In which the bromancer and the Ughmann go to war, and the onion muncher makes a guest puff piece appearance ....

 

A kindly Anon correspondent drew the pond's attention to the latest venerable Meade outing with this note:

The Venerable Meade reports that News Corp journalists are concerned at a new AI tool that would enable them to write in each other’s style. Surely their concern is misplaced, given that their style and content is already near-identical?

Noted, and with a link to News Corp bets big on AI tools but journalists voice concerns

That droll passage regarding the reptile hive mind?

Journalists at three of Rupert Murdoch’s Australian mastheads have reported deep concern after training sessions for an in-house AI tool called “NewsGPT” .
Staffers on the Australian, the Courier Mail and the Daily Telegraph say the tool enables them to take on the persona of another writer, or to adopt a certain style, and NewsGPT will then generate a custom article.
Another tool, in which they adopt the persona of an editor to generate story leads or fresh angles, has also been used. But they say the training sessions have not explained what the technology will be used for.
Reporters have been told to expect another round of training using an AI tool called “Story Cutter” which will edit and produce copy, effectively removing or reducing the need for subeditors.

The venerable Meade also reported on the pandering, fawning Devine, doing her best to enable a lying, snake-oil selling charlatan, while swallowing and regurgitating the lies:

Murdoch’s New York Post launched a new podcast this month from the “legendary political columnist Miranda Devine”, an Australian journalist who relocated from Sydney’s Daily Telegraph to New York in 2019.
An unashamed right-wing cheerleader, Devine’s first guest was unsurprisingly Donald Trump. Videos of Devine laughing in a cosy chat with the president in the White House have been shared widely on social media.
Among the scoops she claimed from the debut Pod Force One was Trump saying all rioters found to be burning the US flag should earn an “automatic” one-year jail sentence.
The chat started off with the following exchange.
Devine: “Mr President, thank you so much for doing this, our very first podcast, especially, I mean, I know how much you have on your plate. I mean, how do you juggle it all?
Trump: “I’ve got wars. I’ve got war and peace, and I have you. And I heard it was your first, so this is your first [podcast]. It’s gonna, it’s an honour to be on your show.”
When Trump falsely claimed Joe Biden allowed immigrants to come in to the US “from jails and prisons all over the world … [and] from mental institutions” Devine replied: “Why did he do that, it’s so destructive?”

Nauseating, but luckily the pond has a stock of anti-nausea pills, necessary when discovering why so much credit must go to the Emeritus Chairman for the current state of the United States.

So to explore the thoughts of the hive mind this day, the murmuration of the reptiles singing in AI unison ...

Ah, it's not quite full war monger mode, there's tax and trans to obsess over, while over on the extreme far right there were also many temptations:

Some might wonder at the pond's peversity at ignoring all these siren songs - how to pass up yet another super effort by Dame Slap on the matter of super? - but the bromancer has always been the pond's go to man for an understanding of reptile sociopathy, and he was in top notch form today. 

Sure the reptiles clocked it as an 11 minute read, but pond correspondents, those who've climbed "Ned's" Everest, will understand this is a bro doddle, with lots of snazzy pics and mindless war monger distractions:

The header: Donald Trump weighs a devastating strike on Iran, The US President baulks at the last moment to join Israel in destroying the buried Fordow nuclear site.

The caption, for a collage which looks full blown tawdry AI, but which has a human bean credit: We are waiting for Donald Trump to decide: will he join Israel and obliterate Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Fordow? Artwork: Sean Callinan

Oh Sean, Sean, for all the AI we should go there? This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The pond always conjures a hive mind reader pressing frantically on the newspaper trying to make the link work, so that they could get online to be with the bromancer, in full war monger flight. 

See how 90 odd million people can be made to vanish into the ether:

Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and America’s Donald Trump have completely transformed the Middle East. It may be they were working in much more intimate co-operation than was generally realised.
Now we wait for Trump to decide: will he join Israel and obliterate Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Fordow? It is Trump’s gravest and most consequential date with history. He has decided to allow Iran a fraction more time. He now says he will decide whether to strike Iran within two weeks, depending on whether Iran offers a deal in which it completely gives up uranium enrichment.

The reptiles went all in on the illustrations this day, with this the first of many to please the hive mind:

The bromancer was in a triumphant mood, singing the bombing electric:

Israel, in a week of war, has degraded Iran’s nuclear programs. It has hit nuclear establishments at Natanz, Isfahan and the heavy-water research reactor at Arak. It has destroyed nuclear archives, and administrative and scientific research facilities. It has killed the entire top cadre of Iran’s military leadership, plus a dozen leading nuclear scientists. It has destroyed 30 to 40 per cent of Iran’s ballistic missiles, as well as hitting missile and drone manufacturing facilities and the infrastructure surrounding missiles – launch sites, even the trucks taking missiles from storage silos to launch pads.
Iran still has a lot of missiles and severely damaged a hospital in Beersheba on Thursday with ballistic missiles, perhaps 30 fired at once, Israel intercepting most but a handful getting through.
The Israeli Air Force, mainly using F-35s, which are also the backbone of the Australian air force, has hit a wide range of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps establishments, as well as police stations, state broadcast facilities, and gas and oil terminals. This is not designed to hurt global supply but to raise prices, and inconvenience, within Iran.
Israel has been careful in its choice of targets. Having suppressed Iran’s air defences, Israel hasn’t gone after most Iranian economic infrastructure. It’s not trying to reduce Iran to rubble. It’s destroying nuclear and missile programs and making them difficult to reconstruct.
But there’s one target yet to be hit: Fordow, Iran’s Mount Mordor. This is where Trump comes in, with the most important moment in his presidency. Fordow is buried in the side of a mountain, deep below limestone and concrete, built to survive Israeli bombardment. The nuclear facilities are 90m underground. No bomb that Israel has can reach that deep.

What a stupid, inane remark. By last count, Israel had some ninety nukes, but you can't expect the bromancer to mention that.

Then came a reptile graphic replete with interactivity, which the pond has reduced to a screen cap, because look what happens when you click on a button:

Useless visual pap and drivel, though admittedly no worse than the bromancer's drivel.

Then after another par came animated gifs of the sort that set the bromancer's Reichsmarschall des Großaustralisch Reiches heart on fire; 

Trump does have such a bomb. This bomb, the world’s most famous, travels under various glamorous names: the bunker buster, the GBU-57, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. It has never been used in battle and was constructed precisely with Fordow in mind. It weighs a prodigious 13,600kg. Only the advanced American B-2, a stealth bomber, can carry it. It’s encased in tough metal skin and will burrow 60m into the earth before it explodes. Then its 2700kg warhead makes the biggest mess.

Maestro, the animated gifs of exciting kit, tragically reduced to screen caps:

That talk of penetration set the bromancer going, in much the same way that King Donald loves his erections:

Fordow is where Iran primarily engages in enriching uranium to near weapons grade. It has 3000 centrifuges. Iran has 400kg of uranium enriched to 60 per cent, far higher than any domestic energy purpose would require. Weapons-grade uranium is enriched to 90 per cent. To move from 60 to 90 per cent is a short, fast process.
Israel will not finish its operation until Fordow is degraded and if possible destroyed. This is almost infinitely more difficult for Israel than for Washington to accomplish. However, if Trump takes too long to decide or it looks like he won’t attack Fordow, Israel will attempt to destroy Fordow itself.

Sic, that last sentence was in brazen bold, because there's no escaping the bro's wrath.

As Trump says, no one knows what he’ll do. The regional US military command, CENTCOM, has been working hand in glove with the Israeli Defence Forces. CENTCOM and the IDF both concluded the Iranians were making serious moves towards nuclear weapons.
Ehud Yaari, Israel’s pre-eminent strategic analyst, with a wealth of experience regarding Iran, tells Inquirer that Iran probably made the decision for nuclear weapons after Israel destroyed the military effectiveness of the Lebanese terror group and Tehran proxy Hezbollah and killed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah: “After Nasrallah (was killed), the Iranians had to make a decision: do they try to re-create Hezbollah, Hamas etc, or do they not send good money after bad. Hezbollah had been their ultimate insurance policy, with their huge arsenal of missiles.”
With Hezbollah gone, Yaari suggests, Iran turned to accelerated nuclear weapons development. The Iranians weren’t yet physically building nuclear weapons. It’s not exactly clear where they were with each bit of the relevant technology.
But they increased their uranium enrichment tempo, took more aggressive efforts to hide what they were doing and were working actively on the stages necessary to make a weapon.
Yosi Kuperwasser, a former Israeli military intelligence leader, now head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, tells Inquirer that in recent months the Iranians dramatically increased production of highly enriched uranium: “Israel really had a reason to do something now.”
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, told a congressional hearing in March that Iran was not producing nuclear weapons. That may have been before the latest intelligence or it may have reflected her ideology.

Cue a snap of Tulsi, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Picture: AP

That shameless hussy's not to be trusted, nor any of the intelligence mob, and it remains a mystery who appointed her to the gig, and naturally the bromancer wasn't having any of that isolationism, after all, there was the war with China by Xmas to consider:

Those parts of the Trump MAGA coalition most paranoid about “the deep state”, most committed to an isolationism harking back to the famous Know-Nothing Party of the 19th century, are determined the US should never intervene militarily anywhere unless the US itself is directly attacked.
They want America to retreat, to build a fortress behind its “big beautiful oceans”. In any event, Trump clearly now prefers the testimony and assessment of his military to that of Gabbard. She was not invited to a key security planning meeting at Camp David. When her congressional testimony was quoted to Trump, he replied: “I don’t care what she says.”
Trump may still decide, within his new two-week window, either way, to attack Fordow or not. If the Iranians were smarter they would offer to give up uranium enrichment and then, as talks dragged on, try to revive it secretly. The Iranians were working directly on weaponising their nuclear program until 2003 when George W. Bush invaded Iraq. They were scared of Bush, really scared of him. So for a time they suspended that program. It’s always good when America’s enemies are scared of the president.
Some critics of Israel argue that Jerusalem has been warning of Iranian nuclear weapons for 20 years, but still no Iranian nuke has emerged. Therefore the Israelis must have been mistaken. In fact the Israelis and the Americans have taken extensive, highly interventionist and effective measures to disturb, delay, destabilise and derail Iran’s program.

At this point the reptiles produced a snap of an inveterate liar, her master's dribbling servant, but spared the pond the sight of her flaunting a cross on her chest, President Trump sees a “substantial chance of negotiations” and will decide within two weeks whether the U.S. gets involved in the Israel-Iran conflict, says White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Time for the bromancer to introduce a little billy goat butt in his thinking. Not too much, just a little cynicism, just in case:

One such was the Stuxnet computer virus, which for a time destroyed Iran’s centrifuges that enrich uranium. Israeli intelligence and special forces periodically sabotaged Iran’s program.
Israel’s military performance in this campaign has been dazzling. Even more so its intelligence performance. Yaari draws the contrast with Israel’s failure over the October 7 terror attacks: “They (Israeli authorities) were so confident that Hamas was deterred, they did not even have a plan in the bottom drawer for how to take over Gaza if they had to. But Iran, like Hezbollah, they’ve been working on for 40 years. For 40 years Mossad has been building its network inside Iran, for 40 years polishing and refining.”
Trump certainly looks like he means business. However, a cynical interpretation might hold that this has been typical Trump bluster. The more publicly he threatens, often the less likely he is to take action. Nonetheless, it’s very unlikely Iran can meaningfully commit to ending uranium enrichment. Trump had told senior administration and military figures he had approved a plan of attack but not yet decided whether to put it into action. The US military has moved two huge aircraft carrier battle groups to the Arabian Sea and three big destroyers. It has deployed squadrons of F-35s and the air superiority fighter, the F-22. The Pentagon has moved in-air refuelling tankers to the region, which means they could fly the mission to Fordow and back, as well as extensive counter-drone capabilities. This is more than the US needs for Fordow. Yaari thinks its main purpose is to deter Iran’s IRGC from any aggressive action against its Arab neighbours in response to a US strike on Fordow.
The British are actively considering supporting an American action launched from the joint US-British base at Diego Garcia. It’s hard to imagine they’d refuse the Americans.
It’s difficult to see Iran agreeing to any deal that would satisfy Americans and Israelis. The Iranians have a long history of lying about their nuclear activities. They are the chief state sponsor of terrorism worldwide. They’ve sponsored an utterly murderous set of destabilising terrorist forces around the Middle East – the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, Shi’ite militias in Iraq – and until recently were in close alliance with the genocidal Assad government in Syria that collapsed in December 2024.
Iran has been responsible for the torture, kidnap and murder of many Americans. As soon as it came to power, the ayatollahs’ regime took US embassy personnel in Tehran hostage. In 1983 a terrorist bombing in Beirut killed 241 US service men and women. It was carried out at Iran’s behest by a terror group linked to Hezbollah. Iran was also implicated in a failed assassination attempt on Trump himself during the presidential election campaign.
Tehran follows an extreme Islamist ideology. Although Shi’ite, the ayatollahs’ government was profoundly influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood and the writings of its chief ideologist, Sayyid Qutb, who had a passionate hatred of America and the West generally. Iran labels the US the “Great Satan” and Israel the “little Satan”.

Any mention that the current Israeli government follows an extreme Zionist ideology, intent on ethnic cleansing and genocide?

Nah, have another bite of the war monger mustard:

Washington and Jerusalem will want more than bland assurances from Tehran. Kuperwasser outlines some of what he sees as essential for a deal to be acceptable: an end to uranium enrichment; nuclear inspections must be any time and any place; there must be American as well as International Atomic Energy Association inspectors; stockpiles of enriched uranium given up; no time limit on restrictions on the Iranian program; no more centrifuges built; the converter facility that changes uranium into nuclear weapons grade material given up; missiles big enough to carry nuclear warheads given up.
It is, as I say, extremely difficult to imagine Tehran agreeing to that. Anything much less will not do the job. That brings us back to Trump’s decision. The idea of striking Fordow has uniquely divided Trump’s base. Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon are particularly opposed. Carlson and Republican senator Ted Cruz, who supports action against Iran, especially Fordow, had an unholy screaming match. They looked two deeply uncivil men. Trump posted on his Truth Social: “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!”

The reptiles offered a snap of the target that surely set the bromancer's lips slobbering, A satellite image of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant in central Iran. Picture: Maxar Technologies/AFP

A target, a veritable target, as the bromancer bombs away on the Bannon:

Bannon claimed it was disillusionment over the Iraq war under Bush, and then the 2008 financial crisis, that led to the populism that drove Trump to the White House. Bannon, like Carlson though a bit more historically literate, seems seldom to meet a conspiracy theory he doesn’t smile at.
He’s over-intellectualising the ideology of populism. It’s certainly true, though, that Trump campaigned against the idea of the US spending blood and treasure to provide for other countries’ security. At the end of the week Bannon had lunch with Trump. Make of that what you will. But Trump has been remarkably consistent on Iran. It’s like tariffs, one of very few issues he has had a serious fixed view on for many years. He has always been determined Iran mustn’t be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.
Trump almost never defies his base, which may be why he is hesitating over Iran. Yaari thinks it likely Trump is concerned that Iran could retaliate against Saudi oil infrastructure. Trump is infinitely more influential with his base than Carlson, Bannon, Gabbard or any of the hangers-on. If US military action is swift and successful, Trump will have no trouble keeping his base. The Americans need only do the Fordow operation. The Israelis have done, or can do, everything else. Even with the bunker buster, the Fordow operation is not a piece of cake, not assured of success. The B-2s would probably need to make several runs over Fordow and drop a series of bunker busters, one after another, on the same spot.

Oh surely not, the pond saw how easy it was in Star Wars, and here the reptiles paused the bromancer to offer more details of the exciting kit. There's nothing like kit to get the war monger juices flowing:

The bromancer ended with a series of ifs, followed by a triumphant expectation, all to come to pass in a couple of weeks, that being the universal measure of such matters:

Neither Trump nor anyone in his orbit is suggesting a sustained US military campaign. No one envisages deploying US ground troops under any circumstances. If the raids on Fordow go well, they could be completed in one night. Far from creating an endless war, this would be the most effective action in shortening the war, which probably has another 10 to 14 days to run. For if the US doesn’t do Fordow, then Israel, with far less effective weapons, will do it anyhow. Indeed, Israel probably cannot wait two weeks. Netanyahu has now said Israel will attack all Iran’s nuclear facilities.
It might do this with many repetitions of the big bombs it has itself. Though much smaller than bunker busters, if repeatedly dropped on Fordow they could destabilise the mountain. Israel could attack the electricity, water and air supply to the nuclear facility. Riskiest of all, it could insert commandos to bomb the facility from close range.
One of Trump’s most influential supporters, strategist and historian Victor Davis Hanson, thinks Trump’s decision on Fordow immensely important to the entire world. He says: “Never have we been closer to complete normalcy in the Middle East, and never have we been closer to seeing the entire region blow up.
“If the war ends with the (Iran) regime intact and a recoverable nuclear program, it won’t be back to square one, it’ll be a disaster.”
If Trump takes out Fordow, the Iranian regime will be discredited with its people, with its proxies, regionally and internationally.
If it survives with a nuclear program it can put back together quickly, it may instead look indestructible, having defied Israel and Washington.
As always in the Middle East, there is of course a doomsday scenario. Iran survives, reconstructs its nuclear program, leaves the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, receives technical assistance from China or North Korea, keeps its new weapons program underground and entirely secret and emerges, North Korea-like, with nuclear weapons in a few years.
That’s pretty unlikely, not least because the Israelis, with their brilliant intelligence penetrations, will hit Iran again if they have to, although that would depend on having a supportive president in the White House.

How could the bromancer resist bringing in the shameless Sharma to spruik? He couldn't ...

Liberal senator Dave Sharma, for several years Australia’s ambassador in Israel, answers without hesitation that Israel was justified in taking action against Iran. He sees substantial upside.
These days no nation other than Iran wants to destroy Israel. If Iran is weakened and can apply less pressure throughout the region, that benefits Middle East stability. The US and others have long opposed Iran’s nuclear program, missile program, material support and sponsorship of terrorism and imperialist interference in other nations. A weakened Iran that can do less of all that has to be good news. Sharma judges, surely accurately, that the Iranian regime probably carries on in much the same form as today but less able to ignore its public’s dissatisfaction, therefore needing to make big adjustments.
Yaari thinks the one possibly consequential institutional fissure in Iran is the alienation of the regular army from the IRCG. Neither Washington nor Jerusalem has designed a military campaign to force regime change.
Provided Fordow is destroyed, Sharma believes Israel will set back Iran’s nuclear program by five to 10 years. Israeli sources suggest seven to 10 years, with the caveat that Iran would find it hard to reconstruct elements of its program unless it receives assistance from China or North Korea.
No recent president except Trump would have allowed Israel to take this action. Notwithstanding Trump’s dislike of foreign military entanglements, probably no other president would undertake the Fordow operation.
Being against foreign entanglements is different from holding dogmatically that there are no circumstances, ever, under which Washington should intervene militarily. Trump and Netanyahu are shaping history. Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is enduring history. The next two weeks are critical, for Trump, for Israel, for the world.

Here, have an immortal Rowe, celebrating a couple of weeks...

It's always in the detail

Before the pond moves on to the Ughmann, also deep in the trenches, could the pond remind itself that Israel has never been a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, standing outside the tent with the likes of India, Pakistan, North Korea and South Sudan, and yet has been a nuclear power for yonks, a rogue state with a lot of heft.

It's never, ever mentioned by the reptiles but cf NBC News, What to know about Israel's nuclear weapons program 

Cf also the NY Times, As Israel Targets Iran’s Nuclear Program, It Has a Secret One of Its Own, Since shortly after it was founded in 1948, Israel has been intent on building a nuclear program to ensure its survival. (* Archive link)

Israel has its own secretive nuclear weapons program, one that it doesn’t publicly acknowledge but that, some experts believe, is also expanding.
“From an official diplomatic posture perspective, the Israelis will not confirm or deny” their nuclear arsenal, said Alexander K. Bollfrass, a nuclear security expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
Instead, Israel has said it will not be the first country to “introduce” nuclear weapons to the Middle East. That deliberately vague wording amounts to what Mr. Bollfrass called an “obfuscation over what is clearly an established nuclear weapons program.”
How big is Israel’s nuclear arsenal?
Israel is widely believed to have at least 90 warheads and enough fissile material to produce up to hundreds more, according to the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation and the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog for the United Nations, has assessed that 30 countries are capable of developing nuclear weapons but only nine are known to possess them. Israel has the second-smallest arsenal among the nine, ahead only of North Korea, according to a Nobel Prize-winning advocacy group, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Israel could fire warheads from fighter jets, submarines or ballistic missile ground launchers, experts said.
Israel is one of five countries — joining India, Pakistan, North Korea and South Sudan — that is not a signatory to the U.N. Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The agreement, which came into force in 1970, generally commits governments to promoting peaceful uses of nuclear energy and preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.
(Iran is a signatory to the treaty, although Israel and world powers have accused Tehran of violating it by unnecessarily enriching uranium at high enough levels to build a nuclear weapon.)
Israel would have to give up its nuclear weapons to sign the treaty, which recognizes only five countries as official nuclear states: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. All had detonated a nuclear weapon by 1967, the cutoff date in the treaty to qualify for the designation.

And a detail you won't see in a lizard Oz graphic anytime soon:

Where does Israel build its nuclear weapons?
It’s widely believed that Israel’s nuclear weapons program is housed in Dimona.
Experts said it appeared that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency had never been to the site, and that there was no agreement with Israel that would allow the U.N. watchdog agency to monitor it. American scientists visited Dimona in the 1960s and concluded that the nuclear program there was peaceful, based on increasingly limited inspections, historical records show. But there is no public evidence that American inspectors have been back since.
Satellite photos show new construction at Dimona over the past five years. At a minimum, experts said, the facility is undergoing repairs and much-needed modernization.
There is also a growing belief among some experts that Israel is building a new reactor in Dimona to increase its nuclear capability. A report released this week by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said Israel appeared to be upgrading a reactor site there to produce plutonium, which can be used both for nuclear weapons and some peaceful purposes, like in space.
Because of its secrecy, Dimona has long been a symbol of fascination and, to some, anger over Israel’s nuclear weapons program.
In a rare public event at the site in 2018, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel used it as a backdrop to warn enemies that “those who threaten to wipe us out put themselves in a similar danger — and in any event will not achieve their goal.”

And so to the Ughmann, offering a six minute read, or so the reptiles timed him ...

The header: Donald Trump must know his bunker buster won’t end Israel’s fight with Iran, Diplomacy and dialogue will not tame this regime any more than one bomb will decide this fight.

The caption: With a gambler’s instincts, Benjamin Netanyahu is betting Donald Trump won’t be able to resist the urge to make a big, dramatic play.

The resistible entreaty: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The Ughmann was inclined to sound a little more doubting Thomas, as if to suggest AI hadn't entirely worked its magic on the hive mind:

It will take only one bomb. That will be the argument made by someone advising President Donald Trump as he mulls whether his country should join Israel’s war against Iran. He might even have heard it directly from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
One bunker-busting bomb, that only the US has, launched at an Iranian nuclear site buried under a mountain, and this game will be over. Tehran’s ambitions to develop a nuclear weapon will lie smouldering in the soil.
It sounds so easy. So tempting.
I heard this argument from an Israeli official months ago. For a horrifying moment, I thought he meant coaxing Washington into dropping an atomic bomb. Now we all know he was talking about the US Air Force’s Massive Ordnance Penetrator.

The reptiles interrupted with that graphic showing how the splendid kit would do the job. The mindless repetition was a reminder that reptile AI remained in play:

The Ughmann carried on, seemingly immune to penetration:

This 13,600kg “bunker-buster” bomb is the only weapon deemed capable of penetrating the defences of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, built inside a mountain near the city of Qom, about 160km south of Tehran. The site’s centrifuges, busily enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels, lie 80m to 90m beneath the surface, shielding them from conventional airstrikes. The US can’t simply give Israel the weapon because only American B-2 stealth bombers are capable of carrying it.
So the success of Israel’s strike on Iran always depended on drawing the US into its fight. With a gambler’s instincts, Netanyahu is betting Trump won’t be able to resist the urge to make a big, dramatic play. He will argue that Israel has already destroyed two enrichment facilities, established air dominance over Iran and opened a clear pathway for a spectacular Trump slam dunk at Fordow. He will argue that any settlement with Iran’s clerical class is futile, that they don’t seek coexistence, they only dream of finishing what Adolf Hitler began.

Yes, it was a gigantic porkie, yet again:

This 13,600kg “bunker-buster” bomb is the only weapon deemed capable of penetrating the defences of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant,

The "only"? In the Ughmann's non-nuke dreaming.

The Ughmann was also entranced at the notion that all would be clear in a couple of week. 

Here's Axios back in 2017, recycling Bloomberg in Trump's timeline? Always "two weeks".

So many more two week deadlines have followed that it's impossible to count them all, and given all the fun that's been had recalling King Donald's two week calendar, it's a wonder the Ughmann went there:

Trump’s two-week window
We will soon see how well the Israeli Prime Minister has judged the temperament of the American President.
The weight of what happens next now rests on Trump in the two-week window he has taken to assess whether a negotiated settlement has any chance of success. America is already contributing mightily to the defence of Israel, but the man who pledged to end the forever wars faces the choice of going all-in on the world’s most intractable conflict.
Even the possibility of taking that step is drawing loud protests from his base.
Trump must know this fight will not end with just one bomb. Even if Fordow were obliterated, Iran’s determination to secure nuclear weapons would remain intact and it would only delay, not end, Tehran’s ambitions. At best, the strike would be an exclamation mark on the last sentence of another chapter in the long and bitter book of Middle Eastern wars. The page will be turned, and the next chapter will begin, written, as it always is, in a pen dipped in blood. And some of it will, again, be American blood.
An American attack will demand an Iranian response. It might be direct assaults on US forces in the region or an asymmetric response involving terror campaigns around the globe for years. It will certainly engage the regime’s proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. It might be all this and things yet to be imagined. It is unlikely that Tehran has not planned for the day it traded blows with the regime it calls the Great Satan.
Optimists hope Iran’s ruling clerics might be felled by the people, and part of Israel’s campaign is aimed at that end.
It is possible, and recent protests show there is little love for the leadership among many. The women-led uprising that followed the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody in 2022 was the most serious internal challenge the regime has faced, with hundreds killed and thousands jailed.
But how many are prepared to risk their lives by taking to the streets is impossible to know, just as the resilience of the government and the loyalty of its police and armed forces are yet to be tested.

The reptiles interrupted with a final snap, with the Ughmann missing out on the kit bestowed on the bromancer, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei addressing a crowd during his annual Nowruz speech, in Tehran.

The Ughmann hovered between action and saucy doubts and fears:

Some regimes collapse quickly. Others die hard and murder thousands of their own citizens in the process. The first attempt to depose Syria’s Bashar al-Assad during the Arab Spring began in March 2011 with peaceful protests in the southern city of Daraa. What followed was a brutal crackdown that spiralled into civil war, drawing in Islamist extremists, foreign fighters and regional powers.
At the time, Syria’s population was around 22 million. Since then nearly seven million Syrians have fled the country, making it one of the largest refugee crises since World War II. About 1.3 million of them sought refuge in Europe, fuelling political upheaval, strengthening nationalist movements and destabilising governments across the continent.
Iran’s population is about 89 million. Like Syria, it shares a border with Turkey and the same migrant pathway to Europe. So, be careful what you wish for.
How many nuclear weapons could Iran make?
Let’s be clear. Israel’s attack on Iran is a justifiable and understandable act of self-defence. The theocratic regime in Tehran is bent on Israel’s elimination and has armed, trained and financed its puppets in Hamas and Hezbollah to wage war on the Jewish state. That alone is enough cause to strike.
Add in Iran’s nuclear ambitions and it poses an existential threat. It may never use the weapons, but what rational government would take that risk?
It’s also reasonable to be sceptical about some of Netanyahu’s claims regarding how close Iran is to securing a nuclear weapon, and US intelligence suggests Iran is not currently building one.
But the International Atomic Energy Agency recently raised its “serious concern regarding the rapid accumulation of highly enriched uranium by Iran, the only state without nuclear weapons that is producing such material”.
The atomic agency’s chief, Rafael Mariano Grossi, has warned that Tehran has enough uranium enriched to near-weapons-grade levels to make “several” nuclear bombs if it chose to do so.

Now might be a good time to mention that Israel is even more of a rogue nuke state?

Of course not, the Ughmann is just a reptile beavering away for the hive mind, and so to the close:

Those arguing to Trump that he should strike will say the only question about the threat is one of timing. And those calling for a diplomatic resolution ignore the fact Tehran will never accede to the kind of intrusive monitoring and verification of its nuclear program necessary to end the threat.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong chose to walk through this minefield. Last weekend she appeared to criticise Israel when she told ABC’s Insiders: “The key issue is not: Is there a threat? We all know that. It’s whether or not, in response to it, we increase the risk of regional escalation, and that would have dire consequences to the people of the region. So that is why Australia has said, we urge de-escalation, we urge restraint, we urge dialogue and diplomacy.”
Israel’s ambassador to Australia, Amir Maimon, dropped his own bunker bomb on that line, saying diplomatic efforts to contain Iran were an “illusion”, warning that the Islamic Republic’s open pursuit of nuclear weapons could not be negotiated away, “as if words can stop warheads”. This seems to have hit a nerve. By Thursday, Wong’s language had changed and the key issue became the Iranian threat.
“I again reiterate Australia’s call on Iran: you have to discontinue any nuclear weapons program,” Wong said. “You have to discontinue any nuclear program. That is the call of the world. We urge Iran to come to the table and to do what the world is seeking – what the United States and others are making very clear – which is to discontinue any nuclear program and to return to diplomacy and dialogue.”
Diplomacy and dialogue will not tame this regime any more than one bomb will decide this fight. Trump now faces a diabolic choice. There are no easy answers.
That’s the problem with forever wars: they don’t end. One chapter just bleeds into the next.

Here have a couple of celebratory cartoons:

And finally a bonus, because ancient Troy this day offered a stunning EXCLUSIVE:

Ancient Troy had the pond with the use of "landmark".

What a shameless, pandering hack, and yet it's a living. Just suck on the sauce bottle and take home the pay.

That's what it must be like to work in the hive mind, reduced to offering pitiful puff pieces to pander to a relentless narcissist, always wanting to parade his budgie smuggler-sized brain.

Oh just give the man a knighthood and sent him on his way.

The puffed up header: ‘Much to be proud of’: Abbott writes landmark history of nation, The former PM has long wanted to tell the story of Australia through a more balanced and positive lens, countering the so-called ‘black armband view’ of the past, but with recognition that sometimes ‘good intentions’ have gone awry.

The caption for that attempt to pose as a serious person: Former prime minister Tony Abbott in his office before the release of his new book. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian

The delusional urging: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Luckily for ancient Troy, he only had to do three minutes of undiluted puffery:

Tony Abbott has authored a new history of Australia, from the uncertain convict settlement of 1788 to the prosperous, fair and free nation that it is today, shaped by Indigenous, British and multicultural heritage, with the aim of fostering greater appreciation of this overwhelmingly positive national story.
The former prime minister told The Australian in an exclusive interview that he had long wanted to tell the story of Australia through a more balanced and positive lens, countering the so-called “black armband view” of the past, but with recognition that sometimes “good intentions” have gone awry.
“While there are blemishes on our past, as there are in all countries’ pasts, I think there’s so much more to be proud of,” Mr Abbott, 67, said.
“So, utilising the megaphone available to a former PM, I thought why not try to tell our story in a positive, upbeat, encouraging way.
“My working title for it was Australia: A Proud History. So that is essentially my approach. It is a history to be proud of.
“As I said, there are some blemishes, but on balance, it’s a great story and it deserves to be better known and more appreciated.”

It wouldn't be a proper piece of puffery without the product shot, and there it was, Cover of Tony Abbott's new Australian history book.

Not nearly as interesting as the money shot, but to much the same point.

Ancient Troy did his best, given the task was performative puff pandering:

The book, Australia: A History – From Convict Colony to Great Democracy, has a foreword by esteemed historian Geoffrey Blainey and will be published by HarperCollins in October. Mr Abbott acknowledged the assistance of The Institute of Public Affairs in researching the book.
He hopes that readers of the book, which highlights the contribution that farmers, miners, soldiers, ­carers and democratic pioneers have made to Australia, will find there is much to value, respect and admire in our past and will come away with “a deeper patriotism”.
Having served as prime minister from 2013 to 2015, Mr Abbott said he could bring a perspective of wrestling with high-level decision making and would include brief accounts of his government and that of his Liberal successors, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, among others.
“There is quite a focus on politics,” he explained. “Having been in the prime ministership and other senior political positions myself, it does give you a bit more sympathy to all others in similar circumstances.”

The pond was pleased to note that the bromancer, his true love the onion muncher, and petulant Peta had all come together on this page, with pandering Peta doing the usual Western civilisation routine, Sky News host Peta Credlin discusses former prime minister Tony Abbott’s visit to Oxford University to meet young Australians studying to “defend Western civilisation”. “I had the pleasure of turning to Oxford University with Tony Abbott to meet a number of current Oxford-based scholars,” Ms Credlin said. “Young Australians awarded a Ramsay Scholarship to study at Oxford to, quote, defend Western civilisation.”

The temptation to shout "oh just fuck off" was strong, but the pond pressed on with ancient Troy's pandering to the narcissist:

Always an admirer of John Howard, he also praises Bob Hawke highly and says he is more of a Ben Chifley “fan” than of John Curtin, and regards Joe Lyons as “rather underestimated” who deserves rehabilitation as “a very significant figure in our national story”.
Mr Abbott, who also served as a minister in the Howard government and was the Liberal Member for Warringah (1994-2019), is a former journalist and author of three previous books, including Battlelines (2009). He said he had no plans to write an autobiography or memoir but did not entirely rule it out.
“I used to say, facetiously, that as a journalist I was a frustrated politician and as a politician I was a frustrated journalist,” he joked.
“I don’t think many political memoirs are that successful. Too often they are about retrospective justification of events that are no longer that interesting.”

By golly they went all out promoting the tome, with this caption Former prime minister Tony Abbott in his office prior to filming part of his documentary with Mark Tedeschi SC on his new book. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian

On with the pandering and the puffery:

Publisher Mary Rennie said she was excited to be publishing a landmark history of Australia that is the first written by a former prime minister.
“Tony Abbott provides a unique view into the events, people and attitudes that have brought us to where we are today, and he tells our story with affection, clarity and in an immensely readable style,” she said.
Mr Abbott said he hoped readers would approach the book “in a spirit of curiosity and appreciation” for our shared history.
“It’s not about me, it’s about the country,” he said. “If you’re in public life, you will be judged and let people make their judgments.
“Do your best to, I suppose, have positive deeds and uplifting words, and honourable political combat, on which they can judge you.”
Mr Abbott is also filming a companion documentary for Sky News Australia, talking to prominent Australians about ideas, events and personalities, which will be broadcast over three one-hour episodes this year.
Tony Abbott’s Australia: A History – From Convict Colony to Great Democracy will be published by HarperCollins on October 14

One guess who owns HarperCollins, and anybody who thinks its Connor Court Publishing will be barred from the pond for life. 

It's way worse than that, much more sickening though completely predictable, because who else would pander so abjectly to a man whose main claim to fame was his introduction of onion munching to the Australian way of life.

Poor ancient hapless, completely useless Troy. He must have picked the short straw that was going around the AI office.

Never mind ancient Troy, sickening promo done, and please allow the pond a profanity because the pond wouldn't piss on a copy if it caught fire in the local street book library, where it's likely to end up after some mug realised that they'd wasted a lot of moola on a narcissist always seeking to stay in the spotlight, especially in authoritarian countries of the Hungarian kind.

And now speaking of narcissists, did pond correspondents catch the moment when King Donald yet again confused Austria with Australia? 

Blathering on yet again about Austria's explosive, highly flammable trees, because he's too stupid to remember where California's gum trees came from ...