In which much happens, weirdness enters from the far right, and Dame Slap and Mein Gott tag along ...

 

Every so often the pond is tempted by a story to stray from the lizard Oz ...

Say what? Even Peter Hartcher? (*archive link) 

And with a bonus reference that reminded the pond that King Donald was clearly no Bond lover ...

The evidence of Putin’s uncanny and growing influence over Trump suggests that perhaps he is the de facto US national security adviser to the president. From Russia, with love.

But the pond's mission means it can't stray far from the reptile hive mind, where such talk is a form of heresy. 

Instead, barely stifling the sort of yawn King Donald's ambling military parade produced, the pond turned to today's lizard Oz headlines ...

Uh oh, it's going to be a wild ride this day, and likely it'll be digital fish and chip wrapping the moment it hits the full to overflowing intertubes, thanks to King Donald's love of chaos ...

All the pond can confirm is that these were the top hits on the extreme far right of the lizard Oz early in the morning ...

The pond can only honour some in passing:

Embarrassed Albanese still can’t get his moment with Trump
Trump’s move to exit the G7 summit early and cancel his meeting with Anthony Albanese puts the PM in a politically awkward position that has already drawn criticism over when he’ll get to meet the President.
By GEOFF CHAMBERS
CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

Embarrassed?

How can anyone be embarrassed when the USA now acts as if it's in a Mean Girls movie, or perhaps a low grade soap, or some kind of telenovela, maybe with killer snow?

If you stoop low enough, you can just pick up the papers dropped to the ground, and all will be well while in that supine, grovelling position.

Ben was packing this line ...

PM relies on British mate to tie in US part of AUKUS
Keir Starmer looks to have won Donald Trump’s support for AUKUS – for now.
By Ben Packham
Foreign Affairs and Defence Correspondent

The prolific Chambers then chambered that wrinkle:

Trump saga
Rock Starmer locks in subs as PM misses gig
The Prime Minister will face extreme pressure to ramp-up Australia’s defence spending after Donald Trump cancelled their long-awaited meeting.
By Geoff Chambers

Truth to tell, as Macron showed, you can be outright insulted, and then pick yourself up and have another go ...

Macron hints at Trump’s chaotic style of diplomacy
French President Emmanuel Macron seems to have poured cold water on any prospect of joining military action against Iran.
Macron says any action designed to result in regime change in Iran could lead to chaos. He reiterated his earlier calls for a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, followed by a return to negotiations over Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and US President Donald Trump at the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alberta at the weekend.
French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and US President Donald Trump at the G7 summit in Kananaskis, Alberta at the weekend.Credit:AP
Macron – who earlier got caught in Trump’s crosshairs – hinted at the US president’s chaotic style of diplomacy.
Trump, he said, appeared to have changed course since meeting with other G7 leaders fewer than 24 hours ago. (Recap: Trump told reporters on Air Force One overnight that a ceasefire was no longer his objective.)
Macron was clearer in his stance. “We don’t want Iran to get a nuclear weapon,” he said, “but the biggest error would be to use military strikes to change the regime because it would then be chaos.” (Nine rolling coverage).

With so much happening, the pond could only spend a limited amount of time with Jennings of the IPA fifth form:

Five reasons why US may strike soon

Donald Trump is preparing his military to enter the Iran-Israel conflict, possibly within a week, if these key developments are any indication.

By Peter Jennings

Contributor

Quickly, cut to the wrap up:

...One thing left to do and uniquely within American military capability, is to destroy deeply buried nuclear facilities at Fordow. It is said this can only be done by a 30,000-pound GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator: A weapon that can only be carried by US long-range bombers.

The “bunker busters” can reach deep enough to destroy centrifuges at Fordow that are enriching uranium to weapons-grade level.

My view is that Israel has other means to destroy these centrifuges, including through cyber attacks on power supplies, but this is not a target to be left to chance.

Donald Trump has an opportunity to deliver on his Truth Social declaration that “IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON.”

He can do so in a way that does not commit ground forces and in a theatre where enemy air defences are destroyed.

Trump’s willingness to act is enabled by Israeli capability and strategic smarts. This could also lead – for good or ill – to regime change in Iran, cement Israeli military dominance in the region and Sunni dominance over Iran.

Trump can choose not to strike if Iran says it will openly give up its nuclear program, but it’s years too late for that to be believable.

As distressing as military operations may be, helping Israel complete the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program is the right move for longer-term stability in the Middle East.

Against these momentous changes in the Middle East, it is almost trivial to turn to Anthony Albanese being denied his G7 side meeting with Trump.

If the President wanted to, he could have found 20 minutes to meet Albanese. An ally in good standing might have been invited to join Trump on the Air Force One flight to Washington.

Sadly, Albanese has brought the alliance to such a place in the White House’s estimation that he is not being afforded that chance.

Contrast that with Sir Keir Starmer’s skill to build a friendship with Trump.

Australia is left to apply Kremlinology – studying how other leaders interact – to deduce from the Starmer-Trump meeting that AUKUS is “OK.”

AUKUS might be, but the Pentagon is reviewing the arrangements having clearly said that Australia must spend a lot more on defence. Trump’s departure means we lose the chance for Albanese to make the case for the alliance.

Amid the Iran crisis Albanese might have offered to deploy a ship (belatedly) to the Red Sea, send an airborne early warning aircraft back to Europe to relieve pressure on US planes, or offered to backfill US ships leaving the Pacific.

But nothing like that. Here’s the sad truth: Trump has sized up Albanese and found Labor’s defence effort wanting.

The President’s hand-picked Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth, made it plain: advising Richard Marles on June 1 that we should lift defence spending to 3.5 per cent.

We have been relegated to the status of a third-tier ally. Britain and Japan are standing up by comparison, significantly lifting defence spending and defence equipment production.

No aspiring statesman should aim for Australia to punch below our weight in the alliance. But Albanese seems content with this outcome. After his thumping election win, he sees no domestic political threat on defence policy he needs to worry about.

Albanese wants to mute our international role; to be the earnest but ineffective partner of ASEAN and the Pacific Islands; not raising hackles in Beijing and flying below Trump’s radar. He maintains that Australians voted “to change the way we engaged with the world.” This is what he means to deliver.

The Pentagon review of AUKUS will conclude we need to do more but Albanese seems set against strengthening defence.

If that’s the case, don’t expect Trump to spend time fixing a problem Albanese won’t acknowledge.

Peter Jennings is director of Strategic Analysis Australia and an adjunct fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs. He is a former deputy secretary for strategy in the Defence Department.

Thank you Jennings of the IPA fifth form, always a splendid way to sate the pond's love of the smell of war mongering in the morning.

And so to a novelty item, because if there's one ancient memory the reptiles love almost as much as Ming the Merciless, it's the British bulldog, five whole minutes of the hound feasting on the hive mind ...

The header: The hour has come; will Donald Trump make it his finest?, President Trump now faces a ‘Churchillian choice’ at Fordow. He has the power to act with Churchillian ruthlessness and wreck Iran’s nuclear ambitions for a generation.

The caption for Captain Bonespurs: Donald Trump is joined by 18th Airborne Corps Commander Lt. Gen. Gregory Anderson (R) and other military and civilian leaders as they watch a demonstration by Special Operations soldiers at the Holland Drop Zone.

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

Take it away Andy:

On Wednesday, July 3, 1940, Winston Churchill had a decision before him as hard as any he ever had to take in his long career of statesmanship. If the Vichy French fleet stationed at Oran in Algeria were to fall into German hands, as seemed highly likely, it would, when combined with the German and Italian navies, pose an existential threat to his country, which after the fall of France was already gearing itself up for the Battle of Britain.

The French admiral would neither hand his fleet over to the Royal Navy, nor scuttle it, or sail it to Canada. So, after some anguished heartache, the lifelong Francophile Churchill ordered it to be sunk, which it was with the loss of 1299 French sailors.

There are some moments in history when a sudden act of opportune ruthlessness readjusts the world towards a safer path.

In the Middle East, these include Israel’s surprise attacks that saved it from certain invasion in the Six-Day War of 1967 and its destruction of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear facility in 1981.

Going back far further, impending invasions of Britain were foiled by Francis Drake sending fireships against the Spanish Armada in August 1588 and vice admiral Horatio Nelson pre-emptively destroying the Danish fleet at Copenhagen in 1801.

Cue a very predictable snap, Sir Winston Churchill

More valiant warrioring followed ...

Pre-emptive action sometimes works but it requires remarkable leadership qualities. Does Donald Trump have them?

For if Iran’s centrifuges are still spinning in its nuclear facility 90m underground at Fordow, then Israel will have scored only a tactical win rather than the strategic victory it needed.

The successes against the upper echelons of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, military high command and nuclear scientists are commendable but nothing like enough.

Only the US has the 14,000kg “bunker-busting” bombs necessary to shatter Iranian nuclear ambitions. So what does Trump do then?

Benjamin Netanyahu certainly feels the weight of history on his shoulders. The son of a distinguished historian and an avid reader of books by and about Churchill, he said three days ago: “Generations from now, history will record our generation stood its ground, acted in time, and secured our common future.”

He is right. And history could record that about President Trump, too, if he acts decisively.

If Trump has before him the Churchillian option, it is not hard to see who represents Neville Chamberlain in all of this.

Sorry, a visual distraction interrupted the flow, Tehran's roads are at a standstill after Donald Trump urged everyone to evacuate Iran's capital city immediately.

Back to those gutless wonders who didn't think war was a good idea, with Andy giving them a sound thrashing ...

President Barack Obama’s adamant and repeated refusal to help the Iranian opposition – overtly or covertly – during his eight years in office wrecked its brave efforts to replace the regime and gave the lie to his pretensions to be a new John F. Kennedy.

His cringing, appeasing Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action utterly failed to stop the sinister, inexorable spinning of the centri­fuges, and came at the cost of lifting key sanctions and unfreezing assets.

It was neither joint (because Iran cheated) nor comprehensive (because it did not require Iran to abandon its nuclear program), or a viable plan of action, although it did produce the sickening detail of pallets being loaded with billions of dollars and transferred to the regime in Tehran.

Joe Biden then continued his master’s policy of trying to mollify Iran, unsuccessfully.

For all his obtuse, dangerous wrongheadedness throughout the 1930s, at least Chamberlain never subsidised the Nazi regime with British taxpayers’ money in the way Obama and Biden has with Americans’.

The valiant warriors assemble, Donald Trump welcomes Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House.

Cue a tale of woe and misery and endless suffering ...

The US has suffered so much at the hands of Iran since the humiliations of the Carter administration during the US embassy hostage crisis between November 1979 and January 1981 that no one would resent it finally setting things right.

There is hardly a government in the world that would not sleep easier knowing that the theocracy in Iran had been denied the power to initiate a third world war.

Counterintuitively, perhaps, President Trump would never deserve the Nobel Peace Prize more than if he destroyed Iran’s capacity for nuclear blackmail. For once Iran goes nuclear and thus becomes inviolate, it is only a matter of time before it acquires the intercontinental delivery systems that will threaten the rest of the world, including the US.

There are grave risks attached, of course, which should not be underestimated. Iranian terrorist sleeper cells will probably be activated in the West, such as the one plotting kidnappings and assassinations recently uncovered in London.

A bizarre interlude, Treasurer Jim Chalmers discusses how the conflict between Iran and Israel is creating a “perilous” situation for the global economy. “I get briefed every day on the consequences of what’s happening in the Middle East – it is a perilous moment for the Middle East, but it is also a perilous moment for the global economy,” Mr Chalmers told Sky News Australia. “The starkest way we see the impacts of what’s happening is with the oil price … this has big implications for the global economy, as implications for inflation, but also for global growth.”

The assault continued ...

The mullahs’ penchant for attacking soft civilian targets such as synagogues and cultural centres is well known, and indicative of their frustration and rage at their failure to devastate Israel due to the technical genius of its Iron Dome defences.

We should believe the threats of dictators. History is littered with times that the West assumed that dictators were exaggerating or merely playing to their domestic audiences but were in fact being coldly truthful.

When Adolf Hitler stated in January 1939 that a world war would destroy the Jewish race in Europe only eight months before he deliberately started it, or Joseph Stalin promised that the Comintern would strive to undermine Western democracies, or Vladimir Putin claimed there was a “historical unity of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples” while massing an army on Ukraine’s borders, the West ought to have listened rather than assuming they were bloviating.

We should similarly believe the Iranian mullahs’ considered and oft-repeated promises to use a nuclear bomb to annihilate Israel.

These threats are not idle; they are meant in cold blood. The imams of Tehran want to turn Israel into a sea of molten, irradiated glass, and even the hitherto-pussycat International Atomic Energy Agency now admits that it is ramping up efforts to obtain the means to do so.

Western leaders such as Friedrich Merz, Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer who are bleating about “de-escalating the Middle East” should recognise that easily the best way of doing that is to defang the chief exporter of terror there.

The hapless few, (L-R) French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, US President Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

And so to a final full-throated war monger outburst ...

The US has never had such an opportunity to rid the world of a spectre that has haunted the Middle East for decades, and possibly may not again while what my friend Niall Ferguson calls the Axis of Ill Will – China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and their proxies – builds ever-closer ties.

Trump today has it in his power to act with Churchillian ruthlessness and wreck Iran’s nuclear – and thus regionally strategic – ambitions for a generation.

I fear he will not do this, however, for as his constant tergiversations over tariffs have shown, his bark tends to be much worse than his bite.

If he does not, he ought to remove Churchill’s bust from the Oval Office, as he should not be able to look in the eye the man who said at the time of the Munich Agreement in October 1938, “Do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year, unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”

Andrew Roberts is a historian and bestselling author of Churchill: Walking with Destiny, The Storm of War, Masters and Commanders, Napoleon and Wellington, and Waterloo. He is the Bonnie and Tom McCloskey distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution and a Conservative member of the House of Lords. This article was first published in The Free Press.

The Free Press? 

The reptiles are now mining Bari Weiss's mob?

Beyond the valley of the pathetic... and yet the reptiles keep tormenting the pond with this invitation ...

If the pond wanted war mongering shit from the Free Press, it would go there directly, with no need to buy the reptiles kind offer of second hand goods with T & Cs...

Meanwhile, Captain Bonespurs has a problem or two ...

Trump Frantically Tries To Stop MAGA Civil War Over Iran

FIREMAN TRUMP

The White House is in damage control as tensions escalated among the base.  (*archive link)

Donald Trump is trying to stave off a MAGA civil war over America’s involvement in the Middle East that threatens to tear apart his conservative base.

After the president abruptly left the G7 in Canada to meet with his national security team in Washington, the White House went into overdrive to assuage “America First” die-hards who are angered that the U.S. could be dragged into Israel’s battle against Iran.

Fire and smoke rise into the sky after an Israeli attack on Iran's Shahran oil depot

Israel's attacks on Iran targeted multiple military, scientific and residential locations, as well as senior government officials.

Stringer/Getty Images

“We know exactly where the so-called “Supreme Leader” is hiding,“ he posted on Truth Social on Wednesday, calling for his ”unconditional surrender."

“He is an easy target, but is safe there - we are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”

As Trump tried to calm nerves, Vice President J.D. Vance took to social media to talk up the “remarkable restraint” the president had shown in trying to keep American troops and citizens safe.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared on Fox News to assure people there had been no change in the military’s defense posture in the region.

On social media, Trump’s rapid response team posted video after video to demonstrate that he “has always been consistent” on Iran.

And at the White House, his communications fired off a press release documenting 15 times that Trump stated Iran “cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon”.

The messaging efforts point to the dilemma Trump faces as he tries to balance his support for Israel with ongoing demands from within his base to avoid another war in the Middle East.

Having come to office promising no more “endless wars,” Trump must now decide whether to help Israel destroy a deeply buried Iranian nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo, north of Tehran, using a 30-pound U.S. bomb known as a “bunker buster”.

But such a move would risk any remaining chance of the nuclear disarmament deal Trump has been pursuing and further divide the very base that got him elected.

“We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” Trump said on Wednesday. “Iran had good sky trackers and other defensive equipment, but it doesn’t compare to American made, conceived and manufactured ‘stuff’. Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA.”

Others in MAGA, however, are not convinced of America’s ongoing role. Carlson, a former Fox News host, entered the fray last week, calling Trump complicit and suggesting that the administration “drop Israel [and] let them fight their own wars.”

This led to Trump suggesting on Monday that he was irrelevant now that he no longer had his own television show, which in turn, led to Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene siding with Carlson.

“Tucker Carlson is one of my favorite people. He fiercely loves his wife, children, and our country. Since being fired by the neocon network Fox News, he has more popularity and viewers than ever before,” she said.

Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk had earlier warned the issue could cause “a massive schism in MAGA and potentially disrupt our momentum and our insanely successful Presidency.”

MAGA activist Jack Posobiec agreed, saying that “a direct strike on Iran right now would disastrously split the Trump coalition.”

Oh dear, Marge, Charlie, Tucker, Jack ... all bloody Chamberlains, who have lost their inner Churchill ...

Perhaps Andy can speak severely to them, and give them a dressing down. Why they're no better than that socialist from Kenya ...

Given all the above, it seems that the reptiles are hot to trot on regime change, slavering and slobbering over King Donald and Benji, but Peter Beaumont was cautious in the Graudian in Netanyahu speaks of regime change in Iran; what he means is regime destruction, Israeli prime minister has no interest in Iran’s future beyond weakening and destabilising a regional rival.

It helps to have a few memories outside the hive mind ...

...Iraq and Libya also demonstrate the practical difficulties of a violent transition between regimes. In Iraq, US and other officials promoted figures from the Iraqi exile diaspora, such as Ahmed Chalabi, while having, for a protracted period, a negligible grasp of emerging centres of influence or tribal and sectarian tensions.

In Libya – in the immediate aftermath of Gaddafi – that dynamic was even more in evidence as international missions, including European, struggled as midwives to a transitional government without authority, and challenged by warlordism, even as other powers including the UAE and Russia moved into the vacuum.

Long-term Iran watchers are also highly dubious that Israel can engineer a path to regime destruction through aerial warfare, even in the event of decapitation with the killing of the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei. They point out that the Israeli offensive could just as easily allow the regime to retrench and accelerate efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon.

More widely there is a risk that Israel’s efforts to destabilise Iran could lend new legitimacy to the clerical regime, even in Middle Eastern countries profoundly suspicious of it as they grow increasingly anxious over Israel’s increasingly violent reach.

“With Israel’s expansion of its offensive to include Iran, there is no telling where the boundaries of this battleground will end,” King Abdullah of Jordan said on Tuesday. His country has faced the recent challenge of hosting both Syrian and Iraqis fleeing their civil conflicts. “And that is a threat to people everywhere. Ultimately, this conflict must end,” he added.

Peter Beaumont is a senior international correspondent for the Guardian and former Jerusalem correspondent. He covered the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, the Libyan revolution and has reported from Tehran.

Well yes, and meanwhile, on a planet the reptiles never acknowledge, John Hanscombe reminiscing in The Echnica ...

For a while he was an anonymous dishwasher at the Menzies Hotel in Sydney. After that, he drove cabs.

Like many who travelled the backpacker trail through South East Asia in those days he'd ended up in the emerald city and was soon taken with its charms. He decided to stay.

But Israeli Mordechai Vanunu harboured a disturbing secret. In his backpack were rolls of film that would finally confirm that his country had built an arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Vanunu had been an engineer at Israel's Dimona nuclear research facility in the Negev desert. In the grounds of the St John's Anglican church in East Sydney, he was befriended by a Colombian journalist who wanted to sell his story and photos to the British press. On September 10, 1986, Vanunu flew to London to tell his story to the Sunday Times.

He revealed Dimona's work in separating lithium-6 to produce tritium, essential for the production of fission boosted nuclear bombs. Vanunu's revelations led experts to estimate Israel had the capacity to produce up to 150 nuclear weapons. Finally, it was confirmed. Israel had the bomb.

An elaborate plan was developed by Mossad to capture Vanunu. In a classic honey trap the engineer was lured to Rome, where he was taken prisoner and spirited back to Israel. Eventually he was tried, convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison, 11 of which were served in solitary confinement.

Israel was determined to keep a tight lid on the Dimona story, not least because its chief ally, the United States, had a ban on funding countries which produced weapons of mass destruction.

Vanunu was released from prison under strict conditions in 2004. He is not allowed to leave Israel; he can't talk to foreigners without permission from the Shin Bet security service; he can't be in the vicinity of an airport or border crossing; his phone and internet use are subject to ongoing monitoring.

And so on, and hypocrisy, be thy weapons of mass destruction friend.

Meanwhile, on another planet the reptiles never acknowledge ... per the Guardian: 

Witnesses describe ‘horror’ after Israeli forces fire at Palestinians waiting for aid trucks

At least 51 people killed and hundreds wounded in Khan Younis as they sought food supplies, says Gaza health ministry

The pond should have stayed in bed, but instead, turned to the usual Wednesday Hyding, with Marina in good form in It’s The Donald Show … without Donald Trump. Welcome to the G-something or other summit

Unlike the reptiles, the Hyding caught the tone ...

Whenever I need to leave a boring party, I always get my press secretary to tweet the apologies, and so it was that White House spokesmonster Karoline Leavitt informed X users in the dead of night that Donald Trump had ditched the G7 after barely 24 hours of mid-price hotel drabness, thus avoiding the possibility of getting cornered by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the kitchen. Trump later said he had to leave the summit “for obvious reasons”, though failed to elaborate whether he meant he’d been expected to talk with leaders, not at them, or simply that the trouser press in his room was broken.

You probably can’t call it a French exit if the French president then claims you left early to work on a ceasefire. But you can definitely up the stakes on Le Bumptious by calling him “publicity-seeking”, someone who “always gets it wrong”, and adding – almost by way of an afterthought – that all Iranians should “immediately evacuate” Tehran. (Population: 9.8 million.)

Poor old British steel was mentioned in the Hydeing, relevant when the pond gets to Mein Gott down below ...

...The one thing Trump did have time for was signing the much-vaunted US-UK trade deal, which he unveiled to the media at a photocall with grateful supplicant Keir Starmer, before dropping the papers all over the floor. The UK prime minister promptly scrabbled around to pick up what he could, which should in no way be regarded as a metaphor for the fact he is celebrating having a 10% tariff on car exports that didn’t exist a few months ago, on the basis that it is no longer 27.5%. Trump made zero attempt to help pick up the mess he’d made, which apparently should also not be regarded as a metaphor. And there was precisely nothing on lifting the 25% steel tariff, much less that the next stage of the deal will include Tata Steel. Forget metaphors here – that would be simply and literally bad.

That note will come in useful when contemplating Mein Gott's offering below.

Positively Churchillian for the entire trip through chaos.

What else? Well there was fear of course ... fear's the reptiles' staple diet ...

Case for foreign students must address community fears

Ignoring community suspicion that the existing education model puts cash before quality will only convince people who want fewer international students that it does.

By Stephen Matchett

And who's raising the community fears? 

Why the reptiles of course. It's the old reptile gotcha coming and gotcha going routine.

Say one thing, King Donald knows how to work the fear angle:

36 More Countries May Be Added to Trump’s Travel Ban

The administration gave the nations 60 days to fix concerns, according to a State Department cable. The president already imposed a full or partial ban on citizens of 19 countries. (*archive link)

...One of the first acts taken by Joseph R. Biden Jr. when he became president in 2021 was to rescind Mr. Trump’s travel bans and return to a system of individualized vetting for people from those countries. He called the bans “a stain on our national conscience” that undermined national security by jeopardizing “our global network of alliances and partnerships.”

When Mr. Trump returned to office in January, one of his first acts was an order directing the government to develop a new travel ban. He wrote that he was protecting Americans “from aliens who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes.”

Who knows, he might shrink the World Cup crowd down to the size he managed for the military parade.

And then there was this genuine bit of weirdness ...

There had been much going on already that the pond thought it might try the offering in "unplugged" form, which is to say, without the snaps, leaving it up to correspondent imaginings ...

The header: Why can’t our leaders drop the ‘Gallipoli syndrome’, Anthony Albanese suffers from ‘Gallipoli syndrome’, a form of the cultural cringe that pervades Australian life but most seriously afflicts those on the left.

The caption: Anthony Albanese speaks at the Anzac Dawn Service at the Australian War Memorial. 

The relentless insistence on being elsewhere: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

What followed was genuinely loopy:

Anthony Albanese has had a narrow escape with Donald Trump leaving the G7 early. The Prime Minister’s cavalier rebuff of Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plea for more military spending – implying that it was an assault on national sovereignty – merited a skewering.

But the problem is deeper and broader: Albanese suffers from “Gallipoli syndrome”, a form of the cultural cringe that pervades Australian life but most seriously afflicts those on the left. This syndrome is a national tendency to blame our allies for any strategic failures. It rests on a ­bizarre assumption: that the real threat to our independence isn’t the enemy but our key ally’s missteps and overbearing demands.

This transforms military alli­ances into rhetorical perform­ances; stages for asserting independence on, rather than tools for, national survival. It forgets that, ultimately, the world owes Australia nothing.

Through this distorting lens, Gallipoli is reduced to a tale of British incompetence leading Anzacs to disaster. Singapore’s fall is a gross betrayal. Vietnam, a mire that American arrogance dragged us into. The Aussie battler let down by the gross stupidity of our great ally. Every time.

And here's why the pond wanted to go unplugged. The reptiles offered this snap, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (L) and US President Donald Trump attend the Army 250th Anniversary Parade in Washington.

That entirely missed the fun, much like Faux Noise did ...

Sleepy Don and cold Melania ... so distant she wouldn't even give sleepy Don a finger ... but what a pity they'd cropped out champers Pete, in a state of depressed anxiety ...

Meanwhile, His Loopiness carried on ...

The problem? These misinterpretations build a romanticised, false victim narrative, preventing Australia from confronting geopolitical reality.

Consider Gallipoli. A pointless strategic sideshow? Perhaps. Or a bold, logical alternative to the ­futile slaughter on the Western Front, looking to launch an amphibious operation to outflank the enemy and shorten the war.

This debate should be a perennial on Australian curriculums, but this would weaken the martyrdom factor. Yet while Gallipoli is a byword for military disaster, our real mistake is compressing the whole of our Great War experience into this signal failure. It overlooks the AIF’s subsequent achievements on the Western Front, particularly in 1918, when Anzacs constituted one of the “spear points” decisively defeating the main enemy in the main theatre of a global war.

This secured the triumph of a new alliance – Americans, British and French. Thanks to this victory, Australia’s own national freedom was ensured; subsequent decades would have been unrecognisable in the wake of a defeated Britain deprived of its naval supremacy.

The same pattern recurs with the fall of Singapore in World War II. Labor mythmakers have converted this into a key episode in our national story of betrayal, where Winston Churchill abandoned us and John Curtin made the decisive “turn to America” in our hour of national peril.

The facts tell a different story. Long before Japan attacked, Washington decided US involvement in World War II was im­perative. American officials were already negotiating with Britain to take over regional defence before a panicked call from Canberra. Especially after the fall of The Philippines, they needed a base for counter-attack. Australia’s provision of armaments, ammunition and supplies were central, too, for the entire Indo-Pacific theatre.

Far from engineering a “great betrayal”, Britain, helped by the Australian legation sent to Washington by the Menzies government in 1939, actively helped persuade the Americans to commit to defend the Asia-Pacific.

This included not simply Australia itself but, equally vital, its surrounding sea lanes and communication lines as well.

Correspondents will have to imagine this snap from the archive, A Gallipoli church service during World War I.

Correspondents will also have to imagine actual history, because there's bugger all of it in this set of distortions ...

The Pacific theatre wasn’t about betrayal but instead proved to be the Western alliance’s great success. Yet, like Gallipoli, Singapore’s military failure has become the conflict’s defining motif, obscuring the real lessons.

Then there’s Vietnam, remembered purely as an American folly that ensnared us. It’s all too easy to forget that Australian security was more significantly advanced in the conflict than American.

With Indonesia’s aggressive expansionism in West New Guinea (Irian Jaya) and its Beijing-­supported Konfrontasi against Malaysia threatening the region, securing a long-term American presence in Southeast Asia was a vital Australian interest.

Leaders such as Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, agreed, crediting the US effort in South Vietnam with giving them the breathing room they needed to survive.

Yet Vietnam ultimately resulted in America’s greatest foreign defeat, worse even than the recent decadal misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Was it wrong to have fought in Vietnam because the democratic nations involved lost? That conclusion, too, is misguided. The alliance and the ­Vietnam involvement served imperative Australian needs.

Military conflicts are inherently uncertain. National leaders – and ultimately their polities – must make difficult decisions without the benefit of hindsight. If we only committed to battles guaranteed to be glorious triumphs and campaigns certain to end in victory, we wouldn’t be an ally worth having.

By golly, how it must lift the Polonial spirits to read all that, but the pond thought it would allow only one of these snaps John Curtin, Robert Menzies

Ming the Merciless! 

How the reptiles never tire of Ming ... how they love to see him in all his splendour, yet strangely never as the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

What a worthy successor to Churchill ... 

And now back for a final gobbet to the "unplugged" offering, in more than one sense of the word ...

Robert Menzies recognised this when considering the introduction of conscription to double the size of Australia’s armed forces in 1964 as regional tensions metastasised. Australia’s fraught history with military service, extending back to the divisive conscription plebiscites in World War I, carried great risk for the Coalition but it was a risk he refused to shirk.

“There comes a time in the life of any government,” he told colleagues, “where it just has to make decisions which it believes are in the best interests of the country even if they believe they are committing political suicide.”

Australia’s foundational stories of military involvement reveal a unique pathology in our national character and a fundamental misunderstanding of alliances. We see ourselves as loyal deputies who are automatically owed protection or victims of betrayal. We fail to grasp that alliances are a complex interplay of mutual and often competing self-interest, yet ultimately pursued to increase national security in a world periodically riven by extreme conflict.

The truth is that alliance isn’t defence on the cheap. You may be able to get away with it for a decade or two in fortuitous circumstances, but sooner or later the hammer falls. If Australia is serious about defending itself and contributing powerfully to an alliance, we need to lift our game.

That our chief security guarantor has had to highlight the utter lack of seriousness in our ­current policy shows how deeply Gallipoli syndrome has compromised our vision and capacity to act meaningfully. As Albanese returns from the G7, he must ensure our national complex stops blinding us to our real situation. It’s time to wake up.

Alex McDermott is a historian.

Some history some historian.

How weird and desperate are the reptiles getting these days, as the world of King Donald and Faux Noise falls apart ...

The pond thought of offering Dame Slap in a late arvo slot, or unplugged, but decided the monomaniacal obsession with the super war could proceed as a fitting  bonus, with the interrupting snaps presented in a very small form ...

It's five minutes long, so the reptiles say ...

The header: This is Liberals chance to expose Labor on super tax, Offering to improve a bad tax policy and simultaneously behaving like the political grown-up in the room is a start. Over to you, Sussan Ley.

The caption: Leader of the Opposition Sussan Ley holds a press conference at Parliament House. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

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

There's nothing to say about this offering, reptiles will do what reptiles will do, Dame Slap gonna scribble straight out of the demented super wars hive mind, and if you never got tired of Dame Groan groaning about the super wars, then maybe this will slap some sense into you  ...

A shell-shocked opposition needs to scour history to see how to rebuild. Though Gough Whitlam is no natural blueprint for the Liberal Party, the smart ones might learn something from the way he pulled the ALP from the blue funk of its disastrous 1966 election result back to electoral acceptability. Famously, Whitlam challenged the 1967 annual conference of the Victorian ALP to skip the ideology. “Certainly, the impotent are pure,” he told them. Whitlam certainly led a shambles of a government, but he did lead an opposition out of the wilderness.

The Coalition faces one of those litmus tests about ideological purity in dealing with the Albanese government’s proposed new tax on superannuation accounts over $3m.

Right now, the Coalition seems set on opposing the new tax in the Senate in every respect. It is a matter of principle that the Libs hate new taxes so it will offer this new tax no support.

Principle is, of course, a fine thing, but here all it will do is ensure that the tax will be enacted by Labor with support from Greens senators. That means any amendments conceded by the government to win Greens support (for example, lowering the threshold to $2m) will make the tax even more objectionable to the Coalition and its supporters than the government’s original proposal.

Came an interruption, Experts have warned Labor's proposed superannuation tax is open to manipulation. The Albanese government is pushing for superannuation accounts of three million dollars or more to be taxed. One of Australia's biggest auditors, ASF Audits, is concerned about the manipulation of property and farm valuations. The company's head of technical says wealthy Australians could avoid taxation by revaluing assets.

Came more slaps from Dame Slap:

Cynics fear that is the Coalition’s intention. They speculate that the worse the tax is, the more reviled it will be, and that this will improve the opposition’s political fortunes. If so, this is a classic example of the opposition sacrificing policy outcomes, and the financial welfare of those they say they exist to help, on the altar of their own political ambitions.

There is a simple and obvious compromise the opposition could offer the Albanese government that would remove the most pernicious, and irreversible, effect of the government’s proposal while preserving the Coalition’s ability to reverse all the other parts of the proposal if and when it regains power.

The opposition could offer to vote in the Senate to accept the doubling of existing tax rates on superannuation accounts over $3m without indexation, but without the tax on unrealised capital gains. A simple swap; the government gets a new higher tax rate on large super balances, but calculated in the traditional way on realised income, dividends and capital gains – not on unrealised gains.

There is a strong argument that this would be welcomed not only by Coalition supporters, but by the community at large, which is only now realising the full horror of the Chalmers proposal.

Came another visual interruption, featuring the man who didn't just nuke the country, he nuked the coalition, Deputy Leader of the Opposition Ted O’Brien

Came yet more slaps from Dame Slap:

The logic behind this is to recognise that of the three key elements of the new tax, two of them (the tax rate and the thresholds) are reversible, while one element (taxing unrealised gains) is effectively not reversible. In the first year in which a self-managed super fund with illiquid assets, such as a farm, a business or a house, makes a material unrealised gain on that asset, it may well have to sell the asset to pay the tax. Once sold the damage is forever done. A family’s ongoing livelihood may well disappear on the sale, replaced by cash (minus tax). It would be most unlikely, indeed imprudent, for the SMSF to ever put illiquid assets into the fund again.

Treasury boffins and class warriors, of course, say that it was always imprudent to permit illiquid assets inside super, but this is hotly contested. Industry super funds are stuffed full of illiquid assets but have the scale and liquidity to meet the claims of their members, who may be forced to withdraw super to pay the new tax.

In any case, it’s beside the point for Jim Chalmers to now say SMSFs should have set aside liquid assets to fund this new tax. The real point is that SMSFs have been permitted, indeed encouraged, to invest in illiquid assets by past policy and could not possibly have anticipated this new tax.

In short, the taxation of unrealised gains inside super is a change in kind in our tax regime, whereas changes in the tax rate or in thresholds are merely changes of degree.

If the Coalition were to offer to back changes in the tax rate and thresholds in return for the government dropping the taxation of unrealised gains, it could, hand on heart, say it is doing so grudgingly to avoid a permanent structural change to our tax system and will, if re-elected, reverse the changes to the tax rate and thresholds.

Came a snap of a threatening ogre, Treasurer Jim Chalmers holds a press conference at Parliament House. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Came still more slaps ...

The Albanese government has sent mixed signals as to whether it would accept such an offer of compromise by the Coalition, but that’s no reason for the Coalition not to offer it. The mere offer is a win-win proposition for the Coalition. If the government rejects it, it deflates its default line about an obstructionist No-alition. And the government would be exposed, not only as intransigent and inflexible, but its real motive – to cripple SMSFs – would be made plain.

There have been hints that the government cannot implement this compromise proposal because big super funds have some unspecified practical problems in calculating tax at different rates above and below a threshold. This beggars belief as a single superannuant is already taxed differentially depending on whether they have a balance above or below $1.9m (the so-called transfer balance cap). If the government sticks to this argument, it had better do so clearly and publicly without subterfuge.

Finally, a response to those who say we should simply chill out about taxing unrealised capital gains. The usually diligent Graeme Samuel, who made the “chill out” argument last week, said: “Interestingly, we have all endured taxes on unrealised gains of our property holdings with land taxes and local government rates. We have learned to just accept this as part of our taxpaying obligations. And I am forecasting we will do the same with Chalmers’s superannuation reforms.”

Came an AV distraction, Former Reserve Bank board members and major Liberal Party donors have suggested the Coalition should negotiate with Labor on their super tax scheme. The proposed changes would see super accounts with more than $3 million, be subjected to unrealised capital gains tax without indexation. Former RBA Board Member Donald McGauchie warns the changes "will grow like a cancer" if they are introduced. The Coalition is divided on whether it should strike a deal with Labor.

Came a final set of slaps ...

Samuel’s failure to mention even the most obvious flaws to the “relax, it’s just like land tax” argument is disappointing. He is normally better than this. Let me make just two points. First, the amount and impact of land tax is deliberately small, so as not to cause tax avoidance behaviour or distort markets. In NSW, for example, land with a value of less than $1.075m is exempt from tax. Above that, tax is charged at 1.6 per cent per annum of the unimproved value up to $6.571m when a 2 per cent rate cuts in.

Chalmers’s new tax rate, by contrast, is a whopping 15 per cent per annum on any unrealised gain. Whereas land tax rates are deliberately minuscule, to stop owners being forced to sell in order to pay tax, Chalmers’s big new super tax on unrealised gains seems deliberately designed, for ideological reasons, to force SMSFs to sell illiquid assets.

Second, no one could have planned for Chalmers’s big new super tax on unrealised gains. By contrast, Australian states have had land tax for well over a century. South Australia introduced it in 1884 and NSW in 1895. No Australian in over a century has ever bought land for investment purposes without knowing it would be subject to land tax.

By contrast, no Australian SMSF has ever bought an illiquid asset knowing in advance that it would be subject to Chalmers’s sudden, and completely unforeseen, tax ambush.

It defies reason that the tax-hating Liberals were so incompetently quiet about this misguided proposal at the last election. Now, perhaps, the Liberals can demonstrate some competence.

Offering to improve a bad tax policy and simultaneously behaving like the political grown-up in the room is a start. Over to you, Sussan Ley.

What a super contribution to the lizard Oz super wars.

And so to a final bonus and is it wrong for the pond to be greedy?

You see thanks to Mein Gott filing later in the day, the pond always tends to miss out on Mein Gott, but the pond had nothing to say on Dame Slap's super contribution to the super wars, so where's the harm in a final after dinner mint?

Stand well clear ...

The header: How US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s rising power could hurt Australia, Under Donald Trump, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is becoming more powerful with each passing day, and that could be bad for Australia.

The caption: US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Elon Musk at a news conference with Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington last month. Picture: Allison Robbert/AFP

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

Mein Gott started by operating under the bizarre notion that there's going to be any form of certainty dealing with King Donald and his minions.

A glimpse at the flip-flopping surrounding immigration policies in recent times should have put that to bed yet again.

Cue...

Stephen Miller and ICE Barbie in Bitter West Wing Civil War Over Round-Ups

PUT ON ICE

The pair weren’t best pleased with an intervention from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins regarding immigration raids. (* Archive link).

The flip-flopping is bizarre, and frequent, as noted in Trump's abrupt policy switch on immigration benefits top donors

Trump falsely claimed that Democrats "use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State." This is a version of the racist "great replacement" conspiracy theory, which posits that immigration is part of a plot by Democrats to marginalize and "replace" white Republicans.

Late Monday, the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration had reversed course again and would resume workplace raids in the agricultural and hospitality industry. The back and forth represents a power struggle between well-connected corporate interests and immigration hawks at the White House.

That WaPo reference? See here, or see an archive link.

Sorry, sorry, the pond didn't mean to hare off in another direction as Mein Gott showed he was ready and able to do the art of the deal with King Donald. 

Like all the reptiles, Mein Gott can be endlessly delusional and this produces a unique form of optimism.

Donald Trump started his second presidency with two Elon Musk-type staunch supporters. The first, the real Musk, received endless publicity and then he fell out with President Trump.

But the second “Musk”- Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick – is becoming more powerful as each day goes by and that power may not be used to help Australia.

Whereas the real Musk achieved entry to Trump’s billionaire camp via cars and space, Lutnick achieved billionaire status via the bond market. He also lost a brother in the 9/11 terror attacks.

Lutnick has pulled off what is arguably the biggest visible achievement of the “Make America Great Again” campaign. He will look to repeat the model, and other countries will be watching closely.

Lutnick is a strong advocate for the Trump policy of using tariffs and low energy costs to entice major investment in US industry, and believes steel is the backbone of a modern economy and military.

The second Musk? Let's hope he has better luck pitching his card than Leon does pitching Teslers ...

Howard Lutnick Just Can’t Stop Pitching Trump’s $5M Golden Visa Card to Foreign Elites

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick just can’t stop pitching President Donald Trump’s “beautiful” new “golden” investor visa to foreign officials and elites – pushing the residency scheme as hard as a salesman at a yacht show.

Lutnick admitted to the Financial Times that he has been selling the so-called Trump Card to foreign dignitaries and business leaders from Riyadh to Palo Alto, promising U.S. legal residency for a cool $5 million. Nearly 70,000 have reportedly already joined the waiting list, according to internal figures cited by the Commerce Department.

“Whenever I meet with international executives,” he told the FT, “I always go through it with them and sell it to them. I can’t help myself.”

That FT yarn, archive link, has some nice add-ons ...

...The White House still needs to determine crucial details about the scheme, although three months ago Lutnick claimed on the All-In Podcast that it would launch in about a fortnight.

The design of a special tax structure for Trump Card holders has yet to be finalised, and while the vetting of applicants is expected to be done by the departments of homeland security, state and commerce, Trump has not decided whether citizens of any particular countries would be excluded from applying. The White House has banned travel to the US from a dozen nations and is reportedly considering others.

Italian billionaire and stablecoin Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino in April told the FT that the success of such visas depended on the tax treatment they afforded.

Ardoino, who has partnered with Lutnick’s former firm Cantor Fitzgerald in a crypto venture, said “the problem” with Americans is “wherever they go, they have to pay taxes in the US”.

“I didn’t research into it, but I live in Switzerland, in El Salvador,” he added. “Why should I [buy it]?”

The reptiles kept on insisting attention should be paid to Leon, Elon Musk speaks during a news conference with President Donald Trump as, from left, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick look on. Picture: Evan Vucci/AP Photo

Leon has his own problems ... Elon Musk Continues to Insist He Is Not on Drugs, Now With Screenshot of Drug Test.

Desperate stuff, and luckily that means Mein Gott doesn't sound quite so desperate or hysterical ... though he does his best ...

In the Biden years, Japanese based Nippon Steel had been trying to acquire the struggling giant US Steel company but was blocked by the Biden administration over national security concerns.

President Trump had been expected to follow Biden and also block the $US14.9bn ($A22.90bn) Nippon bid, especially as the steel unions who were big Trump supporters and opposed Japanese control. But Lutnick found a way to harness the Japanese investment power.

The Japanese agreed to invest in modernising US Steel plants and to expand production which enable Lutnick to achieve his aim of revitalising American steel production, so reducing dependence on Chinese imports.

But that was not enough. To be allowed to take over the American steelmaker, Nippon Steel had to agree to grant the White House a “golden share” that gives the government an extraordinary influence over the US company.

President Trump and his successors will have a permanent stake in US Steel, giving the American government significant sway over the company’s board and a veto power over a wide array of company actions.

Under the terms of a national security pact, the US government would retain a single share of preferred stock, called class G – as in gold.

And US Steel’s charter will list activities the company cannot undertake without the approval of the President or someone he designates in his stead.

For example, Nippon must gain the President’s permission to transfer production or jobs outside the US; closing or idling plants before agreed-upon time frames; making certain changes to how it sources its raw materials plus other powers.

Effectively, US Steel, although owned by Nippon, becomes a quasi government body – an arrangement that if duplicated elsewhere could change the nature of strategic foreign investment in the US.

Australia is unlikely to follow the Lutnick model in the Santos takeover approval decision, but it will certainly look at it.

Australia, via BlueScope Steel, is a significant producer of steel in the US via electric arc furnaces that use scrap steel as a raw material. BlueScope also has a steel building component operation and will be a major beneficiary from US steel protectionism.

However, it supplements its US steel production with imports from Port Kembla in Australia. The Trump administration has imposed big tariffs on those imports, and Australia is seeking relief.

How the reptiles love their images of steel, so much better than renewables, North Star BlueScope Steel is a steelmaking mini-mill located in Delta, Ohio.

Mein Gott struggled to find a way forward ...

Given the nature of the Nippon Steel-US Steel deal, it will be difficult for either Lutnick or President Trump to lower the tariffs.

They may ask BlueScope to expand into its US production or buy steel from other American steelmakers.

However, one of the ideas Lutnick has been discussing with President Trump is the possibility of devoting income from specific tariff levies to assisting companies finance US expansion to replace their imports.

If BlueScope can’t get tariff relief, it should explore that possibility.

Meanwhile, the deal will send a shiver through Australian iron ore producers because China will sell less steel to the US and require less iron ore. On the other hand, the Japanese have been much less active in exporting steel to the US, so it is not a major part of the Japanese industry. This makes it attractive to develop a major US steel manufacturing presence to replace Chinese imports.

The US government has historically taken stakes in companies only when they were under financial duress or played a significant role in the economy. During the 2008-9 financial crisis, it acquired a large stake in General Motors as part of a bailout and took control of the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The US Treasury sold the last of its stake in General Motors in 2013. President Trump has canvassed releasing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from government control.

Australia’s Whyalla building products steel plant is in financial trouble and the Australian government will need to consider a bailout along the lines of the US actions in 2008.

The reptiles reassured Mein Gott with another snap, Whyalla steelworks in South Australia. Picture: Dean Martin

That calmed Mein Gott down and he spluttered out a few final words ...

But the plant needs substantial investment. Currently, there is a glut of steel, but that will change overtime If Whyalla closes, the Australian building industry will be totally dependent on imports.

The message from the second “Musk” – Lutnick – would be that a vibrant steel industry is vital for any nation.

An epic day, with Benji doing his best to save his hide ...

‘Our battle against evil is a service to humanity’: Netanyahu

‘Today, it’s Tel Aviv. Tomorrow, it’s New York,’ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warns in a direct appeal to the White House.

Amanda Hodge

Yes, and tomorrow a new Riviera, with the the ethnic cleansing proceeds apace, as the pond turns to the immortal Rowe for a closing 'toon ...

Never mind the adoring elephant ...

... look what's on the menu as finger food...