world ...

Trump’s muscular, nationalistic, executive power mission to “make America great again” will both excite and horrify many Australians and throw an unpredictable factor into our electoral equation.
Might Trump provoke a crisis with Australia as he has with Canada? Probably not, but he seems to care little for longstanding friendships if irritated by governments he dislikes.
Who could have predicted his showdowns over Greenland and Panama?
Anthony Albanese will hope Australian-American relations stay low-key until after the election. Labor, obviously, will do nothing to provoke Trump while seeking to build common ground over national security, AUKUS and shared strategic interests.
Virtually every day, however, Trump enunciates policies and principles that are anathema to Albanese and the Labor Party.
It will require an extraordinary feat of Australian diplomacy to prevent these differences, sooner or later, impinging on the relationship with damaging import. The opening days, however, have been encouraging for Albanese, Penny Wong and Richard Marles.
Trump has begun with devastating fireworks. His persona as a showman, conviction politician and powerful president is likely to enhance his domestic standing and send other heads of government into calculating retreat.
His executive orders will create conflict within the US system, notably with the judiciary. Indeed, they are designed to precipitate such conflict in the cause of asserting executive power and transforming US polity.
Trump doesn’t run away from conflict – he thrives on it. In the end, he will stand or fall on his ability to deliver results, but final judgments might be years away.

Might be years away? But we already saw the results of his first term, and now in his second he's still blaming that African Muslim Obama for everything wrong in the country, such as a plane crash, even though he had four years to fix things.

Never mind, the reptiles and "Ned" were on a mission to reassure, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is not an Australian version of Trump. Picture Lachie Millard

Oh yeah? Sez who?

Sorry, the pond has a limited amount of 'toons and "Ned's" verbose ways far outstrip them ... as he turns to the onion muncher and others for what passes as insight, if only in the lizard Oz hive mind ...

Assessing the influence of Trump on Australian politics, Inquirer conducted interviews with Peter Dutton, Tony Abbott and former Liberal Party federal director Brian Loughnane, each offering different but nuanced views on how the US revolution might affect this country.
There is no Trumpian figure in Australia. There is no Trumpian transformation agenda in Australia. Dutton is not an Australian version of Trump – here is the essential reality.
Australia and America are different countries despite sharing a range of overlapping attitudes.
Dutton told Inquirer: “People see a distracted Albanese government just as people saw a distracted Biden administration. There is in people’s minds a clear sense the country is moving in the wrong ­direction and I think there is a parallel on that basis between the United States and Australia.
“I look forward to a very productive relationship with President Trump. But he and I are different people. We come from different backgrounds. We’ll have different approaches on issues and there will be points where we agree.
“But my focus is not on what’s happening in the US or the debate there. It’s on how families here deal with a cost of living created by a prime minister who is out of his depth and out of answers for families in their hour of need.”
Dutton dismissed efforts by the left to cast him as Australia’s version of Trump as “another counter-productive personal attack that will backfire”.
Trump, however, inevitably raises the pivotal issue of the extent to which a change of government at Australia’s election might become a transforming event.
Abbott, typically, is optimistic. He sees Trump’s win as having ­global significance with direct relevance for Australia.

Just to rub the pond's nose in it, the reptiles featured this snap, Tony Abbott believes Trump’s re-election assists Peter Dutton on a number of levels. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Damian Shaw

Sheesh, he's looking particularly wretched in that snap ... and of course he'd be ecstatic about the MAGA moron now setting the pace ... what an inspiration ...

Only "Ned" can explain how one of the country's worst PMs, a fellow traveller in the far right, a barking mad fundamentalist extremist, is suddenly a sage full of insights ...

Abbott told Inquirer: “I believe Trump’s re-election has had a seismic effect around the English-speaking world and that it assists Peter Dutton at a number of levels. It validates strong leadership. The line the left has run against Dutton from the start, that he was a hard man without compassion, isn’t working. We can see this in the polls. Dutton can be as strong as he chooses and still look more reasonable than Trump.
“The big message is that the green-left zeitgeist that has dominated the West for the past decade and a half has manifestly failed. We are weaker, poorer and more ­divided than at any time in the past 70 years. That’s because of the green-left fantasy that military strength is irrelevant, that you can build a strong economy on intermittent, weather-dependent energy, and that national cohesion can be replaced with flaccid multiculturalism.
“This model doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t work in America and it doesn’t work in Australia. Dutton is right – this is the most important election since 1949. It’s the clearest contrast since 1949.
“People should not underestimate how transformative what Dutton has already committed to is. On energy he will be very different, he will be different on immigration, on social cohesion and national symbols, on the economy and national development, the same applies to national security. On the basis of what Dutton has ­already announced, he will be a transformative prime minister.
“I think Dutton is in the Howard mould. He is prepared to take risks but won’t overdo it, in the way I was tempted to overdo it sometimes. The great thing Dutton has got going for him is that there are no ­rivals breathing down his neck.”
Yet the mood in Australia is far different to that in America.
Dutton is extremely cautious about any Trump parallels. Suggestions by pro-Trump populist commentators in Australia that Albanese can be swept away in a “down under” version of the Trumpian counter-revolution owe more to hubris than reality.

Oh come on ... the reptiles have been endlessly promoting the parallels ...

Apparently "Ned" hadn't read the Ughmann, and so could sound blithe about the science ...

The early proof was Dutton’s signal that a Coalition government would not follow Trump and leave the Paris climate change accords despite pressure from the conservative wing of the Coalition. The financial truth is that the mass global investment in renewables will continue, even if it slows somewhat under Trump. The rush to renewables won’t be stopped.
Dutton, for example, says it is in Australia’s national interest to remain in the Paris agreement and that the nation risked trade retaliation if it withdrew. The issue is significant in its own right but also as a test case to determine how far Dutton might follow Trump. In this case, he deems following Trump to be electoral folly. Dutton, moreover, will retain the Coalition’s net zero at 2050 target. Nor will he follow Trump in quitting the World Health Organisation. Obviously, he won’t be proposing tariffs.
Trump’s election can assist Dutton – but as a vibe, not as a policy prescription. The distinction is critical and Dutton knows this. Dutton’s aim is to make Albanese’s record the election issue – focusing on cost-of-living – and deny Albanese the chance he craves to make the Coalition the election issue.
Brian Loughnane ran Abbott’s 2013 campaign, stays in close touch with conservative politics in the US, Canada and Europe, and knows the type of advice that campaign directors give to Liberal leaders.
His message is that while Trump ran a campaign as wide as the sky, Dutton will be the opposite – focused and targeted.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with another mug shot, from way back when ...Brian Loughnane, pictured in 2015, says the differences between Dutton and Trump are more important than the similarities. Picture: AAP

The pond was reminded that "Ned's" chief skill is regurgitating the thoughts of others, a well-trained parrot.

Might there not be some Law that explains this facility?

Loughnane told Inquirer: “I think the differences between ­Donald Trump and Peter Dutton are more important than the similarities. Dutton is a pragmatic conventional centre-right Liberal leader, initially promoted by John Howard, and is an experienced minister from the past period of Coalition government.
“By contrast, Trump has won a mandate on a bold agenda seeking not just policy changes but aspiring to dismantle or roll back much of the economic, energy and cultural foundations of the Biden administration. Trump aims to change the fundamental direction of the United States – but the politics of the Australian election will be different and won’t be conducted on the same scale or have the same significance.
“The mood in Australia is more about disenchantment with the Albanese government rather than a reinvention of the national compact. Dutton can be expected to run a targeted and disciplined campaign with a focus on cost of living rather than seeking any ­society-wide reconstruction.”
Loughnane agrees that Trump’s victory “has exposed the current weakness of centre-left progressive governments”. That gifts Dutton an opportunity.
“In this sense the times might suit Dutton,” Loughnane says.
“Dutton won’t campaign as Australia’s version of Trump – that would be folly. But he will seek to tap into a rising sentiment of scepticism about progressive policies, their weakness in combating inflation and the decline in living standards that has occurred.
“The fact that this narrative has played out in other countries should not be exaggerated but it is only likely to further encourage Australians to seriously consider a change of government.”
So, in a campaign sense, Dutton is the opposite of Trump.
Trump made himself a massive target, probably the biggest target in presidential history, and accordingly won on a mandate of transformation.
Australians, unlike Americans, are not consumed by grievance. Voters are disenchanted with Albanese. They see him as a weak and ineffective leader, and increasingly blame the government for the ongoing losses in per capita income and living standards attrition caused by ongoing inflation.

Australians aren't consumed by grievance? Perhaps, but clearly "Ned" hasn't kept up with the Murdochian machine, because each day it's littered with grievance, all it does is set out a rampant set of grieves on a daily basis, every day, there's a new evil, a new outrage, some atrocity, damage done, affront, insult, injury, offence taken at some indignity, a slap to the cheek perhaps ...

Much like the way that the pond takes a fence, never mind the gate, at this image, Simple messaging can help elevate Dutton to the Lodge. Picture: Gera Kazakov

That's eerily familiar ...

Back on the rack, but moving along, and so to the election sales pitch, because that's what it's really been about, though by this point the pond isn't sure anyone is paying attention, listening or caring ...

But Dutton’s campaign message is “let’s get Australia back on track”. It’s practical and about your living standards.
It’s not a revolution. It’s not about reinventing the social and economic order. It’s not about declaring a national emergency or repelling an invasion. It doesn’t correspond to “making Australia great again” – or to use a local reference, Dutton won’t be running a Fightback Mark Two agenda.
Dutton told Inquirer the coming election had a historic dimension. “This is an absolutely critical election,” he said. “The times in which we live are precarious and, as the Prime Minister says, the most dangerous since the Second World War. The prospect of the situation deteriorating further with a Labor-Green government should be at the forefront of people’s minds.”
Yet claims that this is the most important election since 1949 – or even that it constitutes a major ideological divide – are not verified so far in the policy ambitions of ­either Albanese or Dutton, despite the rhetoric of the leaders.
Indeed, the risk is elsewhere – the fear that Australia faces a dispiriting, low-grade, unadventurous election, weak on policy reform with the prospect of an ­ongoing divided country and a minority government, probably Labor, at the conclusion.
At this stage, genuine economic and productivity reform is not on the table from either side. Neither leader talks substantial tax reform, suggesting this will be lost for yet another parliament. Yet if Trump proceeds with his tax reforms, such as cutting the corporate rate to 15 per cent, aggressively cutting red and green tape, and slicing into public sector spending – Australia will resemble a stranded entity in a world it never envisaged.
While Dutton pledges to redefine the meaning of a casual worker, there is little sign the Coalition will roll back most of Labor’s IR laws. And while the Coalition pledges a government-owned nuclear industry far down the track, there is no agenda on how it will deliver cheaper power prices in the near term. While committed to smaller government, the Coalition is yet to put numbers on this electorally risky stance. Dutton says Labor has hired an extra 36,000 public servants at a cost of $6bn but hasn’t spelled out the Coal­ition’s precise response.
As for Albanese, over the past month he has launched an astonishing spending agenda in the prelude to campaign 2025 – including more than $7bn for the Bruce Highway, $3bn for the NBN, $2bn to save the aluminium industry, $2bn to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation for renewals and to unlock another $6bn in private renewables investment, new school funding for Victoria and South Australia, and extra funds for the apprenticeship program.
Here is an opening for Dutton.
He will play into one of Trump’s themes – the bankruptcy of progressive politics. The demise of the Biden administration and the resignations of those globally progressive icons Jacinda Ardern in 2023, and Justin Trudeau more recently, point to a credibility and intellectual collapse on the progressive side.

So he is doing a mango Mussolini ...

At this point the reptiles reminded the hive mind of the enemy, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is facing challenges on numerous fronts. Picture: NewsWire/David Crosling

It was the last snap, and the pond took it as a sign that "Ned" might be winding down. Foolish pond, he was just winding up ...

The pond decided to let "Ned" have his head, let him have at it, any interruptions or visual distractions would only add to the pain ...

Several trends have come together and now afflict Albanese: the de-legitimising impact of high inflation; substantial attrition in living standards; and a cultural backlash against progressivism, from its embrace of identity politics to its cancellation of patriotic narrative.
Dutton’s entire campaign runs on these Labor vulnerabilities. Yet the fascinating aspect of Albanese’s re-election strategy is that he merely offers more of the same – the second term is a double down on the first term, even when the polls show the public doesn’t like the same. At face value, it’s an extraordinary strategy pointing to an exhaustion of ideas and the demise of Labor’s political imagination.
Albanese, post-voice, runs on a retail agenda, his theme being “building Australia’s future” – via infrastructure, government spending, better roads, homes, Medicare, schools, the care economy and the NBN. It’s an old-fashioned ALP agenda given a cosmetic gloss and polish.
It’s weak on the “sunlit uplands”. It’s missing the Labor conviction, innovative reformism and historical mission that radiated from Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, even Rudd. Albanese’s re-election pitch is that things would be worse under Dutton. That’s it.
He desperately needs a Reserve Bank rate cut, not for the modest financial dividend for households, but as the pivot on which to hang a badly needed narrative of sorts – that Labor always had a plan for the economy and there’s now ­evidence that it’s working.
That sales job might be enough to save Labor, given that Dutton sits on 55 seats and needs 76 seats to form a majority government. It highlights the importance of the strategic issue raised by Abbott and Loughnane. How ambitious should be Dutton’s agenda? Labor is desperate to wage a negative campaign against Dutton. So does Dutton run a small target agenda or get more ambitious by signalling a decisive shift in Australia’s direction?
The omens are mixed. Dutton is strong on the cultural agenda. His campaign against anti-Semitism exposed Albanese and Labor and constitutes Dutton’s most important cultural win since the Indigenous voice referendum. Dutton has turned this into a far broader position – opposing the rising tribalism of Australia, the growth in racial and religious hatred and the increased violence in the community, with the Jewish community the prime target.
He pledges to cut the permanent migration program from 185,000 to 140,000 places, reconstitute the Department of Home Affairs, and re-priorities action against non-citizen criminals. Welcome to Country ceremonies will be cut back. Relations with Israel will be restored. The proven method of explicit instruction will be pursued in Australian schools.
Under the current law, social media for under 16s will be restricted. Medicare funding will be guaranteed. There will be a full audit of spending on Indigenous programs. Prime agricultural land and coastlines will be prioritised against renewables projects. People will have access to superannuation to buy their first home. The Environmental Defenders Office will be defunded.
There’s a stack of branding and value-based differences with Labor. Yet the hard economic policy decisions remained unscripted.
Dutton told Inquirer: “If there’s a change of government, the new government will have a mandate to get our country back on track.”
Abbott offers a warning: “We’ve had a few false starts. The first Trump win was a bit of a false start because, in the end, the swamp got him. Brexit turned out to be a bit of a false start because a weak conservative government was unable to capitalise on it. The voice defeat has been a bit of a false start because the left establishment has continued with its usual separatism as if nothing had changed.” But he is optimistic that Dutton can “do a Howard” – get the balance right between caution and transformation. Howard, not Trump, is the model.

Dear sweet long absent lord, that's back on track, and the lying rodent and the climate science denying, NBN wrecking onion muncher are the way forward? 

No wonder that, at the end of all that, Wilcox was in a gloomy mood ...