In which the "Ned" Everest returns, there's a standard Groaning, and a different kind of mead ...

 

What's remarkable to see on a daily basis as the pond does its herpetology studies is the way that the hive mind manages to avoid any stories on the Gaza situation, or the latest proposal to reincarnate the Polish ghetto of WWII, or perhaps a Stalinist gulag in Siberia...

As always the pond has to turn to Haaretz, Israeli Official: Netanyahu Supports Plan to Concentrate Gazans Into 'Humanitarian City' (*archive link).

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports the plan presented Monday by Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, to concentrate the entire population of the Gaza Strip in a "humanitarian city" to be established on the ruins of Rafah, a source familiar with the matter told Haaretz.
"The plan is essentially to move all civilian Gazans south, to a large tent city in Rafah, where they will have hospitals and plenty of food," the source said. "How did the prime minister put it? Give them Ben & Jerry's, for all I care," the source said.

Now there's a war criminal with a canny understanding of how to appeal to a narcissist grifter.

See also 'Now I Understand Why Israel Is Denying Journalists Access to the Appalling Scene in Gaza' One of the only historians studying the Gaza Strip, Jean-Pierre Filiu, spent a month in the killing fields there, and documented everything (*archive link)

The first thing that struck Jean-Pierre Filiu when he entered the Gaza Strip was that he didn't recognize anything. All the points of reference he was familiar with from his many past visits had been destroyed. He became totally disoriented. Streets, sidewalks, buildings, whole cities – it was all a vast heap of rubble.
"Devastated areas emerge from the shadows as the convoy progresses," the French historian wrote later. "A prolonged sequence of horror. Here's a tree that fell, its branches twisted, here's a demolished house, farther away a building is collapsing. The convoy moves ahead as fast as the ruined road allows. The Gaza I knew no longer exists, now I know. A wasteland like this will make us forget that Gaza was for thousands of years an oasis."

And so on ...

Or try Moustafa Bayoumi in The Graudian, The destruction of Palestine is breaking the world.

Tired of tales of ethnic cleansing, mass starvation, mass destruction, tent ghettos and such like?

Turn to the sanitised world of the hive mind:

Over on the extreme far right, the pond knew that this day would come ...

The dreaded, deeply feared "Ned" is back, and the tragedy is that it isn't Neddie Seagoon (Needle-nardle-noo).

It had been way back on 6th June 2025 that the pondering, pompous, portentous pedant had produced an epic 19 minute survey of the middle east, and then silence.

So what brought the moth back to the flame to inflict suffering on the pond and any stray correspondent caught in the line of fire?

Why it was the Curtin thingie, the thingie that has obsessed assorted members of the hive mind these past few days ... 

Luckily this outing was only a five minute read, or so the reptiles said, though it likely will feel like forever in the "Ned" Everest climb manner, but it was required reading for anyone wanting to pass the end of year exams.

The header: Anthony Albanese trapped in conflict caused by his US policy stance, Anthony Albanese is sending contradictory messages on Australia’s strategic outlook and its security ties with the US. The sooner he has a successful meeting with Donald Trump, the better.
The caption: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese bring a stubborn and almost self-defeating mindset towards Donald Trump. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman
Please take the pond anywhere but here: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The pond almost fell asleep in the first gobbet:

Anthony Albanese is sending contradictory messages on Australia’s strategic outlook and its security ties with the US – invoking John Curtin as the Labor hero who stood up to America when he could have equally hailed Curtin as the hero who appealed to America.
Albanese’s John Curtin Oration last weekend offered a historically distorted view of Curtin overlooking the essence of his wartime strategy – maximum co-ordination and reliance on the US to safeguard Australia.
The Prime Minister brings a stubborn and almost self-defeating mindset towards Donald Trump. Albanese’s government champions a vast deepening of military ties with the US spearheaded by the AUKUS submarine agreement that means mutual power projection in the Indo-Pacific, yet he positions himself as an “Australian Way” leader ready to become a nationalistic Prime Minister repudiating Trump’s current and future criticism of Australia.

That mention of subs and AUKUS reminded the pond of the keen Keane in Crikey, Delays likely to hit Britain’s AUKUS submarines (so good luck seeing one here before 2050), It’s not just the Americans. The company that will build the new AUKUS submarines for the UK and Australia has a long history of massive delays, scandals and defects.  (*archive link).

That header conveys the gist, but here's a teaser:

As concerns grow that the United States simply can’t build submarines quickly enough to ensure it meets its commitments to Australia under AUKUS, there are real questions about the SSN-AUKUS nuclear submarines. They are to be designed by the United Kingdom, built there and in Australia, but will they become available in anything like the timeframe promised under the Australia-UK-US agreement?
Under AUKUS, a minimum of three and up to five second-hand Virginia-class submarines will be sold to Australia by the United States from 2032, while the UK builds the first of the new AUKUS-class nuclear submarines for delivery to the Royal Navy (RN) in 2038. Australia’s AUKUS-class submarines, to be built in South Australia, will commence arriving in the 2040s.
With the current Virginia-class construction process stuck far below the levels required for the US to have enough vessels for Australia, AUKUS advocates hailed the recent commitment by the Starmer government to a fleet of up to 12 AUKUS-class submarines to replace its Astute-class vessels from the late 2030s, at a production rate of one AUKUS vessel every 18 months. The UK is also moving into production of its new Dreadnought-class ballistic missile submarines, with the first vessel of the class currently being built.
The timetable problems arise from the fact that BAE, which is building the Dreadnoughts and designing the AUKUS subs for commencement of construction later in the decade, is also the company that will be building Australia’s submarines in South Australia.
BAE was at the centre of one of the UK’s biggest ever corruption scandals, involving the Saudi regime in the 2000s, and has a history of selling arms to human rights abusers. BAE is also at the centre of the biggest scandal in defence procurement in Australia in recent decades — the debacle of the Hunter-class frigates — when Department of Defence officials inserted BAE into the bidding process for the vessels in a major breach of procurement practices.

And so on, and why was the pond so easily distracted from the "Ned" Everest? 

Look at what they do.

The reptiles decided to slip in an AV featuring Tamworth's shame, Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce says “we can’t play dice with Australia” amid Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Donald Trump’s questionable relationship. This comes as Mr Albanese has chosen to ignore recommendations to increase defence spending by the United States. “Even Curtin was incredibly aware of the threat that was coming to Australia, and his reliance on the United States,” Mr Joyce told Sky News Senior Reporter Caroline Marcus. “If we get this wrong in the future … our nation is over, it’s finished. “Anybody who denies these few things, ‘oh no it’s all different now’, no it’s not different, go turn on your television set, you can see how different the world is now, it’s exactly the same. “We can’t play dice with Australia like this.”

Why do they bother? This is the man you'd want to have on to talk about Curtin?

Tamworth's shame in the gutter with Tamworth's pride, but the pond pressed on ...

The strategic policy and domestic positioning are in conflict, constituting a risk for Australia.
Labor constantly says the review of AUKUS by the Pentagon is not a problem, that the agreement works for both nations, that Trump has never uttered a negative comment about AUKUS and implementation remains on track. All sweet.
Except that Albanese has not engaged the US President directly to affirm his personal commitment to AUKUS on the current timetable. Except that US Under Secretary of Defence for Policy Elbridge Colby launched an AUKUS review while publicly doubting selling Virginia-class submarines to Australia and signalling his determination that US allies be forced to pull their weight. Except that Trump has demanded allies increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, a target NATO has nominally accepted. And except that US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told Defence Minister Richard Marles that Australia should lift its defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP “as soon as possible”.
As for Colby, he is reported to be the official who just halted weapon shipments to Ukraine because of his concern about the rundown in US armaments.
That suggests he is willing to test his authority in the Trump administration. Colby would have ignited a review of AUKUS only because he had deep concerns. Given Albanese’s commitment to AUKUS, the government’s priority must be to reassure the Trump administration, to ensure the US upholds its side of the agreement.
But what is happening?

Why there's a snap dragged from the archive, that's what's happening... US General Douglas MacArthur with John Curtin

At this point, you might as well stick a fork through AUKUS, it's done, but "Ned" still clings to it ...

The Albanese government seems to be doing the opposite, almost tempting the US to put qualifications on AUKUS. Albanese resents US pressure on our defence budget. Post-election he is ready to challenge any US pressure and exploit anti-Trump sentiment in Australia. Meanwhile European leaders have accommodated Trump’s demands and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has cut a deal with Trump to lift his defence spend to 2.5 per cent and then 3 per cent.
Albanese’s constant claim that capability is what counts, not the proportion of GDP, misses the point. The reason we lack the capability we need is because of the limited GDP spend.
The 2023 Defence Strategic Review warned that “Australia faces its most challenging strategic environment” since World War II. It said defence must become more of a “whole-of-government and whole-of-nation” story. Labor endorsed the DSR but apparently doesn’t believe this message and hasn’t given effect to the full scope of the recommendations.
Under Labor, the defence spend is increasing from about 2 per cent of GDP to 2.33 per cent in a distant 2033-34. That is manifestly inadequate; it can’t finance AUKUS and maintain our defence resources. Australia should lift defence spending not just because the US wants it but because this is core national interest; witness the calls from Kim Beazley, Sir Angus Houston, Dennis Richardson and DSR co-author Peter Dean, let alone the Coalition in opposition.
The strategic meaning of AUKUS, as Scott Morrison repeats, is to project military power into the region with the US and other allies to strike a balance of power in relation to China. Labor can’t escape from that reality – but neither Albanese nor Foreign Minister Penny Wong seems able to make a public statement about the strategic justification for AUKUS. With Albanese visiting China this week and already facing initiatives from Beijing to deepen trade and technological ties between the nations, the strategic and financial consequences of AUKUS loom as major risk factors for Labor.

The pond had intended to save correspondent Kez's brilliant initiative in asking AI to generate a piece in the reptile style on China and the whole damn thing, but it doesn't just suit the bromancer, it works for "Ned" too ...

The Red Tide Is Coming: Australia's Alarming Unpreparedness for War with China
 Ladies and gentlemen, wake up! The red dragon stirs—and Australia is sleepwalking straight into its gaping maw. While our leaders sip flat whites and debate gender-neutral signage, China is building warships by the hour, hacking into our critical infrastructure, and patrolling the South China Sea like it’s their backyard. This is not just geopolitical maneuvering—it’s the drumbeat of war. And we? We’re polishing rusted submarines from the '90s and holding hands in AUKUS meetings like it’s group therapy!
 Let’s face the gut-wrenching reality: Australia is criminally unprepared for war with China. Our defence force is smaller than a suburban soccer league. Our air force? A handful of jets, half of which are grounded for maintenance. The Navy? More likely to sink from paperwork than missiles. We rely on the US for protection like a toddler clinging to a parent’s leg during a thunderstorm—except Uncle Sam is distracted, tired, and deeply embroiled in Trumpian chaos.
 Meanwhile, China has more ships, more soldiers, more cyber tools, and more willpower than we dare to admit. They don't care about polite diplomacy or UN niceties. They care about Taiwan, the South Pacific, and total dominance.
 And if you think they’d blink before poking the soft underbelly of an isolated island nation with an overreliance on imported fuel and microchips—think again. We’re one cyberattack away from losing power in our cities. One naval skirmish from our supply chains collapsing. One “mysterious” satellite malfunction from being cut off from the digital world. We have no bunkers. No civil defence drills. Most Australians couldn’t identify a Chinese Type 055 destroyer if it parked in Sydney Harbour and asked for a flat white.
We are dangerously naïve, almost proudly so. This is not a drill. This is not Cold War nostalgia. This is the calm before the electromagnetic storm, and if Australia doesn’t wake up, spend big, and militarize like it’s 1939, we’ll find ourselves learning Mandarin under duress.
 And to those who scoff—laugh now. The dragon does not knock twice.

Dammit, the pond will likely run it in the next bromancer outing as well, but back to "Ned" ...

At what point does the US suspect a lack of commitment and implementation from Australia? Albanese seems trapped: pledged to AUKUS yet unable to fulfil genuine ownership. If that’s an accurate situation, it’s unsustainable. The sooner Albanese has a successful meeting with Trump and, hopefully, gets out of this grey zone, the better.
Albanese’s signals are creating enormous confusion in Australia about Labor’s real convictions. One can only imagine the confusion they may create in the US. What will Colby conclude?

The reptiles interrupted with a snap of champers Pete standing next to the snow globe collector, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told Defence Minister Richard Marles that Australia should lift its defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP ‘as soon as possible’. Picture: DoD.

On with "Ned", knowing that when a reptile opens with "Let's be fair", unfairness in all its ugly manifestations will immediately follow ...

Let’s be fair to Albanese. His speech praising Curtin for defying Allied leaders Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt when they sought to divert Australian troops to Burma correctly highlighted a singular, shining example of Australia’s sovereignty. Curtin was right and the entire ranks of the opposition were wrong – Robert Menzies, Billy Hughes, Arthur Fadden and John McEwen.
Years ago Beazley told me the pressure on Curtin “was the most intense that any Australian PM has ever been subjected to by an ally in any circumstances in the nation’s history”.
But Albanese should have highlighted that the chief of the general staff, Vernon Sturdee, threatened to resign unless Curtin defied the Allied leaders. If the Australian troops had been sent to Burma they would have finished in captivity, a catastrophic situation for Australia.
But this event, while heroic, cannot define Curtin’s war leadership. At midnight on April 18, 1942, under a directive agreed by Curtin, a foreign general, Douglas MacArthur, took command of all combat units of the Australian armed forces. MacArthur became commander of all Allied forces in the South West Pacific Area. He became chief military adviser to Curtin, and Curtin’s avenue to US military thinking. Until the end of 1943 Australia provided MacArthur with most of his ground forces. MacArthur reported to the US Joint Chiefs, not to Curtin.
As military historian David Horner said, this was a “substantial abrogation of Australian sovereignty”. The Australian chiefs of staff were effectively replaced by a US general. As Curtin biographer John Edwards said, this situation was “understood, agreed and welcomed by Curtin” because he concluded Australia had “no choice”.
Curtin was subject to MacArthur’s authority in war deployment decisions. Curtin never visited a battlefield. (Weirdly that last line contains a link to letters to the editor wherein no mention of Curtin's failure to visit battlefields is made. This is peak hive mind form).

There came a final distraction, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has delivered a speech honouring former prime minister John Curtin on the 80th anniversary of his death. During his speech, he promoted Australia’s independence from the US. Mr Albanese paid tribute to Mr Curtin, claiming he believed the former prime minister made tough calls by rejecting requestions (sic) from the US president and the UK prime minister at the time in the interest of Australia.

And so to the final gobbet ...

He had a veto power over the deployment of our forces – witness the Burma decision – but, as Edwards said, Curtin “could not and did not make decisions about the timing, size or strategic purpose of military operations”.
Curtin’s real achievement as war leader was to navigate the national interest fused in strategic intimacy with the US; he saw no conflict between being an Australian nationalist and a champion of US ties ready to make huge concessions to harmonise mutual interests.
Labor is fully entitled to extol the Curtin legend for defying the great and powerful friends. It’s a shame it lacks the historical honesty to depict Curtin as he actually was and for what he actually did. Perhaps Labor is embarrassed by the truth of Curtin’s necessary concessions to the US, but that doesn’t diminish Curtin and it cannot detract from his wartime leadership of the nation.
In his speech Albanese stood by the US relationship. But the Curtin model that matters for Albanese today is the Curtin with the astute judgment to manage our intimacy with the US and simultaneously win the support of the Australian people. The circumstances are different, but Albanese’s focus should be on dealing with Trump, minimising the differences and maximising the alignments.
It’s up to Albanese – he can take the right or wrong lesson from Curtin.

Or alternatively ...

What MacArthur said to Curtin helps to explain many things, both in the tragically short remainder of Curtin’s life and in subsequent decades. We can now better understand why Curtin turned so emphatically to praise Australia’s "traditional links [and] kinship with the United Kingdom" in the next couple of years. For the rest of the war, and especially during the election campaign of 1943, he identified himself whole-heartedly with British race patriotism. He became the only Australian Prime Minister to appoint as Governor-General, not a minor British aristocrat, but a royal duke. In 1944 he took to the Prime Ministers’ Conference in London a proposal to coordinate even more closely the foreign policies of the member nations of the British Empire. Historians have sometimes puzzled over this shift in Curtin’s supposed leanings. We can now assume that he "wrapped himself in the Union Jack", as some commentators described it, precisely because MacArthur had told him so bluntly that Australia had no other choice. It should certainly not look to Uncle Sam as a protective big brother. (Peter Edwards at the AWM)

To be fair, as the reptiles always are, if we're relying on the whims of King Donald, we're screwed. And the Union Jack has long gone the way of all things...

And so to Dame Groan, not because the pond cares, but because she was there, and right below the top news story of the day in the early morning ...

The groaning header: RBA rate decision: Shock and disappointment for some but discretion wins out, Jim Chalmers would have preferred a different outcome. But an independent central bank must be left to get on with meeting its defined objectives.
The groaning caption: Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock in Sydney on Tuesday. Picture: Christian Gilles / NewsWire
The groaning advice: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

'Twas but a short outing, a mere two minutes, so the reptiles said:

Economists are not known for their humility. Leading up to the Reserve Bank’s meeting this week, most of the tribe were certain there would be a cut to the cash rate, with a 25-basis-point reduction the most likely outcome.
There was a handful of holdouts, but not many.
For this reason, the decision of the bank to hold the cash rate at 3.85 per cent – with a 6/3 split in the vote – came as something of a shock. For those with large mortgages, the decision will be a huge disappointment.
To be sure, there was some acknowledgment by some economists that the bank might wait until the release of the June quarter CPI figures. These figures print on July 30 and so there is not long to go. The monthly CPI figures are not nearly as comprehensive as the quarterly ones, and the next RBA board meeting is only five weeks away.

The reptiles turned to their tame pet Dimitri for a distraction, Eminence Advisory Dimitri Burshstein discusses the Reserve Bank of Australia’s decision to hold interest rates. The Reserve Bank of Australia decided to hold the cash rate at 3.85 per cent. Mr Burshstein told Sky News host Caroline Marcus that it was the “correct” decision to hold rates.

Back to Dame Groan holding the floor:

RBA governor Michele Bullock also reminded the assembled band of economic interlocutors at the press conference that that target inflation rate, as measured by the trimmed mean (and not the headline figure), has been reached only once.
She also made the eminently sensible point that the bank didn’t want to fight inflation again.
It was better to confirm that the strategy had sustainably passed the finishing line rather than having to backtrack and, in a worst-case scenario, raise the cash rate again. The fact that the cash rate has been reduced by 50 basis points this year shouldn’t be overlooked.
There is no doubt that the uncertain global economic conditions had a bearing on the bank’s thinking. It’s still not clear what the final form of the Trump tariffs decisions will take; the economic repercussions will only emerge over time.
This factor alone is unlikely to affect the likelihood of a cut to the cash rate at the next board meeting – this looks to be in the bag, all going well – but the bank will want to have some room to move should the global economy slow down very significantly.
It was interesting that productivity was one focus of the post-decision press conference. After all, there is really nothing that the bank can do to alter the growth of productivity directly, although business investment is partly determined by interest rates.

The entire point seems to be to sock it to Jimbo and dance on his grave, so cue Caroline... Sky News host Caroline Marcus reacts to the RBA’s “shock decision” to keep interest rates on hold at 3.85 per cent, despite expectations there would be a further cut. “The move has surprised even seasoned economists, who had tipped a third-quarter point cut, especially as inflation had stayed within the bank's target range,” Ms Marcus said. “This is also an upset for Chalmers and Anthony Albanese, too, who, no doubt, would have been practising their Oscar-worthy acceptance speeches to claim glory for another interest rate cut as testament to their superior economic management. “Obviously, Donald Trump's looming tariffs on countries around the world will play a role in the central bank's decision.”

Dame Groan then happily wrapped up proceedings...

There is also an issue of the RBA’s forecasting of economic conditions and the assumption in the modelling that productivity will be returning to trend in the near future. On the face of it, this looks to be too optimistic.
The point here is that sluggish or no productivity growth does constrain the scope for the bank to reduce the official interest rate to a neutral setting. The growth of GDP is the product of the change in working hours and labour productivity. If the aim is to see GDP growing at a reasonable clip and maintaining a low rate of unemployment, it would be a great deal of help if productivity were to pick up.
The governor welcomed the reform roundtable to be convened by Jim Chalmers, in August. She will be one of the participants.
No doubt she will be looking forward to hearing some breakthrough suggestions on which the government will be able to act quickly. She also wisely noted that productivity growth is more a ­medium-term factor than something that will pick up quickly.
No doubt, the federal Treasurer, would have preferred a different outcome.
He understands the pressures that many mortgage holders have been dealing with, but an independent central bank must be left to get on with meeting its defined objectives. There’s always the next meeting.

What a splendid dance on Jimbo's grave.

Sure it was as boring as batshit, but relax, there's always another groaning.

And so to a bonus, and here the pond immediately ruled out Dame Slap ...

Process as punishment in the age of #MeToo
Judges have criticised prosecutors for running prosecutions with no reasonable prospect of success, causing untold damage to both complainants and defendants.
By Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

There was only one upside, she'd given up - for the moment- bashing Aboriginal people, with her desire to bash women taking over ...

Besides, There are so many weird things going down in the United States at the moment, that the pond hungered for a sugar hit (preferably with oodles of fat).

An entire new conspiracy has been born, with a missing minute and a list that wasn't a list and so on ... and Trump Angrily Tries to Shut Down Jeffrey Epstein Questions, and yet nothing penetrates the hive mind ... and all the pond can do is have a few visual moments...

To be fair, Robert Kennedy also has an exceptional knack for commanding attention ... RFK Jr. promoted a food company he says will make Americans healthy. Their meals are ultraprocessed

And the ICE Barbie puppy killer knows how to put on a pleasing competition ...

And recently Joe Rogan had again experienced buyers' remorse ...

Joe Rogan Unloads on Trump’s ‘Insane’ ICE Raids
ICE'D
The podcast star—who endorsed Trump in 2024—blasted immigration sweeps that are nabbing “construction workers and gardeners. (*archive link)

“It’s insane,” Rogan said on his podcast, the Joe Rogan Experience, on Wednesday. “The targeting of migrant workers—not cartel members, not gang members, not drug dealers. Just construction workers. Showing up in construction sites, raiding them. Gardeners. Like, really?”
“I don’t think anybody would have signed up for that,” he added.

Trump had pledged to focus his mass deportation effort on the “worst of the worst,” but data reviewed by ABC News shows the administration has increasingly targeted migrants with no criminal history.
It is not the first time the Trump cheerleader has recoiled at the president’s hard-line immigration tactics.
In March, Rogan warned that “people who are not criminals are getting lassoed up and deported and sent to El Salvador prisons,” which he called “horrific.”
“Let’s get the gang members out,” he added. “Everybody agrees. But let’s not get innocent gay hairdressers lumped up with the gangs?”

And so on, but instead of all that fun, the reptiles decided to run with a perennial reptile favourite, fucking the planet ...

This Mead can't be called venerable, but it only takes three minutes to comprehensively fuck the planet, so drill on: Donald Trump’s rhetoric on fossil fuels generates an energy boom, Of all the goals Donald Trump has set in his norm-shattering second term, the goal of restoring what he calls America’s ‘energy dominance’ may be the closest to realisation.

The caption for the man doing a remarkable imitation of a cane toad: Donald Trump wants to derail the push against fossil fuels and enhance America’s influence in world energy markets. Picture: AFP

And so to celebrate the comprehensive fucking...

Of all the goals US President Donald Trump has set in his norm-shattering second term, the goal of restoring what he calls America’s “energy dominance” may be the closest to realisation.
Global progress towards what the Biden administration hailed as the energy transition to a net-zero future has been largely derailed and, as The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday in the US, developments in the US-dominated Western hemisphere increasingly are shaping global energy markets.
The result won’t be exactly what Trump expected. More new oil and gas production is likely to come from Canada, Guyana, Argentina and Brazil than from the US. Nevertheless, the geopolitics of energy are shifting in Washington’s direction even as fossil fuels appear poised to play a larger role than green climate campaigners hoped.
From the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, politicians of all stripes have embraced the Trumpian rallying cry of “drill, baby, drill”.
In Argentina, President Javier Milei’s pro-market government is accelerating the development of shale reserves that some compare favourably with North America’s Permian Basin.

You won't find any cause for alarm or concern from this Mead, he seems to think it's a jolly spiffing thing, and so do the reptile AV distractions, Sky News host James Macpherson discusses President Donald Trump declaring a national energy emergency to push for “cheap and reliable energy”. “I’ll tell you the other thing Trump believes in,” Mr Macpherson said. “That is in cheap and reliable energy.”

Of all the many ways he managed to fuck himself and Tesla while fucking the United States, this might be the area where Leon did himself and his company most damage. 

How to talk of climate science and the benefits of batteries and buying EVs when you took a chainsaw to the scientists?

Back to the destruction ...

Argentina has the potential to outproduce some members of OPEC and investments in the pipelines and processing facilities necessary to transform the country into a major exporter are proceeding rapidly.
In Guyana, offshore rigs are beginning to produce large quantities of oil, with exports up 54 per cent in 2024 to almost 600,000 barrels a day, and are expected nearly to triple by 2030, when daily output capacity is expected to reach about 1.7 million barrels.
The new oil wealth has made Guyana’s economy one of the fastest growing in the world.
Even the hemispheric left is embracing oil and gas.
Brazil’s socialist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is doing everything he can to promote fossil-fuel growth in his country. State-owned oil company Petrobras is projected to increase production by a third, reaching a billion barrels a year by 2030.
The goal is to make Brazil the world’s fourth largest oil producer, and to do that the left-leaning government is willing to open areas near the mouth of the Amazon for drilling.
There is even a worthwhile Canadian initiative as virtuous Liberals hold their noses and embrace fossil-fuel production.
Canada is already among the world’s top five producers of oil and gas, but this isn’t enough for Prime Minister Mark Carney.

How the reptiles love a good burning ... A shale gas flare in Argentina in October 2024. Picture: Reuters

That flare reminded the pond of Paul Krugman's Real Men Burn Stuff ...

...Honestly, I think this is a case where the usual logic of money-driven policy is trumped (Trumped?) by irrational, psychological — you might even say psychosexual — issues.
We know that Trump himself has a weird thing against wind power, insisting that wind turbines massacre birds and kill whales. This appears to stem from the refusal of the Scottish government to cancel an offshore wind farm he thought ruined the view from one of his golf courses.
But it’s not just Trump. There is, it turns out, a strong link between the manosphere — the online movement promoting “masculinity,” misogyny and opposition to feminism — and anti-environmentalism. For example, in 2023 Jordan Peterson convened a high-profile conference to declare that concerns about climate change are a “conspiracy run by narcissistic poseurs.”
If you think about it, this makes sense — not intellectually but emotionally. Don’t concern about the environment and advocacy of “clean energy” sound kind of, well, feminine? Real men burn stuff and don’t worry if the process is dirty.
And manosphere-type attitudes are clearly widespread in MAGA. One of the main arguments Trump officials and supporters have made for tariffs is that they will bring back “manly” jobs in manufacturing. (They won’t, but that’s another story.) The same notion underlies the doomed attempt to revive the coal industry.
But here’s the thing: MAGA and the manosphere may hate clean energy, but they won’t be able to stop the rise of renewables. All they can do, possibly, is stop the rise of renewables in the United States. Other nations, China in particular, are making huge investments in wind and solar power, because they understand what Trump and his allies refuse to acknowledge — that this is the only way forward.
So while MAGA’s attempt to strangle clean energy will increase the risks of global climate catastrophe, it will also increase the risks of U.S. economic stagnation, forcing our nation to remain wedded to obsolete energy technologies while other countries march into the future.

How nice to be reminded of the United States' current insatiable appetite for self-harm, amid the reptile enthusiasm for real men of the Mead kind attempting to do the same for the planet...

Resistance from indigenous groups and environmentalist campaigners has derailed pipeline projects and oilfield developments. Canada is producing less oil and gas than it could and is more reliant on exporting fossil fuels to the US than it wants to be in the Age of Trump.
The green lobby remains strong in Canada and Carney wants to reduce emissions from Alberta’s oil sands via carbon capture. But Canada will likely be producing and exporting more oil and gas for more time than previously expected.
Work on a pipeline capable of transporting a million barrels of oil a day to a remote port in northern British Columbia could be part of the plan.
All this is happening without Latin America’s traditional fossil-fuel behemoths.
Oil and gas production in Venezuela and Mexico is inhibited by nationalist shibboleths and corruption. If either country ever comes to its senses, hemispheric production would rise even further. With or without Venezuela and Mexico, the Western hemisphere is moving into a new era of fossil-fuel production.
Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Guyana and the US are all raising their games, and newcomers such as Suriname (where rich offshore oil discoveries have attracted investor interest) will further boost hemispheric production.

It wouldn't be a genuine piece of lizard Oz denialism without dragging in the Ughmann, and sure enough, Sky News contributor Chris Uhlmann has commended US President Donald Trump for “calling time” on net zero arrangements which “nobody was going to meet”. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry has expressed doubt over whether Labor's 82 per cent renewables by 2030 target is achievable, pointing to the "great challenge" rising energy costs are posing for Australians. “There was no way on God’s green earth that any country on earth was going to meet the commitments that they have signed up to,” Mr Uhlmann said. “They are all beginning to look at each other and think, who is going to be the first to break ranks.”

It was upside all the way for the Mead, fucking the planet seemingly in his eyes a thing of joy and beauty ...

This surge will reduce the power of the OPEC cartel and shield world energy markets from turmoil in the Middle East.
It also will create headaches for Vladimir Putin, and strengthen the underpinnings of American security in an ever-changing world.
The hemispheric energy boom also will delay any global transition away from fossil fuels. Even as it presses forward with ambitious new drilling plans, Brazil is hosting this year’s UN environmental conference, COP30. Lula’s hand-picked representative at the conference shocked climate change campaigners recently when he argued that Brazil’s drill-baby-drill policies could be part of the energy transition.
For now prices, not politics, will limit hemispheric production. It costs less to pump oil out of the ground in Saudi Arabia than to frack for it in Patagonia.
Price wars may slow the new production, but they won’t stop it. Energy abundance is headed our way.
Trump wanted to derail the push against fossil fuels and enhance America’s influence in world energy markets.
With unexpected support from Canada, Argentina, Guyana and Brazil, his chances of success look good.
The Wall Street Journal

That's success these days?

As for the planet and any chance of success for it? 

Not so good ... as a stroll through the Graudian's climate stories suggests ...

And so to end with the immortal Rowe, celebrating events where the pond began this day ...

It's always in the detail if you want a portrait of the Gollum and his precioussss...