In which the pond spends an unproductive reptile morning with the French clock lover, Rodger and Dame Groan ...

 

The pond likes to imagine it roams free and wild on occasions, away from the lizard Oz hive mind.

This is particularly so on a Thursday, as the reptiles agonise in a "phoney war" phase wondering what's going on in the mind of a prize narcissist ...

Oh dear ... I may or may not, to be or not to be, that is the cartoon question ...

Over on the extreme far right, the offerings were just as dismal ...

Petulant Peta was in top bizarro world form ...

Our PM can’t dodge the President forever
What else, other than a visceral distaste for Trump, can explain Albanese’s apparent lack of interest in actually meeting the leader of our most vital strategic partner?
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

WTF? Apparently Albo stormed back to Canberra, citing huge issues of national importance, to dodge a meeting with the Cantaloupe Caligula?

That's beyond the valley of even the drollest of cartoons ...

With the utmost dedication to its herpetology studies, there's no way that the pond can spend time with a loon who leads with that sort of bizarro fantasy.

Instead the pond decided to go with the French clock aficionado, something the pond rarely does, but in "unplugged" form, without the snaps ... because there was one delicious moment in the spiel ...

First imagine all the usual reptile presentation elements for what is a very skinny piece:

The header: Marles is betraying Australia with his AUKUS fantasy,The Defence Minister’s statement amounts to nothing more than a careless betrayal of the country’s policy agency and independence in its ability to make decisions in its own national interest.
The caption: Defence Minister Richard Marles has betrayed the country’s policy agency and independence, Paul Keating says.
The meaningless flourish: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The pond has no idea why the reptiles took up the French clock-maker except perhaps for the pleasure of a Marles bashing session:

Monday’s statement by Defence Minister Richard Marles that Australia’s geography and continent would be crucial to any United States prosecution of a war against China will go down as a dark moment in Australia’s ­history.
A moment when an Australian Labor government intellectually ceded Australia to the United States as a platform for the US and by implication, Australia, for military engagement against the Chinese state in response to a threat China is alleged to be making.
And ceding the continent to the United States that is devoid of an electoral authority – a month after an election where the government had the opportunity – but declined to make explicit – its strategic intentions and policies.

The pond has already noted that the offering was decidedly skinny and the caption for the AV distraction was an excellent way to boost the word count ... Former Australian ambassador to the US Arthur Sinodinos says the British government is “serious” in terms of the future of the AUKUS agreement. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer emerged from his meeting at the G7 with US President Donald Trump sounding confident of the future of the AUKUS pact after the US conducts its review of the agreement. “It confirmed that the Brits are all in, they are very much in the wagon on this,” Mr Sinodinos told Sky News Australia. “We need the Americans to complete the review to reaffirm their support for AUKUS, and then we get on with it.”

Then came the truly delicious bit, the French clock enthusiast slagging off the sleazy reptiles for arranging a sleazy conference, chosen and assembled to promote their sleazy hive mind ...

Declined to let the public, the Australian community, be party to its strategic thinking and intent. Instead, as Defence Minister Richard Marles reveals his and the government’s fatalist thinking at a sleazy conference, run exclusively by The Australian newspaper – “sleazy”, in that guests invited to the conference were chosen and assembled according to the paper’s view of their collective propensity to subjugate Australia’s interests to those of the United States.

Oh poop, oh joy, did the reptiles even read the copy? And if they did, did they squirm a little?

The rest was predictable, with the French clock lover's predilection for China well-known, but still pleasing to find in a rag dedicated to subjugating Australia's interests to those of the mango Mussolini  ...

And without one solid or reliable word as to the “threat” or nature of the threat China is supposedly making to both Australia and to the region.
The fact is, China has not threatened Australia militarily nor indeed has it threatened the United States. And it has no intention of so threatening. Every person attending “The Australian” conference knew this to be so.
China’s singular crime is to have built an economy larger than the United States, with industrial breadth and depth that the United States not only does not possess but cannot hope to emulate

Imagine then the French clock collector mouth open, leaning forward and pointing figure in snap, Paul Keating delivers a keynote speech at the Wharton Global Forum in Sydney, March 2018. Picture: John Feder

With that out of the way, it was on with a final burst ...

This is the affront which the United States cannot bear, ­because nowhere in the US playbook is there a chapter articulating the precipitous decline in US industrial strength or in US strategic primacy. Hence now, the US is running about trying to sweep gullible allies into its declining and failing pitch.
Yet, it believes there is always a mug who will buy its venal view of affairs. And in Australia, the United States is not disappointed. The Australian Labor Party, at its grassroots, will not support Australia being dragged into a war with and by the United States over Taiwan. And the large majority of new members of the parliamentary Labor Party will not find community support for such a course of action. This whole problem has arisen owing to Australia agreeing to host military assets on Australian soil.
This began with Julia Gillard and Stephen Smith agreeing to base rotational US troops in Darwin during Barack Obama’s “pivot” moment in the Australian parliament in 2011.
This inauspicious action was locked down further by Julie Bishop and Tony Abbott with the Force Posture Agreement of 2014 providing US access to Australian military facilities as well as agreement as to the types of activities US forces may conduct on and from Australian soil, including the interoperability of each other’s forces.
Yet built upon this agreement is the whole AUKUS fantasy, designed to lock Australia further into US naval operations.
Monday’s statement by Richard Marles amounts to nothing more than a careless betrayal of the country’s policy agency and independence in its ability to make decisions in its own national interest and not in the interest or interests of another country.
Paul Keating was prime minister of Australia from 1991 to 1996.

Oh come on French clock lover flying over to Paris, in the same way that the reptiles inspire awe and fear, the US military is a much-feared force and we might in due course have a fine set of squeaky subs ...

And now as military matters have been raised, it was time to give Rodger a go ...

The header: ‘Golden’ intelligence not always the smartest basis for military action, Well-derived and depoliticised intelligence should be fundamental to all military ­operations, rather than something special.
The caption: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discusses the military action against Iran. Picture: Israeli Government Press Office
The meaningless advice: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

Having just come off a viewing of Korengal, the sequel to the documentary Restrepo, the pond was prepared to allow a little personal reminiscing, what with those two films evoking an entirely pointless military campaign, and Timor at least being more useful ...

I was on the staff of a senior army officer when he received a briefing on operations in Timor in which the commander kept talking about the “intelligence-led” operations he was conducting.
My general, a Vietnam veteran, stopped him after not too long and asked rather pointedly: “What other kind of operations are there?”
The general was telling the officer rather directly that intelligence should be fundamental to all military ­operations, rather than something special.
Yet that intelligence needs to be well derived and depoliticised – otherwise the results can be ­tragic.
The Iraqi asylum-seeker known as Curveball, for instance, became the basis for spurious claims ­regarding Iraq’s development of weapons of mass destruction. This information was in turn used to justify the ruinous invasion of Iraq.
As a result, the world should be very cautious of accepting claims made by political leaders to justify military action.

The reptiles continued this mild heresy with the caption to a snap, Israeli rescuers at Bat Yam are already counting the cost of claims made by leaders to justify military action. Picture: AFP

The pond was reminded of the mish-mash of fake videos put out by both the IDF/Israel and Iran in recent days, such that it's impossible to trust any footage ... as noted in this France 24 report (YouTube link) ...

Same as it ever was, but on with Rodger ...

As the Middle East has entered yet another war of choice and stands on the brink of something much bigger, it is appropriate to critically examine the basis on which Israel has launched its strikes and desperately sought to enmesh Washington in its project.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed variously that Israel was under imminent threat of nuclear attack and that Israel had targeted Iranian scientists working on their nuclear bomb and, in another US television interview, claimed they “were basically Hitler’s nuclear team”.
Reports began to emerge that Netanyahu had been briefed on so-called golden information that indicated Iran was weeks away from assembling a bomb and could be even closer.
Israel’s target selection during its six days of operations is also indicative of a much broader strategy than simply degrading Iran’s nuclear capability.
Israel’s publicly avowed ­reasons for bombing Iran seem greatly at odds with non-Israeli ­assessments of Iran’s nuclear ­ambitions.
The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency in an interview with CNN, for example, said the agency believed that “we did not have any proof of a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon”.

The reptiles interrupted with a snap, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate intelligence committee in March Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. Picture: AFP

And then came a moment the pond did enjoy ...

Perhaps more pointedly, the US intelligence community’s ­assessment at the end of March 2025, as relayed by Donald Trump’s Director of National ­Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, to the Senate intelligence committee, concluded that Iran was not ­building a nuclear weapon, nor had the Supreme Leader re­authorised the dormant weapons program even though it had enriched uranium to higher levels.

What's more, she said it all under oath, which means (a) that oaths now have no meaning in a country run by an inveterate liar and snake -oil seller and (b) that she had to take considerable pains to sort out the contradiction, as King Donald called her useless in his usual way.

Per PBS report ...still around, despite the slashing of funding ...

...President Donald Trump dismissed the assessment of U.S. spy agencies during an overnight flight back to Washington as he cut short his trip to the Group of Seven summit to focus on the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran.
“I don’t care what she said,” Trump told reporters. In his view, Iran was “very close” to having a nuclear bomb.
Trump’s statement aligned him with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has described a nuclear-armed Iran as an imminent threat, rather than with his own top intelligence adviser. Trump was expected to meet with national security officials in the Situation Room on Tuesday as he plans next steps.
Gabbard brushed off the inconsistency, blaming the media for misconstruing her earlier testimony and asserting that “President Trump was saying the same thing that I said.”
“We are on the same page,” she told CNN. Asked for comment, Gabbard’s office referred to those remarks.
In her March testimony to lawmakers, Gabbard said the intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”
She also said the U.S. was closely monitoring Iran’s nuclear program, noting that the country’s “enriched uranium stockpile is at its highest levels and is unprecedented for a state without nuclear weapons.

The fix is well and truly in, and so back to Rodger ...

The disconnect between what the Israeli government has claimed and what the US intelligence agencies assessed has not been lost on the press. On his return ahead of schedule from the G7 meeting in Canada, the US President, faced with a question regarding the difference between the US and the Israeli intelligence assessments, said of Gabbard’s ­testimony that “I don’t care what she said”.
Even by the standard of Trump’s normal commentary, such an offhand comment about his own intelligence ­com­munity’s assessment regarding the most pressing security issue of the time should not only be concerning to the public at large, but also to the wider intelligence community.

At this point the reptiles decided to interrupt with a summary, including a reminder of that Riviera dreaming, as the ethnic cleansing continues ...

Rodger then finished off his heresy, a rare sighting in the lizard Oz ...

The world is waiting to know whether Washington will join in the Israeli attacks on Iran, or whether the deployment of military assets is part of the Trump ­administration’s broader plan as leverage to get Iran to agree to the deal that it is offering.
That infers a coherent set of ­options being developed, which one could be confident was occurring if there were some coherence about the intelligence assessments being made.
When such serious military ­action is being considered, it is beholden on decision-makers to question the intelligence being ­offered to them, particularly when that intelligence may be contradictory.
Military commanders know that accurate intelligence is the basis of successful military operations. But for politicians who are ultimately responsible for the decision to unleash that military force, intelligence can at various times represent either an inconvenient truth, or a justification for the appropriate use of force.
It is hard to get away from the notion that the IAEA and his own intelligence community are telling Trump an inconvenient truth, while Netanyahu’s golden information is looking more and more like fool’s gold.
Dr Rodger Shanahan is a Middle East analyst, former army officer and author

Oh come on Rodger, it's all splendid, how soon can we join the new league of nations?

Thanks infallible Pope, Cf Owen Jones in The Guardian, The warmongers were wrong about Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Now watch them make the same mistake about Iran, Israel is the main source of terror and instability in the Middle East. But the west continually turns away from this reality

And so to Dame Groan, only because she's there ...

The header: Productivity shindig unlikely lead to dramatic reforms, The idea that reform can be based on consensus, with everyone agreeing, is unworkable. Let’s face it, there were plenty of people opposed to the Hawke-Keating agenda of financial sector deregulation.
The caption: Jim Chalmers addresses the National Press Club. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
The mystical incantation: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The pond found it hard to focus on the old chook (as an old chook that's a term of endearment), as the old groaner clucked away.

Truth to tell, she's right, productivity is in crisis. 

The French clock man could only mount a two minute read, or so the reptiles clocked him, while Rodger's read was a humble three minutes, and the reptiles claimed that Dame Groan could only manage a three minute read in her railing about productivity ...

Naturally Dame Groan focussed on the real crisis ... alliteration ...

I had hoped Jim Chalmers would have ditched his puerile penchant for alliteration, having massively overdone it in his first term. But, no, it’s back with a vengeance.
In his National Press Club speech in Canberra on Wednesday, the Treasurer spoke of “reform which is progressive and patriotic, in the PM’s words, and practical and pragmatic as well”.
Patriotic reform? That’s a new one. Donald Trump would be right on board – the US President doubtless regards his sweeping tariffs as an example of patriotic reform. It might be a term used by Chalmers to indicate that the government is not investing sufficiently in national defence.
Leaving this flowery rhetoric to one side, the key questions are, first, is our Treasurer correct in his diagnosis of the economic challenges we face; and, second, will he identify and implement possible workable solutions?
According to Chalmers, “Our budget is stronger but not yet sustainable enough. Our economy is growing but not productive enough. It’s resilient but not resilient enough – in the face of all this global economic volatility.”
To describe the budget position as stronger is drawing a long bow: after all we are heading for deficits for the next four years and beyond. Government debt is about to tip over the trillion-dollar mark.

At this point the reptiles interrupted with a lengthy AV distraction, CreditorWatch Chief Economist Ivan Colhoun discusses Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ government financial agenda speech at the National Press Club. “The really positive thing there was they are not wasting the majority they won at the election,” Mr Colhoun told Sky News Business Editor Ross Greenwood. “He actually used that three-letter GST acronym, which has just been off the agenda for any political party, so he is certainly looking broadly and trying to look at what are the themes and policies that need to be addressed.”

That set the old biddy off in her usual fit of pique and petulance, a performative, preening, promenade, a parade, a pageant, a procession pandering to the reptile propensity for provocations, a cavalcade of carnival clowning (oh how the pond loves alliteration, if only because it seems to set the old duck off) ...

Government spending as a proportion of GDP is around 27 per cent, which is markedly higher than in the first two decades of the century, excluding the GFC and Covid interregnums.
Productivity is completely in the doghouse and we have experienced negative per capita GDP growth in eight of the past nine quarters.
While it’s true that productivity growth has been sluggish in many countries, we are at the bottom of the ladder.
And there are exceptions, most notably the US, Ireland, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland. In the case of the US, the combination of a reduced company tax rate, the immediate expensing of business costs and cheap and reliable energy has underpinned the strong growth in productivity in that country.
Of course, the proposed productivity roundtable should rightly be seen as a stunt, just a smaller one than that other stunt, the Skills and Jobs Summit, held early in the Labor’s first term in office.
The competition to attend will be vicious; the outcomes are likely to be insipid, in part because some of the most important issues such as industrial relations and energy policy will be excluded from the discussion.
The Treasurer has established three criteria for any suggestions that might emerge from the shindig. First, they must be in the national interest rather than cater to sectional interests. Second, they must be implementable. Finally, they must be budget-neutral or budget-positive, although the timeframe for this requirement is not clear.
Although the necessity of curbing government expenditure was briefly noted, it is evident that Chalmers is primarily focused on increasing tax revenue. But this is where there is a real difference of opinion among contributors to public policy debate.

There came a last AV distraction, featuring the object of the old groaner's ire, Treasurer Jim Chalmers discusses the upcoming productivity roundtable during his address to the National Press Club. "We're trying to respectfully encourage people to try and engage in the kind of work that we engage in around the Cabinet table - at the Expenditure Review Committee and the broader Cabinet," Mr Chalmers said. "Which is to understand that there are a lot of great ideas, often expensive ideas, and we have to make it all add up, and so the only way this is going to work is if everybody understands. "There will be opportunities for the Opposition to be constructive, whether they're inside the room or not inside the room."

And that was about it, with the ancient groaner showing a reluctance to spend too many words ...

For many, tax reform is really just code for collecting more tax, ideally by imposing even higher burdens on high-income earners and those with wealth. Chalmers’ proposal to increase the tax on earnings to 30 per cent on superannuation accounts above $3m is one example. It is clear he is not for turning on this new impost even though the predicted additional revenue is likely to disappoint as people reorganise their financial affairs. This principle applies more broadly to all taxes levied on capital.
For others, tax reform should be about improving the efficiency of tax collection and assisting in growing the economic pie. Our tax system is dominated by income tax, company tax, the GST and a small number of excises, although not on tobacco products these days.
The long tail of other taxes raises very little money but cause substantial economic distortions.
The bottom line is that we should not expect any dramatic reforms from this Labor government and that our steady economic decline is likely to continue, particularly with the continued growth of the productivity-sapping care economy that is largely funded by the government.
The idea that reform can be based on consensus, with everyone agreeing, is unworkable. Let’s face it, there were plenty of people opposed to the Hawke-Keating agenda of financial sector deregulation, tariff reductions, privatisation and industrial relations changes – Anthony Albanese among them. If we are to wait around until every agrees, we will be waiting for a long time.

Be fair. 

The old duck knows whereof she speaks. If we hung around waiting for her to agree with anything Jimbo says, we'd be waiting for a long time.

And so to celebrate with an immortal Rowe ...

All that said and done and (cartoons aside), the reptiles in limbo, there wasn't nearly enough comedy to hand for the pond's taste ... 

The pond started by mentioning how it liked to roam wild and free, so please allow this as the closer, as featured in the Beast ...

Like much of the Beast's stuff, it came from another place, in this case Politico's ...

MAGA’s Plan to Remake an Iconic New York Landmark

A group of Trump-loving devotees of classical architecture are making headway on rebuilding New York’s central train station. (* archive link)

The Politico piece contained much more, much of it a warm-up for our Henry's much anticipated return tomorrow to produce a flurry of ancient Greek and Roman references.

While the pond slobbers in anticipation, please enjoy this MAGA moment ...

The supporters of Grand Penn are acutely aware of the image that a Trump-ified Penn Station conjures to mind: gold pillars, gilded ceilings and “TRUMP” emblazoned in glittering letters above the entryway. Classicism, they know, has never really been the president’s speed. As his portfolio of commercial buildings and his recent redesign of the Oval Office suggest, the president has always gravitated toward the gaudy and the gilded rather than the Greco-Roman.

But during his tenure in Washington, Trump has demonstrated at least some support for the architectural principles of ancient Athens and Rome. Toward the end of his first term in 2020, the president issued an executive order — supported by Shubow’s Commission of Fine Arts — directing the General Services Administration to defer to classical architectural aesthetics when designing new federal buildings. After the order was rescinded by the Biden administration, Trump issued a new presidential memo this past January reiterating the directive.

And with Trump back in the White House, his allies in the “Make America Beautiful Again” movement have increasingly framed the revival of classical architecture as a natural extension of MAGA’s political project.

“Central to [Trump’s] thinking is anti-wokeness, and modern architecture’s rejection of the past is woke,” said Klingenstein. “In this woke world, we’re trying to erase our past and reject as racist our Western roots,” but by returning to the principles of classical design, “we’re trying to recover our Western heritage.”

This defense of neoclassicism dovetails with the broader project of conservative organizations like the Claremont Institute, which has tried to offer an intellectual justification for Trumpism grounded in a fusion of American political philosophy and classical political theory. In the lead-up to the 2024 election, for instance, Klingenstein published a multi-part video series — culminating with a somewhat halting interview with Trump — arguing that the president embodies the political virtues exalted by ancient philosophers and revered by America’s founding generation. In other corners of the right, Trump-aligned conservatives regularly invoke the masculine virtues and grand aesthetics of ancient Rome as a foil for the supposedly decadent and effete state of contemporary America.

All that and more and it really ticked all the pond's woke boxes ....

Now the pond is inclined to be a King Chuck when it comes to architecture - a return to the land of RMIT always triggers the pond back into a love of the Victorian era - but who wouldn't be entranced by this new manifestation of the MAGA mind? 

It's undiluted our Henry, and would make him very proud and pleased, and yet for some perverse reason, all the pond could think of was those grand days when Speer and Adolf combined to MBGA (aka Make Berlin Great Again) ... and given all that, how right and proper it would be to break Godwin's Law ...

You can roam YouTube for dreams of Germania ...

Inside Hitler's Berlin - The Crazy 'Germania' Plan

Albert Speer: The Reich’s Chief Architect

No guarantee of quality, but what grand dreams, grand visions and BTW, chief enabler Speer was an all-in Nazi with a dissembling gift for the gab that, like Leni Riefenstahl, allowed him to get off lightly while being a devout panderer to Adolf's dreaming. He should have spent more time in the slammer, she should have been offered a cell ...

And so to end with a personal aside.

While in Melbourne, and fearful at being surrounded by black clad lefties, the pond has embarked on its own project, MDTGA, or if you will, Make Dorothy's Tea Great Again.

You need a good cup of tea to keep the Melbourne winter at bay - oh the winds, so bitter - and so the pond has indulged in Russian Caravan, Assam Bold, Darjeeling, Orange Pekoe and Lapsang Souchong 

Now the pond is now off for a serve of Assam Bold, to sip on while contemplating the unproductive reptiles, and the return of empire-building fascism, all with a tea-laced equanimity that is fully woke...

Take it away Godwin ... and please come back dear Henry, there's a lot that needs fixing ...