In which the Caterist carries on in his usual way, Lord Downer offers advice, and the Major returns...

After all the reptile hue and cry, the endless anguishing and suffering, there it was way down the digital page in this day's lizard Oz ...

EXCLUSIVE
Coalition open to a deal over super tax: O’Brien
The Coalition has left the door open to striking a deal with Labor on increasing taxes on high-end superannuation balances to help address the structural budget deficit.
By Greg Brown

Say it ain't so Ted, think of the reptiles. Has another crusade, another lizard Oz jihad bitten the dust?

It turned out that the reptiles had opened their doors to a conciliatory Ted ...

Aspiration and reward to ignite Liberal Party’s comeback
As we now rebuild the Liberal Party, we will listen to the Australian people before formulating policies with a clear line of sight to the values from which they are derived.
by Ted O’Brien

Oh Ted, Ted...

As for the rest, it was full speed ahead for the war with China...

Meanwhile, over on the extreme far right, the Major had finally returned and was, at least briefly, on top of the lizard Oz digital world ma ...

The pond is extremely tired at the thought of reading another defence of ethnic cleansing, but luckily the Caterist was on hand to help Ted in that taxing transformation. 

It's simple Ted, embrace Caterist climate science denialism ...

The reptiles suggested it required five minutes to wade through the usual tosh: Revive the Libs? Step one, give up the net-zero ‘target mania’, If Sussan Ley is to redefine the party, she must begin by rejecting a failed orthodoxy. Net zero is no longer just flawed policy, it is her clearest chance to lead.

There was a special credit to Emilia for exceptional work, an astonishing collage, though why the Duttonator was there was something of a mystery: Sussan Ley will be shadowed by the words and actions of Ted O'Brien, Angus Taylor, Peter Dutton and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Artwork: Emilia Tortorella

And there was the usual advice: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Then it was on with the usual:

Five years ago, Sussan Ley rejected a wind turbine development in Queensland’s Connors Range, ruling the damage caused would be “clearly unacceptable”.
In December 2022, Tanya Plibersek reversed the decision. The Palaszczuk Queensland government acquired the Lotus Creek development, and construction proceeded. Ley is one of the few state or federal ministers who dared to reject a wind turbine development on environmental grounds. She found an unexpected ally in Christine Milne, the former leader of the Greens. “Did anyone in Plibersek’s office point out the significance of Connor’s Range area as a core habitat for koalas and gliders?” Milne wrote on social media in March. “Work on this project must stop.”
But the tide is turning. Target mania is giving way to pragmatism. A fortnight ago, David Crisafulli’s LNP government blocked the Moonlight Range turbine development 45km west of Rockhampton. It says it will review Queensland’s wildly ambitious 2030 and 2035 emissions targets, which are driving the headlong rush to industrialise vast areas of farmland and native vegetation.
The federal parliamentary Liberal Party has the opportunity to follow suit under its new leader, who has announced it will review all policies implemented since the last election.
That must include the unworkable and uncosted commitment to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The party must return to what it does best: rational, evidence-based policymaking that recognises there must be trade-offs.

Curiously Ted steered well clear of all this and the urgent need to nuke the country, and instead offered a moving tribute to the inspiration provided by sniffing bums on the field:

Amid a volatile global economy and heightened geostrategic uncertainties, Australia is becoming poorer, weaker and more dependent. Labor can’t address these challenges because the policies it took to the election will only make the situation worse. Responsibility therefore lies with the Liberal Party, but first we ourselves must rebuild.
As I have reflected on how I can contribute to that rebuild, the advice my father gave me as a schoolboy running on to the rugby field has come to mind.
“Run straight and tackle hard, my son.” Over the years, I have adopted that piece of fatherly advice as a guiding principle for meeting challenges far beyond the sporting arena.
To run straight is to know where you want to go and to run with conviction. And to tackle hard is to possess the courage to confront opponents head-on.
Growing up the youngest of nine children was the perfect training ground for running straight and tackling hard. As a little one I’d either be put on the kitchen table or get up there myself to be heard. A big family teaches you humility and the importance of teamwork.

Oh Ted, Ted, way to appeal to the female demographic.

Meanwhile, the reptiles were helping the Caterist with the usual impeccable scientific sources, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has vowed to scrap net zero if his party wins the next election. “If we win the next election, we will scrap net zero,” he said.

Good old Nigel, making plans to fuck the world, what with Brexit fucking Britain not nearly enough, as the Caterist ploughed on ...

Sentiment won’t be enough. Those in the partyroom who wish to retain the net-zero target must add substance to their arguments. They must justify the multitrillion-dollar cost and map out a credible pathway, explaining how they plan to close the technology gap. They must justify the investment in land and capital, as these are scarce resources that could be used for other purposes.
The Liberal Party’s net-zero policy is both electorally ineffective and technically unachievable. The strategy of adopting the net-zero mantra to make the Liberal Party more politically attractive has comprehensively failed. The privileged voters whose luxury opinions it was supposed to satisfy voted for the teals in 2022 and were reluctant to return three years later.
Meanwhile, the world has moved on, driven by the energy shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Donald Trump’s return to the presidency and the growing demand for energy to support artificial intelligence, among other factors. Fears that Australia would face economic sanctions if it stepped outside the straitjacket imposed by the IPCC have receded.
Labor’s climate policy is based on discredited modelling and unworldly assumptions about the speed of the so-called energy transition. The pace of investment in so-called renewable energy has fallen significantly short of the level required to meet the government’s 2030 targets. The government is technically in breach of the Paris Agreement for failing to meet the March deadline to announce targets for 2035. A 2035 target will remain meaningless without a credible path to meeting its legislated commitment to a 43 per cent reduction on 2005 levels by the end of this decade.
The Liberal Party must seize the opportunity to declare that the emperor is naked. It should distance itself from the unspoken fantasy to which it has subscribed for much of this century: that the chief obstacle to abandoning hydrocarbons is a lack of political will.
Adopting a rational energy policy bounded by economic and engineering constraints would hardly put the Liberal Party at a disadvantage. Tony Blair was an enthusiastic adopter of the climate change narrative in the late 1990s.

And what of climate science and warnings of impending doom? You know, Earth's seasonal rhythms are changing, putting species and ecosystems at risk, and so on ...

Not to worry, turn to Tony Bleagh, deep in the maw of petro dollars, a sell-out king, Britain's former prime minister Tony Blair speaks at a panel session during the World Government Summit in Dubai. Picture: AFP

The pond developed a more than fair level of contempt in relation to Bleagh over the Iraq war, and he's done his level best to nurture that contempt ever since ...

In a keynote 2004 speech, he described it as “a challenge so far-reaching in its impact and irreversible in its destructive power that it alters radically human existence”.
While Blair has not reneged from that position, he decries the unfulfilled promise of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which has distorted the debate “into a quest for a climate platform that is unrealistic and therefore unworkable”.
“Too often, political leaders fear saying what many know to be true: the current approach isn’t working,” he wrote in the foreword to a report by Lindsay Fursman published in April by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

Ah yes, How 'out of touch' Tony Bleagh became a serious threat to climate action, Even before his calll for a net zero 'reset', there had been criticism of ex-PM's lucrative links with fossil fuel nations. 

Do go on ...

Blair’s supporting arguments for his assertion are hard to contest. The surge in renewable energy investment has not halted the rise in fossil fuel production, nor will it stop it increasing in the future. In 2024, China began building 95 gigawatts of new coal-fired power plants, and India recently announced it had reached the milestone of one billion tonnes of coal production in a single year.
Airline travel is set to double over the next 20 years. By 2050, urbanisation is expected to drive a 40 per cent increase in demand for steel and a 50 per cent increase in demand for cement.
By 2030, almost two-thirds of global emissions will come from China, India and Southeast Asia.
“These are the inconvenient facts, which mean that any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail,” Blair wrote.
He calls for policy pragmatism rather than aspiration, arguing that nuclear will be an essential part of the answer. “The irrational fear of it, intensified by hyperbolic campaigning, has led the world to an egregious policy error,” he writes. “Embracing it would have significantly changed the trajectory of global emissions.”
Blair says many world leaders would like to take the hysteria out of the climate debate but “they’re terrified of saying so, for fear of being accused of being ‘climate deniers’ ”.
The debate is moving fast. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch is dropping her party’s commitment to reaching net zero by 2050, arguing that it is eroding public trust.

The Caterist's turning to Kemi was matched by a snap, UK Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch

It's worth reading a cracking Crace or two to be reminded of just how far down the rabbit hole clueless Kemi is ... which makes her a worthy inspiration for the Caterist ...

“The only way that we can regain it is to tell the unvarnished truth – net zero by 2050 is impossible,” she said in March.
As Ley seeks to assert her authority within her shattered party, the swift abandonment of net zero would end any suggestion that she is beholden to the NSW party moderates and distance her from their unelected factional leader, Michael Photios, and his commercial interests in renewable energy.
Retaining the party’s existing energy policy will prolong the debate and undermine the chance of presenting a unified Coalition position at the next election. Anthony Albanese’s reappointment of Chris Bowen has sealed Labor’s fate, divorcing it from reality and shackling it to a false global consensus around an agreement that is fast unravelling.
If Ley is to redefine the party, she must begin by rejecting a failed orthodoxy. Net zero is no longer just flawed policy, it is her clearest chance to lead.
Nick Cater is a senior fellow at the Menzies Research Centre.

Moving quickly along, the reptiles were much troubled by matters involving King Donald, including but not limited to ...

Trump’s steel threat might be hot air, but damage is already done
Australia again will be hit in the crossfire of Donald Trump’s latest trade war missive. However, faced with reality the question arises whether the US President sees his latest threat through.
By Eric Johnston
Associate Editor

Albanese can’t duck now, he must put a rocket under defence
The PM has been given fair warning by the US that he shouldn’t turn up to his first in-person meeting with Donald Trump empty-handed on defence spending.
By Geoff Chambers
Chief Political Correspondent

As always, in such dire moments, the pond turns to Lord Downer for inspiration ...

The header: To persuade Putin, Trump needs a few lessons on the Russian Bear, The President needs a simple, clear message for Putin. If he wants to end the war quickly – and he does – he will have to tell him that the US and its allies will never allow Ukraine to be captured by the Russian military.

The numbingly obvious caption without a taco in sight: Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump.

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

Lord Downer proceeded to explain to King Donald how he should behave like a hard man in politics, follow in His Lordship's high heels footsteps ...

Sorry, the pond can't resist fond memories when His Lordship is offering sophisticated understandings ...

Successful international statecraft requires a sophisticated understanding of domestic politics at home and abroad. It also requires a clear understanding of history. Donald Trump clearly understands politics. But, as people who know him tell me, he doesn’t read history.
There are three historic lessons he and his team should reflect on. The first is what is known as the Great Northern War at the beginning of the 18th century. Over two decades, the Russians led by Peter the Great – who many regard as the father of modern Russia – fought the Swedish empire and finally destroyed it. In its place they built their own Russian empire in Eastern Europe.
Rest assured Vladimir Putin knows all about it. It is a window into the way Russians approach this war. They are prepared to persist, year after year, regardless of the cost. They are confident that if they stick at it for long enough they will finally win. That’s the Russian strategy in Ukraine: like Peter the Great, the Russians think they can gradually wear down their opponents and win back control of Eastern Europe.

The reptiles interrupted His Lordship by allowing the Bolter to intrude with an AV distraction: Sky News host Andrew Bolt says Russia has just warned US President Donald Trump to “back off” over Ukraine with more threats of World War III. “The US President seems to now realise at least that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been playing him,” Gen Keane told Sky News host Andrew Bolt. “Talking peace to Trump but instead beefing up attacks on Ukrainian civilians.”

His Lordship offered more history lessons, what with King Donald a most excellent student and wide reader:

The second history lesson is for the Europeans. They need to remember the behaviour of Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Yalta conference of February 1945. The American president wasn’t too fussed about Stalin’s plans to take over much of Eastern Europe – even though Churchill was distraught about it.
The point is the fate of Eastern Europe wasn’t in the front of Roosevelt’s mind. He was more worried about the war against Japan and the prospect of losing hundreds of thousands of GIs in an attempt to invade Japan and end the war.
Today, as the now US Undersecretary for Defence, Elbridge Colby, told me last year, the American foreign policy establishment is much more worried about China than it is about Russia and Ukraine. After all, remember the worst thing that could happen to the world is war between the US and China – triggered perhaps by a Taiwan crisis.
Viewed from Washington, America has other, more serious issues to deal with than Russia. After all, Russia’s GDP is only about one-tenth the GDP of the European Union and its population one-third of the EU’s. Russia is hardly likely to mount a full- scale invasion of central and Western Europe particularly as those countries are all bound together in the NATO alliance.
And then there is the third history lesson. The Europeans signed up to détente during the Cold War; Europe accepted the existence of the Soviet Union and the Soviet empire, and under the doctrine of détente developed strategies for coexistence.

Cue a snap of Elbridge Colby

Reading all this, the pond's sympathy for Ukrainians under assault from a sociopathic dictator grew stronger, what with His Lordship trying to pander to King Donald while gently trying to correct him.

Ronald Reagan, supported by Margaret Thatcher, rejected détente. Reagan called the Soviet Union an evil empire and demanded “Mr (Mikhail) Gorbachev, tear down the Berlin Wall”. Conventional diplomats were horrified.
But Reagan stuck with his policy, which became known as peace through strength. He invested heavily in sophisticated missile defence systems and made it clear to the Soviets that, technologically, they would never be able to match America. Finally, the Soviet Union crumpled and its empire was disbanded.
President Trump would be best advised to study Peter the Great and Reagan, and then he might find the answer to how to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine.
I don’t criticise President Trump for trying to achieve a ceasefire over the past three months, although his tactics have at times been quite alarming. After all, this is a war that has killed close to half a million men, women and children since it began in 2014.

His Lordship doesn't criticise him, while being quite alarmed? 

What a prize doofus His pandering Lordship is ...

What’s more, it is causing very substantial economic disruption. But President Trump is learning that despite his different tactics to lure Putin into a ceasefire, Putin is guided by the durability of Peter the Great.
President Trump would be better advised to take a leaf out of Ronald Reagan’s book. He needs to have a simple, clear message for Putin. If he wants to end the war quickly – and he does – he will have to tell Putin that the US and its allies under no imaginable circumstance will ever allow Ukraine to be captured by the Russian military. The West may not have a formal alliance with Ukraine but Putin needs to be persuaded that he can never win.
There are signs Trump is finally coming to the conclusion that he won’t be able to talk Putin into a ceasefire. In the past week, the Americans and the Europeans have agreed to lift the limits on the use of their missiles by the Ukrainians.
This should have been done years ago, but the Biden administration subscribed to the doctrine of de-escalation, which was as successful as President Trump’s attempts to get Putin to agree to a ceasefire. Neither strategy has worked.

If this is the best His Lordship has got then Ukraine is in deep trouble, because the best the reptiles can offer is blather about not being woke, Former Trump senior advisor Christian Whiton discusses the "successful foreign policy” of the United States under Donald Trump. President Trump launched a fresh spray against Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, stating the leader was “playing with fire” after he sanctioned one of the largest drone strikes yet against Ukraine. “A strong America, an America that’s not apologising for itself, a military that’s no longer woke,” Mr Whiton said.

Ah woke, sorry, the pond has a contractual requirement, an obligation to celebrate the word whenever it appears, and it appears so many times in the lizard Oz it can be quite wearing...

His Lordship seems to think that being servile, obsequious and tugging the old forelock to the demented mango-coloured King will do the trick ...

More sophisticated military equipment will have to be provided to the Ukrainians and new sanctions on Russia, particularly on Russia’s energy exports, will have to be introduced. This peace-through-strength approach will have real implications for other parts of the world.
Unless the Iranians really believe the Americans and the Israelis will launch a military attack on their nuclear facilities, they will never agree to constrain their uranium enrichment program. And as for China, the Australian government should be telling President Trump that the Chinese leadership in Beijing will be influenced by the robustness of America’s response to Putin.
Weakness is provocative. The dangers of the Chinese Communist Party blockading Taiwan will be substantially reduced if Xi Jinping sees Donald Trump give up on Putin and pour resources into helping Ukraine stave off Russian adventurism indefinitely.
All these trouble spots are linked together: Ukraine, Iran, China, Taiwan and North Korea. China is Russia’s ATM; North Korea has provided the Russians with thousands of troops; Iran has been providing Russia with military drones; Russia has been providing China with cheap energy, as has Iran.
That’s the last lesson for President Trump; America’s greatest strength is not its military but the extraordinarily robust and cohesive network of alliances. China, Russia and Iran have nothing like those relationships.
But they do have each other and if President Trump wants to underwrite the peace of the world – which admirably he does – then he needs to remember that peace can only be achieved through the strength of America’s military and the cohesion of its alliances.

Stay strong Ukraine. If this is the best His Lordship can do, then you're in for tough times, and might just be better off using drones to take out as many aircraft as you can ...

Last and certainly least, the pond must note that the Major has finally returned, and how the pond wished he hadn't ... how much better if he'd stayed on the golf course.

It had been 27th April when the pond last heard from the Major with Journalists failing to ask politicians the hard questions on campaign trail, After the federal election campaign was branded a cost-of-living poll, journalists have failed to explore other key issues that affect Australia, followed by what seemed like a massive sulk and silence. 

Turned out he was on a junket.

The pond isn't sure exactly when the Catholic Boys Daily fully became the Australian Zionist Israeli Government propaganda sheet, but the Major is well down that road ...

Why is it that useless far right loons always project about useful idiots? Western media’s useful idiots embolden Hamas, What Israelis don’t understand is the willingness of Western journalists to believe the most ridiculous anti-Israeli propaganda.

The caption for the sublimely unaware hive mind: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Picture: AP

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

Why the Major? 

Why doesn't the pond turn to lizard Oz yarns like this, which at least mention danger and struggle?

Bibi’s balancing act: tactical success v political danger
Whether he accepts the US ceasefire proposal or not, Benjamin Netanyahu will struggle to maintain his current path for much longer.
By David Kilcullen
Contributing Editor for Military Affairs

It's because the pond is fascinated by the way that the Major has become head of the Australian Zionist Israeli Government propaganda sheet:

Too much reporting about Gaza is presented by people who have no clue about Israel, its history and purpose.
The Jewish state is motivated by a central creed: “Never again”. Yet on October 7, 2023, a fascist Islamic death cult, not much different from ISIS, crossed the border into Israel from Gaza to take the lives of 1200 innocents on a Sabbath morning and capture 260 hostages, many from a young people’s dance party for peace.
Western reporting seems to indicate most journalists don’t know that Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and left the strip to govern itself. Hamas won an election in 2007, set about murdering its rivals from the Palestinian Authority and then refused to have another election.
For this behaviour, Hamas won the support of Iran and Qatar. Yet Israel was subjected to historically inverted arguments that it was an apartheid state committing genocide.

Curiously the reptiles themselves didn't buy what the Major was selling and kept interrupting with visual reminders of what the Major was denying ...In Gaza, flour costs up to $20 per kg under blockade, forcing families to ration, as hunger and desperation rival bombs amid soaring prices.

The Major didn't pay the slightest attention, so keen was he to play a Lord Haw-Haw to the current government of Israel ...

Arabs living inside Israel have their own members of the Knesset and the right to vote.
Israelis today are sceptical of the two-state solution they supported 30 years ago. Why? October 7 happened after 18 years of Gazan self-rule going back to Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal from the former Egyptian territory.
This columnist spent three weeks in May on a private, personally paid trip to Israel to visit a daughter who has been living in Tel Aviv since 2013, and to meet her first child, a son born on Christmas Eve.
What stands out in every corner of Tel Aviv, the small towns of the rural north and the desert communities south of Be’er-Sheva is a country united behind a single aim: “Bring them home”.
Stickers picturing the remaining hostages, those already returned and the dead of October 7 adorn thousands of bus stops, park benches and lamp posts. Many large residential blocks feature multistorey “Bring Them Home” posters down the sides of buildings. Many cars have such stickers on their rear windows.
Israel was founded in 1948, after the passing of UN Resolution 181 to protect descendants of the original inhabitants of the land of Israel, following the murder of six million Jews in industrial-scale death camps during World War II. The country will do everything in its power to save every Jew.
ABC Radio National’s Sally Sara on Wednesday morning presented a discussion of the two-state solution that featured Gershon Baskin, an Israeli who helped to negotiate the release of Gilad Shalit in 2011.

There came another visual interruption, Palestinian prisoners, released as part of a deal that freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, kneel down upon arrival at the Esenboga airport in Ankara, Turkey in 2011. Picture: AFP

The Major maintained his rage at the ABC:

Sara did not mention that among the 1000 Palestinian prisoners traded for that single kidnapped Israeli soldier  was Yahya Sinwar, the architect of October 7.
Anyone who witnessed the 1976 Entebbe rescue in which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s brother was killed, or the tracking down of the Munich Olympics’ Black September killers who murdered 11 Israelis in the Games village, should understand that Hamas knew what would happen when it kidnapped young and old people, women and babies and took them into Gaza.
Israel was always going to act.
This column discussed Israel’s attitude on October 14 2023, arguing Israel “will struggle with the idea of not bowing to the blackmail of hostage taking”.
This is the conundrum in Israel: the desire to bring home the hostages safely, even if it comes at the cost of allowing Hamas’s survival. Yet there is little Israel can do to force Hamas’s hand.
Hamas is winning the global media war by deliberately sacrificing Palestinian civilians.
Israelis do lament those civilian deaths. But they also mourn the loss of more than 850 young soldiers, men and women, from the Israel Defence Force in pursuing Hamas.
Israelis also feel the loss of support from former allies – such as Australia. But they understand the political purpose of Hamas’s strategy to hide in tunnels under hospitals and schools.
What Israelis don’t understand is why so many Western journalists can’t tell the truth about this strategy. They see the willingness of Western journalists to believe the most ridiculous anti-Israeli propaganda as pure anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile, the reptiles were introducing news of another atrocity, Injured Palestinians were rushed on Sunday (June 1) to Nasser hospital in Gaza's Khan Younis after an Israeli air strike hit near an aid distribution point run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), killing at least 30 people in Rafah, according to Palestinian news agency WAFA and Hamas-affiliated media.

The Major wasn't paying attention to any of that, just as other news this day passed him by ...

The Major sailed on serenely, believing all was well ...

Think of last month’s foolish and false story that 14,000 Palestinian babies could die in 48 hours unless Israel lifted its aid blockade. News organisations such as the BBC, the Guardian and The New York Times that ran it prominently buried their subsequent corrections.
This story was the result of a UN staffer deliberately feeding the media a false narrative, yet journalists remain as incurious about the role of the UN as most have been since it was revealed as many as a dozen UN workers participated in the October 7 massacre.
It turns out the UN child famine scare was based on an assessment that 14,000 children aged from six to 59 months were expected to be affected by malnutrition between April 2025 and March 2026 if aid remained cut off. Aid has in fact begun flowing again.
This is just the latest in 18 months of misreporting of alleged Gaza famine. A famine never eventuated, as this column has argued several times using the UN’s own aid daily dashboard, which has shown aid levels have often been higher in the last year than before the war.
Why the willingness to believe Israel would deliberately starve civilians, especially by people who could not condemn the rape and murder of October 7? Smells like anti-Semitism.
Those looking for a detailed explanation about how Western journalists got the famine story wrong for more than a year, should check Michael Ames’s piece, headlined ‘The Gaza Famine Myth’, published by The Free Press on May 7.

Strangely the reptiles again contradicted the Major with this caption for another AV interruption, Gaza faces extreme hunger, with the UN warning the entire population is at risk of famine.

Really reptiles, didn't you read the Major assuring the world that it was all just misreporting and a scare?

Could it be that this Lord Haw-Haw didn't notice what was going down? 

Might he have benefited from reading Haaretz on what is happening in the West Bank? (archive link)

Inter alia:

The eyes of the world are on Gaza, where the war between Israel and Hamas has now dragged on for over 600 days, with no end in sight. Another attempt by the U.S. to pressure Hamas into accepting the terms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a temporary cease-fire appears to have failed. And, despite growing international pressure to end the war, the situation on the ground remains as hopeless as it is dire.
Meanwhile, just a few dozen kilometers east of Gaza, in the hills of the West Bank, another significant development is quietly taking shape. There, the Netanyahu government has accelerated a de facto annexation process – one that began before the October 7 attacks, continued under the guise of war and gained even more momentum following President Trump's victory last November.
Short of a formal annexation declaration, the government is doing everything possible to signal that it intends to absorb this territory – home to more than two million Palestinians – into the State of Israel. That includes the announcement of 22 new settlements; the effort to legalize isolated outposts that are illegal even under Israeli law; and the expansion of roads that cut through the West Bank and entrench Israeli control. These moves are happening in parallel and are all part of a larger, unified strategy.
This strategy does not include offering the Palestinians in these areas Israeli citizenship, civil rights or the right to vote. Instead, the government relies on the weakened and corrupt Palestinian Authority – still led by the aging autocrat Mahmoud Abbas – to sidestep the obvious question: if Israel is effectively annexing the land, what will it do about the people who live there?
Even this automatic deflection – that Palestinians are under the control of the Palestinian Authority and therefore outside Israel's responsibility – is growing less and less convincing by the day. Take, for example, Netanyahu's recent decision to block a visit by the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to the Palestinian Authority's headquarters in Ramallah.

And so on, and down below came this story (archive link):

And so on, but when you're determined to be a useless idiot of a Major kind, it's important to strut about proudly showing off your cannily crafted blinkers ...

Suffice to say, the thousands of Palestinians marching back to northern Gaza at the start of the latest ceasefire in January were far from starving. The Middle East Media Research Institute has even published a video of bustling Gazan markets full of food and produce as recently as the past week.
This newspaper’s chief international correspondent Cameron Stewart got the latest famine media beat-up right in his reporting on Thursday. New aid distribution protocols were designed by Israel and the US to prevent Hamas from looting food aid, one of its main sources of income for weapons purchases.
None of that registered at the national broadcaster. ABC AM on Friday seemed surprised Israel was pushing Gazans south and did not mention the new aid protocols were to stop Hamas stealing food.
Discussing the IDF’s latest Operation Gideon’s Chariots, Netanyahu on May 21 outlined the reasons for the new aid arrangements. He foreshadowed moving the population south to where Hamas’s tunnel network has been destroyed and then dismantling what is left of Hamas in central and northern Gaza.
The tragedy for the Palestinians, who should have accepted the territory offered by the UN in 1947, is that yet again they will cede land as they did after the failed attacks by Israel’s neighbours in 1948, 1967 and 1973. Hamas’s billionaire leaders meanwhile have begun talks in Qatar “to accept limited deportations of its military commanders”, veteran Israeli journalist Ehud Yaari reported on Wednesday.

It turns out that the Major is an expert in blaming the victim, and is singularly incapable of blaming the current government of Israel's propensity for ethnic cleansing and genocide ...

On the other hand, the Caterist wants to doom the world with climate science denialism, and Lord Downer thinks he can beguile King Donald with pandering, so talk about being between a rock and a hard place thanks to these men of reptile steel ...

As always, it's in the detail, and the pond is pleased that tacos have entered the immortal Rowe's diet, but what is it with the chastity belt, and who has the key?