In which the pond EVs with the Ughmann and defaces the bromancer offering with graffiti of the 'toon kind ...

 

Being a paid-up member of the cult, the pond dropped in on the Melbourne EV show yesterday and checked out the range to hand (it's still on for the next two days).

Whatever its reputation as a manufacturer BYD had a tidy range, though it was a pity that their contribution to the “funny little car” genre, the Seagull/Dolphin didn’t make it to the stand.

The Polestar range was also intriguing, as was the Smart 3, though it felt a tad over-priced compared to others in the range (though there were keen EOFY deals being offered on the day).

Sadly the most intriguing new entry, China’s latest Tessler killer, the Xiaomi YU7, was a no show, but that’s because the phone and appliance manufacturer had its hands busy delivering to a booming domestic market. (See the AFR's China’s EV newcomer sells 200,000 SUVs in 3 minutes, *archive link)

There was a pleasing ring of shame around the Tesler stand, much like the complete lack of interest in the remarkably vulgar Roller that made it to the floor in Jeff's temple by the Yarra.

There were oddities, like Mazda's pathetic attempt with a couple of hybrids, while Toyota was completely MIA, being too busy missing the boat and attempting to subvert the market by converting governments to its pathetic misplaced hybrid hopes (when you've missed the bus completely).

There were plenty of others that were MIA - such as the Renault 5 - but there were more than enough vehicles on offer to tempt the pond, though the pond hungers for the unobtainable Xiaomi. 

There was much talk of it being a Ferrari knock-off, but back in the day the pond had a 280ZX and the Japanese industry didn't mind talk of knock-offs in those days. If it sold, or helped the brand, it was a knock-on.

One thing's certain - EVs are on the move in China in a big way, and there are plenty of contenders intent on world domination and driving Tesler out of business, and with many domestic customers and a government intent on helping, it's going to take a heap of tariffs to stop the tsunami, and even then?

Say what? Why on earth is the pond neglecting its herpetology studies to blather on about EVs?

Well look at the lizard Oz this day ...

Yes, there's the Ughmann, just making it into the cut at the very bottom, trying his stupid best to make the most of Leon's and Tesler's misfortunes, and showing woeful ignorance about EVs, in the way he manages to show woeful ignorance about pretty much everything ...

Any punter will immediately realise that they're in the hands of an intellectual gnat, a mediocrity of the first water, a tragically out of date mind at play, what with "virtue signalling" making it into the header.

Just stop it, stop it or you'll go blind and get hairs on your palms, it's as bad as blathering about "woke" all the time, verbal crutches for addled brains: Elon Musk is a blow for virtue signalling Tesla drivers, The Tesla is the perfect symbol of the Western world’s ‘energy transition’: an expensive, materially intensive, performative illusion that offers net-zero benefit to the planet.

The caption for the two EV enthusiasts and for those asking Leon Who?: Donald Trump and Tesla chief Elon Musk in a promotional event for the brand at the White House last March before they parted company. Picture: Mandel Ngan / AFP
The mystical advice: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Take it away Ughmann, attempt a gloat ...

The first time I saw the sticker of shame was in California.
A baby-blue Tesla glided by in Los Angeles and plastered on the boot was: “I bought this before Elon went crazy.”
It was in September 2024, before Donald Trump was re-elected US president and before Tesla chief Elon Musk was tasked by him with gutting the US federal administration.
Imagine how the hapless Tesla owner feels now, the halo effect of green branding sullied by a mercurial genius who turned this symbol of planetary cleanliness into a dirty joke about power. The “Elon is a Nazi” software update was not in the handbook.
One of the reasons for buying any prestige car is advertising. The first thing any expensive car says is: “I have more money than you.” The more you spend, the louder you are shouting: “I’m rich.”
If you buy a Ferrari, you have issues that go well beyond being prepared to invest more than $500,000 in a car that cannot legally hit top gear anywhere in Australia or safely navigate suburban driveways faster than a 1960 Fiat.

The reptiles immediately interrupted to remind the hive mind that EVs were part of the despicable world of renewables and all that jazz, Former Snowy Hydro chief executive Paul Broad says there is “no chance in the world” of the Albanese government reaching its goal for 89 per cent of new car sales being electric by 2030. “You and I sit here today and think we’re going to have 98 per cent of all vehicles sold in Australia, driven in Australia, in the next 10 years are going to be electric,” Mr Broad told Sky News Australia. “Do you believe that? “There’s no chance in the world of that happening.”

Thanks for that broadly stupid set of observations, and do your best to ignore what's happening in China.

Back to the feeble attempt at a gloat:

For a time Tesla stood alone in both advertising wealth and purring planet-saving street cred. This was a marketer’s triumph: a status symbol badged as a moral triumph. You weren’t just buying a car, you were buying indulgences from the pantheist church.
Being pagan, this is largely a church of the left. The right-wingers are driving Range Rovers and Mercedes G-Wagons to the school drop-off.

(BTW, there were Mercs at the show, and Audis. All designed for the status conscious and those in search of a leasing arrangement, and never mind that the Chinese were eating their lunch, while the poor old VW stand looked decidedly thin, unless you wanted a people mover).

Don’t buy this argument? Then consider this: if the Los Angeleno Tesla owner did not buy the car – at least in part – for virtue signalling, then why the sticker disavowing the company owner? The sticker is also advertising. It proves the owner bought the car for all the right reasons, so please don’t key it.

What a prize maroon. It's clear enough why anyone would put a sticker on in the current circumstances. Anything to prevent the vehicle being torched or keyed or otherwise damaged.

It so happens that the Tessler isn't a bad car, though it's a tad too ascetic, too Opus Dei in its layout, stylings and fittings for the pond (which isn't to suggest that the pond thinks that dressing up the Atto 3 as a cockpit is a pleasing alternative).

It just so happens that the car got caught up in the prize maroon behaviour of its boss, and his ill-fated dalliance with a Cantaloupe Caligula.

So of course putting out this sort of sticker ... A sticker on a Tesla last March. Picture: AFP

... isn't virtue signalling.

(a) It might well be the truth, depending when the vehicle was purchased, because he did go decidedly weird, to the point of ketamine krazy, and (b) it's bloody sensible, a bit like a turtle putting on a defensive carapace to ward off the zombie Ughmann hordes (it being a bit hard to put garlic, or holy water, or silver bullets on a car, and who but a Leavitt would want a crucifix?)

Stand by now for some more moralising cant ...where the true point of the Ughmann exercise is revealed. More renewables bashing ...

When you think about it, the Tesla is the perfect symbol of the Western world’s “energy transition”: an expensive, materially intensive, performative illusion that offers net-zero benefit to the planet. A monument to motion without progress, as China’s coal-powered electric vehicle industry churns out better, cheaper cars.
The truth is, the Tesla was never saving the planet one commute at a time.
Electricity is only as green as its energy source. Unless you have a solar array capable of charging your car, then in California about 42 per cent of your fuel comes from locally burned or imported natural gas. Nine per cent of it is nuclear.
On mainland Australia’s east coast, your Tesla’s fuel is mostly black coal and brown coal.
It will come as no surprise to learn that Canberra is fast becoming the Tesla capital of Australia. Here the stickers of shame are multiplying as owners fear their peers will see the “T” on their bonnet as screaming “Trump” as loudly as a presidential post on Truth Social.

And who would want to be associated with the meandering ravings of a president in deep cognitive decline?

At this point the reptiles slipped in a reminder of who Leon was, SpaceX, Twitter and electric car maker Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Picture: AFP

Sheesh, couldn't the reptiles have dug up a decent snap showing Leon in a state of ecstasy (or a state of something)? You know ...

Back to the Ughmann, showing that vision of a gnat ...

Happily, the many public servants counted among the ranks of Tesla owners are now spared a daily commute to work because the election underlined the fact that forcing them to go to the office was an abuse of their human rights.
On their rare trips out, the capital’s Tesla drivers no doubt find comfort in the ACT government’s boast that the territory runs on 100 per cent renewable energy.
Alas, this is based on creative accounting, not generation. The territory sits in the middle of the NSW grid, where the dominant fuel is black coal. Its green credentials rest on the annual surrender of renewable energy certificate offsets, and the bookkeeping is opaque.
Welcome to net zero, where what you say matters more than what you do. Governments set targets based on a zombie word: ambition. Only some – such as Australia – are actually trying to hit those targets. The ambition of others is to do nothing. Just like believing buying a Tesla will save the planet, it’s a fraud.
Turns out your electric vehicle has devoured enormous amounts of energy and minerals before you drive it off the showroom floor. The International Energy Agency says a typical EV needs about six times the minerals of a conventional car.
Energy savant Professor Vaclav Smil calculates that a 450kg lithium car battery contains about 11kg of lithium, nearly 14kg of cobalt, 27kg of nickel, more than 40kg of copper and 50kg of graphite, as well as about 181kg of steel, aluminium and plastics.

Getting all of that demands ploughing up a lot of earth to save the planet.
“Supplying these materials for a single vehicle requires processing about 40 tons of ores, and given the low concentration of many elements in their ores, it necessitates extracting and processing about 225 tons of raw materials,” Smil writes.

“And aggressive electrification of road transport would soon require multiplying these needs by tens of millions of units per year!”

Did "energy savant" Smil manage to do a comparison of EVs v. ancient technology? 

There are plenty around, such as this one, which concluded ...

...The sustainability of electric vehicles versus petrol cars is complex and multifaceted. Electric cars generally offer significant advantages in terms of GHG emissions and long-term energy efficiency, provided they are recharged using renewable energy sources. However, they are not without their environmental and social impacts, particularly regarding resource extraction and battery recycling. Petrol cars continue to be responsible for high CO₂ emissions and ecological impacts resulting from oil extraction, although their lifecycle is less resource-intensive in terms of rare metal mining.

The true sustainability of electric vehicles will depend on advances in battery recycling, improvements in mining practices, and the use of clean energy for their recharging. As these challenges are addressed, electric vehicles are likely to become a more sustainable option than petrol cars, but only if global policies and technologies advance in a responsible and ethical manner.

Well yes, and take a look at the current advances in batteries in China in terms of efficiencies, re-use and so on ...  and by way of contrast, imagine a world which continues on with gas guzzling.

While the mango Mussolini is intent on destroying science in America, the Chinese are going full steam (and electric charge) ahead on research and innovation, and the luddites at the lizard Oz imagine they can hold back the tide? Good luck with that.

At this point the reptiles provided a snap of the prof., as if that bestowed authority on him ...Professor Vaclav Smil: ‘Materials for a single vehicle requires processing about 40 tons of ores.’ Picture: supplied

On the Ughmann rambled, prof. powered ...

To put that in perspective: if all the earth needed to be dug up to extract the ores for one car were piled into a mound of dirt, it would be about the height of a two-storey building and as wide as a tennis court.
So there is a job of work to do here. As of the end of 2023, there were about 1.5 billion light vehicles in the global fleet and only about 2.7 per cent of them were electric.

A submission to a parliamentary inquiry into electric vehicles by expat Australian Simon Michaux of the Geological Survey of Finland, found that to get Australia’s vehicle fleet to 100 per cent electric by 2050 demands an increase “of the order of 770,000 EVs of various vehicle classes, and 650,000 EV charging stations, each year for the next 26 years”.

Surely this trifle can be overcome by government fiat. Or more ambition.

The Ughmann really does work hard to dig up amazing sources ... and so cue a final reptile AV distraction ... CarExpert Founder Paul Maric says the confidence people have for electric cars in Australia “isn’t strong enough”. Just 3,832 EVs were sold in Australia in January, which is a share of just 4.4 per cent. Tesla saw the most significant drop, falling 33 per cent in overall sales.

And so to the final gobbet, and for those interested, the Canadian Fraser Institute is perfectly happy to accept cash in the paw from the likes of the Charles Koch Foundation ... (not to mention other right wing sources).

Canadian public policy think tank the Fraser Institute has run the numbers and found that meeting the 2030 targets for electric-vehicle mandates adopted by Western governments would require 388 new mines.
“The sheer scale of mining required to meet EV mandates raises serious questions about the timelines being imposed by governments,” study author Kenneth Green said.
You get the drift. The road ahead is long and the energy needed to build just electric cars will be staggering. And transport is just one element of it. There is nothing green about this revolution.
No matter. We live in the era where performance trumps truth. What counts is not what is real but what we choose to believe.
And believing electric vehicles are better for the planet is yet another article of faith on this religious pilgrimage.

It's always the way, just as a hammer will always see the world as nails, so a failed seminarian and determined climate science denialist will always see science and alternative ways as conforming to his world view, as articles of faith. 

It's why the pond prefers to be an atheist ... and incidentally by way of experience, willing to allow that EVs are a pleasant way to get about, much quieter, much less inclined to stink up the place with exhaust fumes, as easy on the pocket as any gas guzzler, stacked with tech items, and with plenty of toe for those who like that sort of thing... 

And now please allow the pond a moment to drool in a most unseemly way ...

By the way that Ughmann "better for the planet" verbiage featured a link to another piece in the hive mind ...dated October 2021, which about sums up the former seminarian's ability to stay in touch.

A sample of that reptile story from those ancient times and a timely reminder of why the pond never bothers with reptile links, because they always keep the suckers and the johns inside the hive mind...

Ah, Well Done Angus, as the pond's correspondent would have the beefy, windmill-hating, boofhead from Goulburn called ...

Keep up Ughmann, do better, you sound truly pathetic and remarkably out of touch, even for a reptile lurking deep inside the hive mind ...

And so to the alternatives for the add-on for the day ... and naturally the pond turned to the extreme far right ...

English in India? AI fro snappy Tom? The pond is well over AI thinking it can guess what the pond's keyboard should be saying. Just fuck off ... 

The dog botherer doing projection yet again? You know, talking of radical ideology, yet seemingly unaware that he's barking mad, an amazingly fundamentalist bigot, and constantly howling at the wind?

Prattling Polonius going full MAGA? And still cavorting as a furry in the guise of a watch dog?

The pond shoved them all in the too hard basket - there's always the Sunday meditation to contemplate some of the dribbling - and went back to the alleged "news" portion of the rag to see what else will on offer.

Keen observers of the reptiles will note that nattering "Ned" isn't amongst the hacks hacking out a piece for the hive mind.

Who knows where he is, what's happened or is happening to him, and it also has to be asked, who cares?

But that's how the pond ended up with all 11 minutes of the bromance's bleating into the ether, or so the reptiles timed the interminable suffering ...

The header: Trump’s big 12 days: transforms NATO, pulverises Iran, disdains Albanese, The US President has imposed himself on the global strategic order to greater effect in a shorter period than any American leader since Ronald Reagan. Anthony Albanese is lucky Trump doesn’t seem to know who he is.

Luckily there wasn't a caption or a credit for the appalling gif which headed the piece and showed the Cantaloupe Caligula plucking the strings of the middle east.

It's the sort of image that would delight a MAGA moron or King Donald himself, and it heralded the bromancer going full MAGA in his addled mind (which is why the plea This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there sounds more like an imprecation).

A funny thing happened with the bromancer going full MAGA.

The reptiles decided that they'd load the piece to the gills with visual distractions, and the pond's brain snapped.

The pond decided on a party game. The reptiles would offer a visual break, but instead of the pond offering an image, it would offer a cartoon. What could go wrong?

So to the bromancer in full flight, triumphalism run rampant:

Donald Trump has transformed the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as surely as he has transformed the Iranian nuclear weapons program. The US-Israel versus Iran conflict was 12 days that shook the world. And the shaking isn’t over yet. This is a pivot point in modern history.
Archimedes said he could move the world with a lever. Trump moves the world with unpredictable but decisive actions, scatological language, immense willpower, ferocious temper and the awesome authority of the American military. And, though it may seem to defy some Trump instincts, in this case with the intimate co-operation of an ally, Israel.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Dan Caine conducted a Pentagon press conference in which they detailed just what the B-2 bombers did when they dropped their bunker-buster bombs, the Massive Ordnance Penetrators. This included sets of six bombs on Fordow, most going down ventilation shafts and causing massive explosions underground, the biggest explosions in fact of any non-nuclear weapon.
The MOPs were designed specifically to destroy Fordow, and US military engineers have been refining their attack plans for nearly 15 years. It’s all but inconceivable that whatever was in the Fordow facilities, where Iran enriched uranium to near weapons quality, wasn’t devastated.
Trump’s transformation of NATO may be as consequential as his strike against Iran’s nuclear program. All NATO members except Spain committed to raising their military budgets to 5 per cent of GDP (including 1.5 per cent for military infrastructure, cyber, intelligence and the like). That’s the biggest step forward in Western resolve in decades.
Trump is not successful everywhere. One part of the world is impervious to the realities Trump’s addressing. That’s Australia, lotus-eater land, with a government seemingly forever away on a long weekend.

At this point the reptiles offered a visual distraction, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has refused to budge on Australian defence spending following a recent agreement from NATO allies to increase to 5 per cent of GDP.   This comes as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested Indo-Pacific countries should follow NATO allies and “do it as well”. The Australian government is considering lifting its 2033 target of 2.33 per cent but has resisted the 3.5 per cent calls by President Trump’s administration.

The pond offered its first cartoon, one intended to evoke the bromancer's state of mind...

Back to the bromancer's endless, boundless triumphalism ...

NATO is muscling up, but while Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles, antipodean Clausewitzes both, may not be able to get an appointment with Trump or even a phone call with his hairdresser, they know so much better than those foolish NATO dummies.
Australia proudly proclaims its Know-Nothing strategic policy. The Albanese government will keep defence spending at just 2 per cent of GDP, rising gently across nearly a decade to 2.3 per cent. In that same period Britain, with its much bigger economy and defence force, goes to 3.5 per cent. What would those Whitehall Yes Minister types know about security?
Albanese on Friday morning recommitted to his manifestly inadequate defence budget, telling a press conference: “We continue to invest in whatever capabilities Australia needs – will continue to do that.”
That’s manifestly untrue. Sir Angus Houston, who conducted the Defence Strategic Review Albanese commissioned, Peter Dean who wrote it and former Department of Defence chief Dennis Richardson, whom Albanese commissioned to do an inquiry on submarines, have all said the nation must go to 3 per cent of GDP to achieve even its basic defence capability aims. They, along with countless other analysts, are not doing this at America’s behest.

At this point the reptiles offered another visual distraction, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese defies the logic of his own advisers by keeping defence spending at just 2 per cent of GDP. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The pond thought a 'toon better explained the mindset ...

The bromancer carried on berating anyone who refused to swallow his MAGA delusions ...

Many capabilities mandated in the DSR itself have been shelved by the Albanese government because it can’t control its budget. The Trump administration is right to ask why its taxpayers and service personnel should defend Australia if Australia won’t defend itself. Trump got a sensible reply from NATO. From Albanese, the reply is nonsense.
Albanese is lucky Trump seems not to know who he is. Trump has threatened Spain, which has promised to go beyond the 2 per cent level (which Australia now spends) with trade penalties for being a security free-rider. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, when asked about Australia, said: “If our allies and friends in Europe can do it, I think our allies and friends in the Asia-Pacific can do it as well.”

The reptiles offered a stunning snap, stunning if you happen to have the mindset of a stunned mullet, Smoke billows the Iranian capital Tehran, one of the sites targeted in Israel’s Operation Rising Lion, a ‘stunning military and intelligence success’. Picture: Sepah News / AFP

As the bromancer was speaking of budgets, the pond preferred this 'toon ...

The bromancer was all in on the spend, spend, spend routine, and evoked jolly Joe, as if that completely irrelevant fossil was a useful reference point ...

For Albanese to defy the logic of his own DSR, the logic of all the people he appointed to provide policy guidance, the logic of every analyst and former soldier who takes defence seriously, and the logic of the Trump administration eyeballing freeloading allies, he must believe that Australia enjoys a vastly more benign security environment than all the NATO partners, or that NATO’s strategic analysis is fundamentally wrong. Joe Hockey is right to argue that Australia under Albanese is slipping from a tier one US ally to a tier three ally, a massive loss for Australian security.
What a pity Albanese wasn’t at The Hague to persuade them all of their folly. Surely NATO nations too could cut their defence budgets in half and spend all the remaining pitiful budgets on a project designed to produce a submarine fleet in the 2050s. Of course the present prime ministerial anonymity is a uniquely impotent position for Australia. But an encounter between the Giant Will and the Giant Void could be unbecoming, to put it mildly.

The reptiles provided another snap, With Iran, Trump showed he would back an ally when he thought it was in America’s interests and the ally was making a genuine effort itself – even when it involved serious military and political risk. Picture: Mandel Ngan / AFP

If the giant void didn't satisfy, how about a giant dome?

At this point the bromancer offered a mild rebuke, to show he was aware that the emperor might occasionally behave in an unseemly way, albeit unbefitting for an all-powerful monarch ...

Speaking of which, it’s unbecoming for Trump to campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize. But Trump’s almost always unbecoming. 

But that's only so the bromancer can play an age-old game, along the lines of "you have a mole on your face" ... "but I love moles and you're astonishingly beautiful."

See how the game is played ...

He’s also often very effective. Sometimes he says crazy things (taking Greenland by force, making Canada the 51st state). Other times he speaks critical truths bluntly. At his best, as with Iran and NATO, Trump’s better than any recent president. At his worst, as when he humiliated Ukraine’s President and temporarily cut off all aid to Ukraine, he’s worse than any recent president.
Since World War II, there have not been many more consequential periods of presidential activity than Trump’s efforts now. Israel’s Operation Rising Lion hit Iran, especially its nuclear project, all over the place and was a stunning military and intelligence success.
Trump’s Operation Midnight Hammer transformed into kinetic reality what had previously existed only as presidential rhetoric – akin to the war on drugs – Iran must never have a nuclear weapon.
Trump has imposed himself on the global strategic order to greater effect in a shorter period than any president since Ronald Reagan. NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte claims Trump’s activism going back to his election in 2016 has already resulted in, cumulatively, NATO spending $US1 trillion ($1.5 trillion) more on defence.
Before the NATO meeting, Trump bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities into the stone age and likely hastened the end of the ayatollahs’ regime. Right from the start, he backed Israel in its preceding military operation.
The US Middle East military command, CENTCOM, works hand in glove with Israeli Defence Forces. Israel is a formidable, independent, military power. Trump authorised Israel’s actions in advance and provided US military assets to help intercept incoming missiles from Iran.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with a trio of snaps featuring

Handout satellite pictures taken after US strikes on Iran's Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant northeast of the city of Qom …
… and in central Iran, the Natanz facility …
… and Isfahan. Pictures: Maxar Technologies / AFP

The pond won't offer three cartoons in a row, but will help anyone wanting to take a cruise to get the hell out of here ...

On and on the bromancer meandered ...

Then Trump clobbered the Iranian facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, using weapons, Massive Ordnance Penetrators, on Fordow and Natanz, that only the Americans possess. He quickly insisted on an Israel-Iran ceasefire. The Iranians complied because they were suffering daily military humiliation and the loss of an ever increasing inventory of military and state facilities.
A couple of Iranian missiles were fired against Israel after the ceasefire took place. There was such confusion in Iran by then, these may even have been on a kind of automatic timer. One was intercepted, one landed harmlessly. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was determined to re-create the new post October 7 doctrine that he has established with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel will no longer tolerate small breaches of ceasefires. It reacts decisively if attacked. There was a ceasefire with Hamas, after all, when the October 7 terror atrocities took place.
So Netanyahu launched 50 planes to hit Iran. Trump was furious. What are you doing ruining my beautiful ceasefire? He famously declared, on camera: “They (Israel and Iran) have been fighting so long they don’t know what the f--k they’re doing.” It was monstrously unfair to equate, momentarily, Israel with Iran.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with an AV distraction that had an amazingly long tag, U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday celebrated the rapid end of the 12-day war between Iran and Israel, boasting that his intervention had brought the conflict to a halt and expressing optimism about future ties with Tehran. Speaking at the NATO summit in The Hague, Trump likened the war to “two kids in a schoolyard” fighting until they’re worn out, and said U.S. airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities were what ultimately ended the fighting. “This ended that war. If we didn’t take that out, they would be fighting right now,” he said. The war began when Israel launched surprise strikes on Iranian military and nuclear targets on June 13. Iran responded with a barrage of ballistic missiles, some hitting civilian areas in Israel. Days later, Trump ordered US B-2 bombers to strike Iran’s Fordow enrichment facility and other key nuclear sites with 30,000-pound bunker-busting bombs. Both countries later declared victory after agreeing to a ceasefire. But the true extent of damage to Iran’s nuclear program remains unclear. A preliminary U.S. intelligence assessment suggested the strikes may have only delayed Tehran’s nuclear ambitions by several months. Trump dismissed the report as “inconclusive,” insisting the targets were “virtually obliterated.” International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi cautioned that while physical damage may have occurred, Iran’s technical expertise and industrial capacity remained intact. “The last thing they want to do is enrich anything right now,” Trump added, suggesting Tehran now seeks stability, not escalation. Trump concluded by predicting a shift in relations: “We’ll end up having somewhat of a relationship with Iran.”

One Luckovich deserves another ...

A veritable hole in one shouted the starry eyed bromancer in unison with his king ...

In any event, Trump had a frank and character-building phone call with Netanyahu and convinced him to call back the planes, which were minutes from delivering their payload. They struck a single Iranian radar instead. They had to refuel on the way back because they’d never before flown to Iran and come back still full.
Trump’s achievements go well beyond all this. He reinforced American deterrence globally. Trump’s predecessor as president, Joe Biden, said the right things about alliances and deterrence but projected such dithering weakness, and demonstrated in the withdrawal from Kabul such epic administration incompetence, that he undermined American credibility, whatever his words were.
Trump, by contrast, frequently says a lot of wrong things about alliances. Even going to this NATO summit, Trump, when asked whether he endorsed article five of the NATO treaty, which obliges member states to come to each other’s aid if one is attacked, replied confusingly that it depended on how you interpreted article five.
But Trump showed in Iran he would back an ally when he thought it was in America’s interests and the ally was making a genuine effort itself.
This is disastrous in its implications for Australia because we are making almost no effort at all on defence. Trump showed he would take such action even when it involved serious risk, both military risk and political risk.

Speaking of jolly Joe, the pond should have realised the reptile fix was in, and sure enough there he came, Former ambassador to the US Joe Hockey claims United States President Donald Trump’s underlying focus is “China and the Indo-Pacific”. “We do need the United States, they’re the biggest investor in Australia, they are crucial to the Indo-Pacific,” Mr Hockey told Sky News Australia. “They’ve just shown the world their capability to deliver on their objectives, and importantly, they are a force for good and have been throughout our history. “The danger is at the moment that we can slip from being a tier one ally of the United States to a tier three ally. “Donald Trump … his focus is not really Europe, his focus is not really the Middle East, his focus is China and the Indo-Pacific.”

And speaking of objectives ...

It all seems so long ago, and so to the war on China ...

Though Iran and China could hardly be more different, and Trump could not intervene effectively in northeast Asia with a single uncontested bombing raid in one night, Trump’s military decisiveness and his effective transformation of NATO help to give Beijing serious cause for concern. Hmmm. May not be so smart after all to think the Americans won’t take action.
Trump’s actions also have important implications for American politics. In this, he somewhat resembles Bob Hawke. Trump leads a movement, MAGA, which instinctively doesn’t like foreign military engagements. It’s not exactly isolationist. Certainly the American people aren’t isolationist. Most Americans, and most Republicans, sensibly, and in the baddest way, don’t want Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. But they’re very wary of foreign entanglements and forever wars.
They certainly want US allies, which rely on America for their own security, as Australia does, to pay more for their own defence. Trump has again changed American politics.
Having a fight with CNN and The New York Times over how they interpret the Iran attacks only helps Trump. He’s educating and socialising his own MAGA movement into accepting that occasionally Washington must intervene militarily overseas in its own interests, in the interests of its allies, even of humanity.

Indeed, indeed, it's all going splendidly well, and the reptiles unleashed a distracting snap, Trump and his administration unleashed on CNN after a story which reported the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear program did not destroy it. Picture: Carlos Barria / POOL / AFP

Meanwhile, in the real world never visited by the reptiles ...

The bromancer decided to get really weird by blathering about Bob ...

The parallel with Hawke is this. Hawke led a Labor Party that had last been in government under the disastrous Gough Whitlam, who nearly destroyed the US alliance, and ended up dominated by the anti-American left. When Hawke won in 1983, Labor ranks were extremely wary of the US alliance. Hawke embraced the alliance while delivering buckets of good Labor policy. He transformed Labor’s internal political culture.
This transformation lasted nearly 30 years but is unravelling now as the Albanese government lacks strategic direction, its internal culture aimless and hollow on security.

And as the French clock maker continues to scribble in ways that offer peace and harmony with the Xi government, the reptiles decided to run a snap from the archives,  President Ronald Reagan welcomes Bob Hawke to the White House in 1983. Picture: AP

The pond was more interested in F bombs ...

The pond isn't sure all the 'toon distractions are working, but if anyone decodes them as puerile attempts to downgrade, mock, belittle, diminish and insult the bromancer and his mango monarch, then the basic intent is coming through ...

Trump is doing for MAGA what Hawke did for Labor. Trump commands his base but he didn’t invent the base. The base in a sense invented him, or rather the base called out for him. Trump may do many bad things or many good things in the rest of his presidency. He’s utterly unpredictable.
But in Operation Midnight Hammer, and in the transformation of NATO, Trump is delivering the MAGA base something it thought no longer existed – successful American strategic policy.
So let’s briefly consider, one by one, the likely fallout from these past two weeks for Iran, Israel and the US.
Iran has been dealt savage blows. Though it will be months before all the intelligence is in and all the calculations made, there’s no real doubt about this. A very early US Defence Intelligence Agency assessment was tendentiously leaked. It said the effect of the US strikes could be relatively minor (or indeed severe), it didn’t yet have the evidence and it had very low confidence in the provisional alternatives it outlined.
The best explanation of this report and its leaking is that, as Trump alleges and often wildly exaggerates, there are a lot of people in the American security establishment who are deeply anti-Trump and who hate the idea of his claiming any success.

So the bromancer doesn't have a clue, and that's the basis for celebrating a triumph, and so the reptiles ran with ... Ayatollah Khamenei emerged just hours ago for the first time in several days. The Supreme Leader of Iran gave an impassioned speech to his people declaring victory over Israel and the United States.

Winning all the way, so much winning ...

On and on prattled the now fully MAGA bromancer, adopting "Ned's" inclination to scribble in the third person, as in "tells Inquirer", as opposed to "tells me" ...

Others cling to the notion that Barack Obama’s discredited deal with Iran is the proper solution and should never have been repudiated by Trump in his first term.
But International Atomic Energy Agency director Rafael Grossi says Iran’s facilities are no longer operational. CIA director John Ratcliffe says credible intelligence indicates severe damage to Iran’s facilities. The IAEA says Iran before and after the US strikes is totally different. Israeli intelligence assessments confirm this view. Of course, fuller assessments will take time.
Ehud Yaari, Israel’s pre-eminent strategic analyst, tells Inquirer that change in Iran is less likely to come from popular rebellion than from disagreements within the ruling elites. He suggests that in the last days of the war effective decision-making passed out of the hands of supreme leader Ali Khamenei and into the hands of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
They weren’t trying to depose Khamenei but to sideline him. Says Yaari: “At every point from October 7 Khamenei took the wrong decision.” Iran massively overplayed its hand. Its regime is now severely weakened. Much analysis has been provided about what a popular revolt in Iran would look like. But that’s not the centre of gravity, nor what’s likely to change Iranian behaviour, Yaari argues.

Cue another visual distraction, While Trump will revel in this Middle East success, Albanese’s government appears unable to ‘comprehend nor affect any of the strategic dynamics that swirl around the world’.

Comprehend the mask of fascism if you will ...

Back to the Reichsmarschall des Großaustralisch Reiches promising eternal vigilance, and likely enough, eternal war ...

Instead, that will come from divisions within the elite: “Iran now requires a major, major decision, whether it now sends a lot of good money after bad.” Trying to resuscitate its nuclear program, which was always headed towards weapons, trying to re-create all its proxy forces, means once more impoverishing ordinary Iranians.
Yossi Kuperwasser, head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, puts it to Inquirer in even starker terms: “I think they (the Iranian regime) are under huge pressure now. All the big questions arise. The reformists will ask the ayatollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: what happened to all our investments, what happened to our air defences, to the crown jewels of our nuclear program, to our proxy forces – Hezbollah didn’t fire a shot. What happened to all our money that went to building those projects, billions and billions and billions of dollars, where has that all gone?”
Iran is weaker than it has been for many decades. It’s still just barely possible it has kept some 60 per cent enriched uranium and, in some new secret facility, could fashion a crude nuclear device. That wouldn’t give it nuclear deterrence, just a one-off shot at national suicide.
Israel and the US will watch intensely. If Iran is discovered in any activity that looks like it’s building a bomb, it will be struck again. The only real danger is that US attention may wander, but CENTCOM will remain focused.

At this point the reptiles offered a final visual distraction, Iran has warned America's attacks on nuclear sites will have everlasting consequences. The US President Donald Trump is calling on Iran to get back to the negotiating table, but Tehran says it reserves all rights to retaliate. Iran could attack Americans directly with drones and missiles or use proxies in the Middle East. Hezbollah in Lebanon has been massively degraded by Israel; more likely, Iran would use militias it has backed in Iraq or the Houthis in Yemen.

There's really not that much difference between authoritarianism abroad and at home ...

Back to the last gobbet of rousing triumphalism, and warrior bromancer berating Australia for wanting a quiet life ...

For Israel, this has been two weeks of unalloyed triumph. The morale of the society is sky high. So is the unity. Netanyahu doesn’t yet seem to be recovering in the polls but the whole Israeli nation supports what was done in Iran.
For America, here is successful geo-strategic policy and military intervention. Trump will internalise everything about this success. Trump loves success. MAGA itself is changed. This has been a very good few weeks for the Western alliance.
The Albanese government, and therefore Australia, on the other hand, looks as though it can neither comprehend nor affect any of the strategic dynamics that swirl around the world, and that certainly swirl around Australia.

Unalloyed triumph? Possibly, if you like mass starvation and ethnic cleansing and genocide, or perhaps if you like a state of constant tension, and an ever-present desire to go around again and again ...

What a pity he's too old to enlist. What a pity young Australians might yet have to endure the mindless stupidity of Murdochians in yet another foreign adventure.

And now as Leon was mentioned at the start, time to return to him for a final 'toon and a celebration of Snappy Tom's AI ...

And for those interested - the pond can't imagine anyone, but who knows? - here's the second half of that ancient bearded EV story from the lizard Oz in October 2021, just for the record ... so touchingly out of date and deeply irrelevant ...