In which our Henry, the bromancer and Killer of the IPA sort out everything, though it might take a couple of weeks ...

 

The pond had thought of starting the day with a distraction ... this story in WaPo, where democracy goes to die in a billionaire's pocket ...

It came in a couple of forms ...

State Dept. restarts student visa interviews with tougher social media rules, The new requirements could affect hundreds of thousands of visa applications each year, raising concerns about staffing requirements. (* Archive link)

US resumes visas for foreign students but demands access to social media accounts, The U.S. State Department says it’s restarting the suspended process for foreigners applying for student visas but says all applicants will now be required to unlock their social media accounts for review (* Archive link)

The pond swiftly realised it was no biggie. 

All the US was doing was explaining and training students in the ways of authoritarian and fascist states, so that they might be deported back home in due course fully equipped to submit to their local authoritarian and/or fascist governments. 

Isn't a fascist education in the ways of fascism a wondrous thing?

Besides, there was splendid news. 

Our Henry had returned, and he was in a war monger mood ... 

Look, there he is, towards the bottom of the top digital edition news, just above the Vics saving Pesutto's bacon, but with his very own bigly splash ...

Sad to say, those expecting any insights into the history of Iran will be disappointed. 

If you want any of that, you'd be better off with Amin Saikal, in The Conversation with Iran’s long history of revolution, defiance and outside interference – and why its future is so uncertain.

Or perhaps Lawrence Wu back in 2019 in NPR with How The CIA Overthrew Iran's Democracy In 4 Days

Ah yes, the good old days of the 1953 coup - is there any country the CIA hasn't fucked up in some way? (Memo to international students, don't put that in your social media).

Sadly, instead of all that, you just cop this ...

The header: Iran’s rulers hellbent on apocalyptic stupidity, It is impossible to understand Iran’s miscalculations without grasping the mindset of its rulers and the religious fanaticism on which it is based.
The caption: An Iranian army member looks back among others, as they conclude their march, during a parade commemorating National Army Day in front of the shrine of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini.
Mindless advice to go there, and never mind we're here: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Our Henry is so deep into Benji's pocket all he can see is the fanaticism of the mad Mullahs, and never mind the deep fundamentalist fanaticism and ethnic cleansing zealotry of the mob of Zionists currently running Israel ...

Years ago, commenting on one of Iran’s periodic crises, the great American statesman Dean Acheson wryly observed that “never have so few lost so much so quickly and so stupidly”. Today, as its military capabilities continue to be battered, Iran’s ruling theocracy seems set on a repeat performance.
But rather than simply an error, its miscalculations are the inevitable result of the mindset that has defined the Iranian regime since it seized power in 1979.
Central to that mindset is a theology that harks for the decimation of unbelievers and the dawn of the Day of Judgment. The image Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, posted earlier this week on X highlighted it starkly. Captioned “Ali returns to Khaybar”, the image, which shows a man brandishing a sword as he strides into a burning fortress, refers to a well-known incident in the life of Mohammed that eventually culminated, under Umar al-Khattab, in the death and destruction of Khaybar’s entire Jewish population.
Khamenei’s reference to that incident, which prefigures the fate that awaits infidels, was scarcely an accident. While visions of the End Time permeate the great religions, they are particularly prominent in Shia Islam.
At their heart lies the expectation of a messianic leader, known as the Mahdi or Qa’im (“the riser”), who – as in Khamenei’s post – is armed with a sword that unerringly guides him to the enemies of God. Wielding that invincible sword, the “Master of the Age” will butcher Allah’s adversaries, reassert the House of Mohammad’s rights and inaugurate, over the infidels’ dead bodies, an era of peace and justice.

It would of course be possible to seek out alternative views on the barking mad mob of Zionists currently in charge, whether true believer or secularist, as outlined by Joseph Massad back in 2023 in Are Jewish fundamentalists more dangerous than the secularists? Ask their Palestinian victims.

The reptiles decided to interrupt with a snap, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during Friday prayer ceremony in Tehran, Iran.

Our Henry decided to introduce a mild billy goat butt in the form of "There are, for sure ..."

There are, for sure, factors that have at times moderated the impact of apocalyptic premonitions on Shiite communities. Thus, traditional Shiite dogma left little room for human volition in the supreme designs of the Master of the Age, encouraging Shiites to wait patiently for the Mahdi’s arrival.
Moreover, in a pattern that typifies Persian history, regimes that initially triumphed by mobilising hopes of imminent salvation – such as the Safavids, who, coming to power in 1501, established Shiism as Persia’s official religion – then cooled those expectations so as to assure their regime’s stability.
But the rise of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini swept the inhibitions aside. Imbued from an early age with intense millennial expectations, one of his best-known poems prays for the day when “Two hundred million will be felled from chariots upon the darkened earth/Caesar’s gut will split; Napoleon’s heart will burst/Yet from that bombardment the world will become the eternal paradise”.

That sadly was as good as it got for those who lust for history in the style and manner our Henry, 'hole in bucket' repair expert, made famous.

A token mention of Caesar and Napoleon, and then it was just in the form of a borrowed poem? 

Pitiful ...as on the pond trudged, hope quickly vanishing.

It is therefore unsurprising that apocalyptic imagery figured prominently in the 1979 Revolution and in the regime’s propaganda during the blood-soaked Iran-Iraq war.
And it is unsurprising too that without ever claiming to be the returning Mahdi, Khomeini ensured his acclamation as the Imam – a title that, since the 16th century, Shiites had never attributed to a living person.
Millennialism received a further, enduring, boost in the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-2013). Convinced that divine intervention had opened the eyes and ears of the delegates to the UN General Assembly when he addressed them, Ahmadinejad used apocalyptic rhetoric as a cover both for empowering (and enriching) the Revolutionary Guard and for brutally suppressing the protests that rocked Iran in 2009-10. Since then, it has repeatedly been deployed by hardliners in the face of popular revolts.
However, millennialism is not just the regime’s ideology. It is its program of action. At the outset of the Iranian revolution, Khomeini proclaimed that “state boundaries are the product of a deficient human mind; the Revolution will ignore them – and until the cry ‘There is no god but God’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle!”. If, in order to achieve that goal, it proved necessary “to destroy this world to construct the other world”, then that was a price worth paying.

Of course there are other sides to the story ... see Anshel Pfeffer in Haaretz back in July 2024, 

'A Miraculous Time': Israel's Far-right Jewish Fundamentalists Want War, Settlements and Intifada. And Netanyahu Is Facilitating Them, For far-right messianic settler ministers like Orit Strock and Bezalel Smotrich and their sizeable constituencies, nine months of battles in Gaza aren't enough. They sense a biblical opportunity for conquest and power, and Prime Minister Netanyahu won't publicly oppose them. This is the story of a war between two Israels (* Archive link)

Millennialism, messianic, whatever, the reptiles interrupted with another snap, Sea of hands reach out to greet Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini following his arrival at the international airport.

Our Henry sailed on, blithely refusing to mention the CIA or fundamentalist Zionism ...or the way that the final eradication of Palestinians might pave the way for a greater Israel ...

But while Khomeini conceptualised jihad as global, his primary focus was always on Israel and Jews. Not that Khomeini ever tolerated other faiths. On the contrary, he made his name by launching a campaign in 1956 for the suppression of Iran’s Bahai. Later, in a widely used codex that codifies the Shiite purity laws, Khomeini classified Christians as well as Jews as defilers whose bodies are as unclean as dogs, pigs and urine.
There is, however, no doubt that “the Jews”, who allegedly hold “secret conferences” in which they plot to rule the world, stood, for Khomeini, in a class of their own – as they always had in Muslim apocalyptics. Devious plotters endowed with mysterious powers, they could strike suddenly and unexpectedly with huge force; but faced with Islamic steadfastness, they were certain to crumble. And there could be no more important step towards the Day of Judgment than the final eradication of Israel and the subjugation of its surviving Jewish inhabitants.
All that now has immediate consequences. Iran’s theocratic rulers do not view their regime as merely a normal government. As Khomeini said immediately after the referendum that endorsed Iran’s theocratic constitution, the revolution ensured that “a satanic power departed forever, and the government of God was established in its place” – a government that had to endure, at whatever cost, “until the time when the Mahdi emerges from hiding”.
It is utterly fanciful to believe that such a government, freighted with a divine mission, will readily acknowledge defeat. Instead, unless and until it is utterly crushed, the ruling theocracy will view this battle as just another step in the “fitna” that precedes the End: the testing time of tribulation that separates true believers from the hesitant, before bestowing on the meritorious rewards 20 times those of ordinary shahids (martyrs).
As for the Revolutionary Guards, whose considerable wealth relies on the regime’s perpetuation, it is even less likely that they will make concessions unless they are comprehensively routed.

To bless our Henry's proceedings, the reptiles provided a snap of his hero, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference in Jerusalem.

Then it was a short gallop to the end, with a tantalising, but sadly token, all too brief, reference to the nineteenth century.

And it is least likely of all that the regime will accept a durable and credible peace with Israel or, for that matter, the West. Rather, in accordance with the ruling that “Al-Darurat Tubihu al-Mahzurat” (“necessity permits forbidden acts”), and strictly following, like Hamas and Hezbollah, the precedent the Prophet Mohammed set with the Treaty of Hudaibiyya, it will, at most, enter into a temporary armistice agreement (“Hudna”) whose sole purpose is to allow it to rearm for the next battle with the enemies of Allah.
Nor, unfortunately, can one count on the regime being easily displaced. An internal reshuffle is certainly possible; but the reality is that the genuinely oppositional forces have been battered by repression and beset by the absence of effective leadership.
Although Iran has produced many outstanding liberal thinkers – beginning with Mirza Malkum Khan in the 19th century – it is hard to dispute Hussein Banai’s conclusion, in his magisterial history of Iranian liberalism, that “especially in times of crisis, the inability of liberals to translate their fractured practices into a coherent and unified political movement has persistently led to failure”.
As a result, the priority must now be to eliminate as comprehensively as possible the regime’s offensive military capabilities. Until our government recognises that fact, its repeated calls for peace will be nothing but hot air.

Have the wheels fallen off our Henry? Is he so blinded by war mongering bloodlust and a desire for regime change that all he can offer is hot air?

Never mind, because the pond noted that early this morning this was the lizard Oz headline:

Trump to make Iran strike call ‘within two weeks’
The US President has thrown Iran a two-week lifeline, believing there is still a ‘substantial chance of negotiations’ with the Islamic regime.

"Two weeks" is now such a farce that comedians routinely have fun with it. 

Steve Benen was one of the latest with A familiar metric: White House says to expect Iran decision within 'two weeks', Donald Trump's reliance on a two-week timeline for a decision on Iran represents a striking failure of self-awareness...

...It’s difficult to say with confidence whether these negotiations exist or whether they’ll succeed, but the fact that Trump and his team has rolled out another “two week” timeline represents a remarkable failure of self-awareness.
Last week for example, the president said U.S. trading partners should expect letters on unilateral tariff rates in “two weeks.” Shortly before that, the president was asked about Vladimir Putin’s alleged interest in “peace.” He replied, “I can’t tell you that, but I’ll let you know in about two weeks.”
Last month, Trump was asked about tariff rates on pharmaceutical products. “I’ll know in the next two weeks,” he said.
Alas, we can keep going. Where’s Trump’s health care plan? It’ll be ready in “two weeks.” What about a possible minimum-wage increase? That, too, will be unveiled in “two weeks.” On everything from tax policy to infrastructure, immigration to reproductive health, the president’s detailed solutions are always just “two weeks” away.
By now, most observers are probably familiar with how the game is played: The Republican is asked for his position on an issue; he dodges the question by saying he’ll make an announcement “in two weeks”; and then he waits for everyone to forget about his self-imposed deadline.

And so on and on, and see the original for the story links, and here, have a Golding ...

That "two week" notion left that lesser member of the Kelly gang, Joe, like a shag on a rock, as he tried to go full war monger to impress his seniors ...

Trump must act now to eliminate the nuclear threat, Doing nothing is not an option. Donald Trump must seize his historic opportunity and act swiftly to remove the nuclear option from Iran through force or an eleventh hour deal.
By Joe Kelly
National Affairs editor

Joe was over in the extreme far right section of the lizard Oz, in company with the bromancer ...

But why would the pond bother with Joe, in second place, when it could have the bromancer on top of the hive mind world ma, and best of all, it was just a two minute read? 

Or so the reptiles said ... because they still gave it the full treatment ...

There was a grand header: Hospital strike will only strengthen Israel’s resolve – and Trump’s, Iran’s latest missile attacks show no defence system is 100 per cent foolproof. Full scale ballistic missiles travelling at enormous speed are very difficult targets to take down.

A sad caption: Rescue workers and military personnel inspect the site of a direct hit from an Iranian missile strike in Ramat Gan, Israel. Picture: AP

And that mystical incantation: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

For all that the bromancer was inclined to be subdued, and clearly hadn't caught up with news of the TACO king's two week routine ...

Iran’s latest missile strikes in Tel Aviv, and on a hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, will stiffen Israel’s resolve to finish the job of destroying as much of Iran’s nuclear program as possible.
They are also likely to increase the chances that US President Donald Trump will join Israel in offensive operations in Iran.
The penetration of the missiles will have shocked many Israelis. As the frequency and size of Iranian missile attacks on Israel reduced over the course of the week during which the Israel/Iran war has been going, Israelis and their allies became perhaps a little complacent that they had diminished, if not destroyed, Iran’s ability to strike back. The Israeli government had announced an easing of restrictions on Israelis’ movements and activities because the Iranian missile threat seemed to be decreasing.

The reptiles offered an AV distraction, a stark contrast to their reluctance to show the destruction of Gaza, Footage captures the aftermath of a direct ballistic missile strike in Holon, Israel. Buildings are heavily damaged, streets are littered with debris, and emergency services are seen responding to the devastation. The attack marks a significant escalation in regional tensions.

The bromancer descended into defensive posture ...

This is because Israel has been hitting Iranian missile stocks, and all the technical gear supporting them, in order to make it more difficult for Iran to carry out just this kind of missile strike.
However, experts think the Israelis may have destroyed 30 to 40 per cent of Iran’s missiles. That still leaves Iran with a lot of missiles to fire.
Israeli air missions are working to suppress this.
The Israelis have for example attacked the trucks which typically move Iranian missiles from their storage silos to their launch points. The Israelis have been focused on attacking choke points in both Iran’s nuclear program and its missile program.
Israel has interceptors which can take out even ballistic missiles and it seems to have destroyed the majority of Iranian missiles launched even in this latest attack.
However, no missile defence system is 100 per cent foolproof.
Israeli’s Iron Dome system of defence is mainly directed at the kind of low-tech missiles and projectiles which Hamas traditionally fired from Gaza, and the more hi-tech but still limited missiles which Hezbollah fired from southern Lebanon.

Then came a snap of the too weak man, US President Donald Trump. Picture: AP

All the bromancer could offer was the hope of a surprise ... perhaps in two weeks ...

Full-scale ballistic missiles travelling at enormous speed are very difficult targets for interceptors to get. As the boffins say, it’s a challenge akin to hitting bullets with bullets.
Meanwhile Israel is continuing to attack nuclear, missile, military, police, broadcast and some energy infrastructure targets inside Iran. The Israeli operation will have a limited time duration. It has done a great deal of damage to Iran’s nuclear programs already.
But of course the whole world waits on Trump’s decision on whether he will use American forces to help the Israelis hit and hopefully destroy the Fordow nuclear facility, which is buried deep inside a mountain.
The American bunker buster bomb was built with Fordow in mind.
However, the Israelis also have a number of different ways they can attack Fordow as well.
There is no visible weakening of Israeli resolve in this campaign. The Israeli government says it will be intensifying its air campaign in Iran in the coming days.
Trump was certainly telling the truth when he said no-one knows what he will do about striking Iran. He also said he likes to make a decision one second before it must be made, because circumstances keep changing.
The Israeli campaign will continue for some days at least. There are bound to be more surprises.

Here, have an  immortal Rowe and surprise, surprise, it features the too weak man ...

And so to the bonus, and here the pond was torn. 

There was always the chance of some pearls of wisdom ...

Has Jim Chalmers finally seen the light?
When Chalmers talks about resilience, he is signalling his willingness to bet billions of taxpayer dollars and our future living standards on green hydrogen, green steel and a nation covered with solar panels and wind turbines.
By David Pearl

But if the pond wants a Killer bout of renewables bashing and climate science denialism, it will always turn first to mask-fearing Killer of the IPA ...

Killer was in top IPA denialist form with Net zero is Australia’s biggest self-imposed economic burden, For all the economic damage, Australia isn’t even close to achieving its emissions reduction target. There is no transition.

There was a snap of that despicable man, and the stench of vile renewables: Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen tours the 5B solar manufacturing facility in Salisbury.

And there was an invitation to go there: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Killer was in expert denialist form, up there with his denunciation of masks ...

When I began writing about economics at The Australian more than a decade ago, these pages were filled with optimism: the resource boom was in full swing, the phrase “miracle economy” still prevalent. If we had a problem it was a “two-speed” economy, and an Australian dollar that was almost as valuable as the greenback.
Fast-forward to now and there’s only one speed – and it’s too often in reverse. National income per person has fallen for nine of the past 11 quarters. Australia is dropping down global living standards league tables.
Our country excels at self-imposed economic burdens: an excessively regulated labour market that throttles small business, a compulsory saving system that takes money from workers when they need it most, and a shockingly high – and growing – income tax burden that acts as a de facto prohibition on innovation and as a powerful incentive for young, bright Australians to emigrate.
But perhaps the most damaging, and indeed ridiculous, self-harm of all is the determination to reach net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.
Even proponents of the policy put the total cost, often couched as an “investment opportunity”, at near $9 trillion by 2060, according to Net Zero Australia.

The reptiles interrupted with a word from Jimbo, blathering away to petulant Peta, Liberal Senator James McGrath discusses the recent decision by the NSW Nationals to dump their net zero commitments. “We’ve got to get energy policy right, we’ve got to make sure that we don’t crash the economy,” Mr McGrath told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “We do want to reduce emissions. “We have also got to remember that Chris Bowen is the one who’s in charge of it at the moment, and he’s the one with his reckless renewables, who’s actually forcing up people’s power prices.”

Strange there was no mention of nuking the country, perhaps another time, as Killer looked to Tony Bleagh and never mind stories such as the Graudian's How ‘out of touch’ Tony Blair became a serious threat to climate action, Even before his call for a net zero ‘reset’, there had been criticism of ex-PM’s lucrative links with fossil fuel nations.

There's never a oil buck Bleagh hasn't liked if it lands in his purse, even more than his love of sexing up a war folly, just the right sort of qualities for a Killer to love ... 

Fortunately, more people, political parties and governments are beginning to wake up to economic and scientific reality. Net zero won’t and can’t happen bar some remarkable, epoch-changing scientific breakthrough. Yet governments are inflicting enormous economic damage in trying.
In a few years the policy will go the same way as Covid zero, another costly delusion that couldn’t ever remotely pass a cost-benefit analysis.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair recently said the net-zero policy was “doomed to fail” and “riven with irrationality”, as Britain’s Labour Party faces an electoral wipeout. British trade unions are beginning to baulk at the manufacturing job losses.
In recent weeks the NSW Nationals and the South Australian Liberals have dumped net zero as a policy, following in the footsteps of the British Conservative Party earlier this year. Research by the Institute of Public Affairs and other surveys show Australians, including young people, believe the government should prioritise affordability over emissions targets. Rural and regional communities throughout the US and Britain are increasingly pushing back against the destruction of their natural environment by wind turbines and solar panels. While they rarely make the national news, the IPA has identified 178 such cases of local opposition in Australia since 2008.
The world’s biggest economies, including the US, China, India and Russia, increasingly pay, at most, lip service to the so-called Paris climate accord goals. Hardly anyone outside Australia, Canada and the ossifying, shrinking European Union takes the 2050 pledges seriously.

Cue a snap of Killer's new hero, Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair speaks as he attends a panel discussion during the Austrian World Summit in Vienna.

 

Next Killer turned to a certain Robert Bryce, who mercifully remained out of the pond's sight as he delighted the IPA mob with his tour down under ...

The pond has already featured denialist Bryce at DeSmog and he was on hand with others helping to fuck the United States ... but the good news is that outside Sky After Dark down under, the IPA mob and the likes of Killer and the Speccie crew, he barely disturbed the bleached coral ...

American author and journalist Robert Bryce, who this week wrapped up an Australian speaking tour with the IPA, blasted Australia’s energy policy as the most absurd and self-destructive in the world given our resource-rich endowments. Australia’s wholesale electricity prices have almost tripled since 2008 as the share of “renewables” in the grid has soared to 33 per cent. Canberra is seeking to paper over the economic reality of wind and solar power by partly nationalising households’ electricity bills, applying a $300 rebate to everyone’s power bill this financial year. How sustainable is this sleight of hand as prices continue to march higher?
In any case it won’t help manufacturing. Australia now has the lowest share of manufacturing employment of any OECD nation. Bryce mocks the belief that Australia’s actions could make any difference to global emissions even if we could achieve our targets. The nation’s emissions contributions have fallen to 1.1 per cent of the global total.
Meanwhile, China and India’s share of global emissions has soared to 40 per cent, more than triple that of America’s contribution. Since 2000 China has increased its annual carbon dioxide emissions by 7.9 billion tons a year, India by 1.9 billion. The two nations are building hundreds of new coal-fired (and nuclear) power plants in coming years to underpin their economic development.
“China and India are burning more coal every week than Australia consumes in a year,” Bryce says. Britain, a much larger economy than Australia, has reduced its emissions by 240 million tons by comparison, and Germany, which has spent trillions of euros, has curbed its by 282 million.

Naturally there had to be a snap, Robert Bryce ...

... as if that proved anything, as Killer hit his denialist stride in a final refusal to admit that we might be fucking the planet ...

For all the economic damage, Australia isn’t even close to achieving its emissions reduction target. It’s only through creative accounting with land use and trees that the government can claim they have fallen more than 20 per cent since 2005. The reality is they have declined only 2.8 per cent, well short of the 43 per cent reduction the government has promised by 2030, on the government’s own figures.
There is no transition.
Whatever we do in the West, at whatever damage, it will have zero effect. And the idea our action will inspire others is surely laughable.
In his series of presentations, Bryce was astonished by the hypocrisy of Australia’s energy policy. On the one hand we’re supposed to be concerned about human-induced climate change, yet we rely massively on coal and gas exports to pay our way in the world, as if it matters where the carbon dioxide emissions occur.
Victoria is somewhat ludicrously building an LNG terminal to import gas from Western Australia, or possibly even overseas, because it has locked up its own plentiful gas reserves just a few hundred kilometres from Melbourne. The folly of net zero is obvious to anyone who bothers to look. Too few in the Labor Party appear to have done so, given the party remains wedded to a policy that will surely end up a great embarrassment in the years to come.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Here have a cartoon that brings everything together ...

And that would usually be that, but the pond would like to put in another plug for The Echnida, a newsletter which pops into the pond's email box each day featuring a 'toon and a piece, this day Garry Linnell's Breaking up is hard to do but there comes a time (subscribe here).

The offerings provide a reliable emetic, necessary if you want to void or purge the daily plunge into the reptile hive mind ...

Just a sample ...

The wedding, only weeks away, is off. Dreams have dissolved in a swirling fog of bitterness, betrayal and resentment. But it's a gut-wrenching sadness that will linger, not only for the couple involved but for friends and family grieving a future that will never arrive.
When something you believe in falls apart, anger eventually turns to sorrow for all that is lost. These friends of ours spent a year planning their celebration. An apartment was bought. Rings and outfits purchased. Guests had paid for flights and accommodation. How to make sense of something when love abruptly turns to cold silence?
You sift through the rubble looking for those tell-tale signs of cold feet and gnawing doubts that only the aftermath reveals; how one partner clung to the dream more than the other; how others saw worrying signs but looked the other way, choosing fantasy over reality.
Then the hardest thing: moving on.
Australia faces a similar dilemma over its alliance with the US. We now have a sullen and aloof partner who wants different things. Donald Trump is swinging a wrecking ball through a century's worth of carefully-crafted international diplomacy, treating historic loyalties as nothing more than leverage and Australia as a second-class ally whose phone calls are no longer returned.
Trump's administration is actively reviewing AUKUS - the security pact promised to be the cornerstone of our future defence. He questions the value of NATO, blithely undermines long-standing commitments to the Pacific region and is openly cynical about the old world order.
He not only flirts with dictators but courts them.
The US is an old lover grown contemptuous of traditional values. Australia is the still-believing partner, too quick to forgive, desperately believing the relationship can still be retrieved.
It's time to move on. The Australian public certainly thinks so. The latest annual survey by the US-based Pew Research Centre shows we rank behind only Sweden when it comes to anti-Trump sentiment, viewing him as dangerous and a threat to peace and the global economy.
To alienate so many old friends in a few months is no mean achievement. Or an accident.

And so on, and as noted, you always get a 'toon, this day the infallible Pope doing a shout out to the Lynch mob at Melbourne University ...

When the pond gets to roaming like this, there can be no stopping the fun to be found outside the hive mind.

Why do the reptiles at the lizard Oz always act as killjoys when there's so much joy in the world?

The entire world had a go at this ... but not the reptiles ...

There were splendid answers to that question ...

And what about that gold phone?

The latest grift has been full of 'made in China' comedy, at double the rip-off price for the re-branding ...

Unless the Trump family secretly built a U.S. factory, industry experts say the $500 made-in-America smartphone is a fantasy

Not to mention faux pas ...Trump Mobile pulls coverage map after ‘Gulf of Mexico’ label sparks chatter online.

And how about that Leon refugee? 

Ex-Tesla manager dishes on the company and his unceremonious dismissal: "They're absolutely hosed."
Matthew LaBrot was fired after posting a protest letter against Elon Musk's leadership. We spoke with him about this move and his thoughts on life at the company in the Trump era.

The pond wishes that the reptiles would sometimes lighten up and enjoy the end of the world ... in best fundamentalist apocalyptic fashion ...

What about those epic flag poles? Talk about grand erections ...