In which the pond sends petulant Peta off to the cornfield and so is left with just the swishing Switzer and Jack the wannabe Insider ...

 

The pond has long complained that Thursday is the worst of the worst days in the hive mind calendar, and look no further than this day's outing for evidence it's always dire.

First there's always petulant Peta ...

Islamophobia must be seen for what it is … and isn’t
On International Day to Combat Islamophobia, critics warn that laws and reports may suppress legitimate criticism of religion. True reform must come from within Islam itself.
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

The pond truly appreciates the return of the intermittent archive and personally supervised the uploading of this bigot to that desolate, malfunctioning cornfield... so that all that's needed is a teaser trailer ...

If you wanted a dictionary definition of Islamophobia, you couldn't go past this for an example ...

... there are clearly a lot more radicalised Islamists screaming Allahu Akbar as they take the lives of infidel nonbelievers than there are Christians screaming support for Jesus as they detonate suicide vests or fly planes into buildings.

This at the very time that a bunch of alleged Xians are bombing the heck out of Iranians, not to mention the odd 150+ school girls ...

Petulant Peta went on that way, reminding the pond that atheism really is the only way out of this kind of manic Xian and Islamic mania ... (more on mad Kegsbreath's religion later in this bulletin).

The reptiles compouned this carry on by featuring yet another item worthy of the Australian Daily Zionist News, attempting to tame Tame yet again ...

Tame’s call for intifada has real-world consequences
Grace Tame’s ‘intifada’ call is a threat to all Australians
Grace Tame blames a smear campaign for losing speaking engagements but people and organisations that know what ‘globalising the intifada’ means don’t want you to represent them.
By Marnie Perlstein

What a classic way to carry on a smear campaign and by a typical suspect ...

Marnie Perlstein is a Jewish advocate who lives in Sydney.

The pond didn't want to indulge in the endless reptile smear campaign with even a teaser trailer, what with its opening soft porn snap of Tame, so it was off to the cornfield with that.

But early in the morning that left the pond with just two reptiles, and alas and alack, one of them was the swishing Switzer, still on his rehabilitation tour through the hive mind ...

The header: Is the Iran war testing the limits of American power? Conservative confidence in a US-Israeli victory over Iran may be misplaced. Tehran’s resilience and strategic retaliation suggest a prolonged, high-stakes conflict with no clear end.

The caption for the cavorting King: Trump’s administration assumed decisive advantage over Iran, but Tehran’s response has complicated US objectives. Picture: AFP

On the upside, the swishing Switzer could only manage a three minute read, so the reptiles said, and the presence of the corrupt, narcissistic, demented King gives the pond permission to match it with a 'toon or two ...

And to be fair to the swishing Switzer he hasn't been big on American or Australian adventurism.

 Witness this opening line in the Graudian in March 2015 ...

Tony Abbott’s announcement to deploy 300 Australian army instructors to Iraq by the middle of this year reminds one of Talleyrand’s observations of the Bourbon monarchs: he has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing since the invasion in 2003.
As much as it pains me to say this, the prime minister and other western interventionists – including (of all people) Bill Shorten and Tanya Plibersek – are showing the same contempt for the lessons of history.

With that noted, it was on with the latest history lesson ...

Among many conservative commentators in the US and Australia, the prevailing view of the war with Iran is one of confidence.
The assumption is that the US and Israel hold the decisive advantage and that Tehran will ultimately be forced to accept Western terms. After all, Iran has been subjected to one of the most intense air attacks in history and there is no let-up in sight.
But the war is not unfolding as Washington and Jerusalem expected, and there are no plausible off-ramps to end the conflict in ways that preserve American credibility.
If that is correct, the implications for American power and regional stability could be profound.
Before the US-Israeli strikes on Iran a little more than fortnight ago, Donald Trump appeared to assume that Tehran would ultimately conform to Washington and Jerusalem’s maximalist demands: an end to uranium enrichment, the dismantling of Iran’s ballistic missile program and the termination of its support for militia proxies across the Middle East. But the Iranian leadership was never going to bow to those demands.
When Washington moved a massive concentration of military power into the Persian Gulf in an effort to intimidate Tehran, the Iranians did not buckle.
And when the US and Israel eventually launched their strikes, the apparent assumption was that the killing of supreme leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of senior military commanders would leave the regime so weakened that it would have little choice but to capitulate to American demands – or that the resulting instability would lead to regime change, with Iran’s new leaders accepting Washington’s terms. However, the regime remains firmly in place and appears to possess more leverage than Washington or Jerusalem initially imagined.
With its back against the wall and convinced that it faces an existential threat, Tehran has responded with the full range of its capabilities. It has retaliated directly against Israel, struck at American interests and allied facilities in the Persian Gulf, and moved to stop the flow of oil and disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz – steps that are already generating serious tremors in global energy markets.
Washington is so worried about rising petrol prices at the pump that it has granted Russia sanctions relief to allow more oil on to global markets – a development that represents a windfall for Russian leader Vladimir Putin as he continues to prosecute his war in Ukraine.
What, precisely, the US – or Israel, for that matter – has gained from this conflict is far from clear.

As a result of the swishing Switzer being a tad short weight, the reptiles dropped in just one visual distraction:

Iran’s leadership has survived US-Israeli strikes and remains firmly in control, maintaining leverage in negotiations. Picture: AFP

Speaking of middle East influencers ...

Then it was time for the final gobbet:

And if Trump wants to bring the war to a successful conclusion, the obvious question is whether he has any credible off-ramp. At this stage there is none in sight.
The Iranian regime has not been decisively defeated and it has both the incentive and the capability to prolong the conflict while further threatening the international economy.
The key question, therefore, is how Washington expects to persuade Tehran to settle.
Inside the administration, officials sometimes speak as if the US and Israel alone determine the course of events – that they decide when the war begins, when it ends and the terms Iran must accept. Trump says the war will end “when I feel it in my bones”.
But international politics rarely works that way. The Iranians have a say and any settlement must take their interests into account.
Punishment alone is unlikely to force Tehran to capitulate. Iran has long prepared for the possibility of major military confrontation and appears ready to absorb substantial damage while escalating in response.
Strikes on critical infrastructure inside Iran will almost certainly provoke retaliation against strategic and economic targets across the Gulf and in Israel.
Iran’s arsenal of ballistic missiles and drones gives it a significant capacity to inflict serious damage across the region.
Nor does Tehran have any incentive to settle on America’s terms. To make matters worse, Iranian leaders will expect tangible gains – sanctions relief, financial compensation and guarantees that the attacks will not start again anytime soon.
Indeed, as time passes and the economic and geopolitical costs of the war mount, Iran’s bargaining position could strengthen rather than weaken. Could a long war play to Tehran’s advantage?
If the conflict begins to inflict serious damage on the global economy, Trump may have no choice but to bring the war to an end. Should that happen, Tehran may well claim an ugly victory – and many will ask what this war was about in the first place.

And as always there needs to be a promotion as part of the rehabilitation tour.

Tom Switzer is presenter of Switzerland, a podcast about politics, modern history and international relations.

Lesson learned...

The pond is sure that Milne and Shephard won't mind.

Then it was on to the bonus, and for reasons best known to Jack the wannabe Insider, he decided to tuck into a serve of Tucker ...

The header: How Tucker Carlson became a one-man PR megafactory; Carlson might maintain some level of deniability, but scratch away the ‘just asking questions’ veneer and he is never far away from antisemitism.

The caption: Tucker Carlson speaks on stage on the 2024 Republican National Convention. Picture: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

If the pond wanted a serve of deeply weird America, it would usually revert to The Bulwark or tabloids of The Daily Beast/HuffPo kind ...

For example, this outing by Julie Ingersoll ...What Pete Hegseth’s Spiritual Mentor Wants for America  Pastor-theologian Douglas Wilson advocates theocracy, the restriction of the franchise from women and nonbelievers, and much else—and he is closer than ever to real power.

Nuttier than an Xmas fruitcake, and fruitier too ... and yet this is the drunk notionally in charge of the current crusade!

The likes of Will Sommer have made a career out of observing the antics of the likes of Laura Loomer...

Laura Loomer Gets Roasted on Trip to India Plus: Disgraced manfluencer declares victory, reveals true colors.

And there are a host of "influencers" feeding on each other on assorted platforms as a way of driving clicks and views ...

It's an easy way to fill in time, and Jack is easy ...

In yet another brazen act of self-promotion, Tucker Carlson has claimed he is on the cusp of arrest in the US. Looking trim and tan – the Ozempic and Coke Zero diet seems to be working – Carlson took to the cameras on Sunday, with a vague tale of his texts being read by the CIA.
He could face criminal charges of acting in service of a foreign power – aka fraternising with the enemy – he said, due to “some” conversations he had with “some” Iranians before the war started.
It’s not clear what evidence the former CNN and Fox News host has, but I do know Ayatollah Khamenei had an X account. I attempted to lure the late Supreme Leader of the Islamic Federation of Iran into a Twitter conversation a couple of years ago. Perhaps wisely, he had chosen to keep his DMs closed. But I’m sure a blue tick buddy could always slide in and ask the Ayatollah how the family’s going.
The notion that Carlson and Khamenei were online pen pals is not entirely ridiculous. “Iran and America have nothing to fight about,” Carlson said in a podcast in July last year, in the wake of the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
In more recent times, Carlson claimed the Iran war was driven by Israel’s “regional hegemony” and was not in the national interests of the US.

And yet a broken clock can be right a couple of times in a 24 hours cycle, and there's plenty of evidence to hand to support the notion that the Iran war has been driven by Israel’s “regional hegemony” and was not in the national interests of the US.

Up until recent attacks, the US had attempted to avoid attacking key Iranian oil facilities - possibly presuming that there would be an end to the war and that the mess would have to be fixed and that a shortfall in oil would play havoc with the world's economy - as if Benji cared about any of that - and left the assassinations and the adventure in Lebanon to the government of Israel.

Of course the point of being an influence is being noticed, so Tucker will shape shift in a trice ...

Vladimir Putin gives an interview to US talk show host Tucker Carlson at the Kremlin in February, 2024. Picture: Gavriil Grigorov / AFP

The pond has no time for Tucker's fellow travelling with Vlad the Sociopath - the irony of Vlad bleating to the UN about the Iran excursion is beyond the valley of stupidity - but it's not as if Vlad hasn't had a lot of encouragement from the King himself ... a man with way more clout than Tucker, and always willing to present Vlad the Sociopath in the best possible light ...

Jack tries to have fun with this self-serving carry on, but comes off as a lightweight himself ...

One imagines US intelligence agencies have a bit on at the ­moment but should Tucker’s clairvoyance come to pass and he is bundled off to the slammer, we should bow our heads in sorrow for the poor bugger who has to share a cell with him.
Can you imagine it? “So tell me, El Chapo, how are you feeling now? How did you feel after I asked you how you are feeling? You still want to shiv me in the left eyeball? We’ll circle back to that.”
A one-man PR megafactory, Carlson is fresh from an earlier bizarre and ultimately refuted claim that he was harassed by Israeli officials during his brief fly-in, fly-out interview with the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.
Apart from a quick selfie taken outside Ben Gurion Airport, Carlson stayed between the airport’s four walls where, he said, Israeli government officials detained him. They didn’t and the Israelis have the CCTV to prove it. The US government also confirmed the incident was a fantasy.
Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett called Carlson “a chickenshit” and “a phony”.
The Huckabee interview went to air on X, racking up two million views almost immediately, with another three million on other platforms. Huckabee batted away Carlson’s themes of Israel pulling US strings. Carlson sneered his way through the interview. According to Carlson, Republicans like Mike Huckabee and Texas senator Ted Cruz are “Christian Zionists” who he “dislikes more than anybody”.
We know this because Carlson said it during his podcast with guest Nick Fuentes in October last year. Fuentes is a white supremacist, Holocaust denier and vicious antisemite who invariably spews out hate and hyper-aggression, which is odd, given Fuentes looks like he couldn’t go three rounds with Mahatma Gandhi.

Yet here's the thing... Fuentes is another shape-shifter, which is why you could read the Daily Beast a couple of weeks ago ... Far-Right Influencer Revolts Against Trump: ‘Vote Democrat’

“Something has gone horribly wrong,” a fuming Fuentes, 27, said during a new podcast episode, while seated beside a hat emblazoned with the words “America First.”
“The movement is something else now. And what we need in 2028—this is our last chance. We need in 2026 for this administration to be shut the f--- down.”
“What does this administration do, other than cover up the Epstein files, embezzle money through government contracts, and bring us to war for Israel,” Fuentes, who has a history of being accused of antisemitism, went on.
He continued: “This administration needs to be shut down immediately. Do not vote in the midterms, and if you do, vote for Democrats, f--- this.”
Fuentes, whose show draws between 500,000 and 1 million views per episode, escalated further, urging voters to metaphorically “burn down the house with them inside.”

And so on, and anything for the clicks and controversy, and that's the way it goes in that weird world, and don't get the pond started on Candace ... Candace Owens; Tucker Carlson with Nick Fuentes. Picture: Facebook

If you want an idle distraction, you can spend time on YouTube watching the three amigos aka the three potato boys take on Candace ...

Candace Owens’s Erika Kirk Docuseries Is NUTS

Candace Owens' latest conspiracy theory is batsh*t crazy

Go down that Candace rabbit hole and you might never see daylight again.

And yet Erica Kirk herself is deeply weird and always contriving to get herself into some kind of war or feud ... it's the nature of the beast:

College Republicans Chapter Collapses After Erika Kirk’s Visit (*archive link)

More deeply weird American younglings.

Social media and the need for clicks and likes has driven the United States mad.

It's a pity that Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die has such a lame final act, because it's opening vision of younglings in the classroom, in thrall to their phones and marching on a substitute teacher, is a hoot ...

Meanwhile, Jack was stuck back in ancient times ...

Fuentes admitted that he’s “always (been) an admirer” of Stalin. The old mass-murdering paranoiac’s birthday is on December 18 and every year, apparently, Fuentes draws a big red circle around it on his calendar.
Fuentes admires Hitler a little more than Stalin. Presumably, the party hats and fairy cakes come out on April 20, too.
Carlson remained cheerful and warm throughout. He’d been waiting so long to meet Fuentes, he gushed, before Fuentes geared up to unleash a litany of antisemitic tropes.
In terms of vodcast views, the high watermark was Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin in February 2024 where Carlson stoically sat for more than two hours, nodding his head at the right times, while Putin regaled him with 9th century revisionist Russian history.
When it came to asking the tough questions, Carlson preferred Moscow’s streets to the Kremlin, only to become bedazzled by Russian supermarkets. It was not so much the bounty on the shelves inside that caught his eye but the coin-operated shopping trolley concept. Chuck a kopeck in the trolley and away you go but bear in mind, in order to get that kopeck back, a shopper has to put the trolley in its designated corral. Carlson looked on, mouth agape in wonder, like a macaque witnessing a pea and thimble trick.
Obviously, the bloke has never shopped at Aldi.
The downside to this miracle of Russian retailing is, if you cause a stink in the fruit and veg aisle, you’ll either be kicked to death by the FSB there and then, or more likely, given cursory firearms training, dispatched to the Zaporizhzhian front and told to go your hardest.

Jack again led with an easy ploy ... Tucker Carlson and Clive Palmer give a press conference ahead of the Australian Freedom Conference at the Palmers Fig Tree Pocket Estate. Picture: NewsWire / Glenn Campbell

Barking mad of course, but what happens when you go looking for sanity? You end up right back with King Donald ...

There's nothing so lame as someone trading on influencers while resolutely unaware that what was true a nanosecond ago is no longer valid a nanosecond later...

Carlson was raised in California as a Democrat and commenced the well-trodden pathway from the left to the right many years ago. He has since veered into the margins to trumpet Christian nationalism and US isolationism, combined with what Ted Cruz ­described as “an obsession with ­Israel”. Other MAGA podcasters and influencers like Steve Bannon, Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly have broken ranks with the White House over the Iranian War but only Carlson seems so fixated on Israel.
Is MAGA splintering under the weight of it? It’s clear Tucker’s outside the tent playing sword fights with Alex Jones, at least according to Donald Trump. “Tucker has lost his way. He’s not Maga. Maga is saving our country. Maga is making our country great again.
“Maga is America first, and Tucker is none of those things. And Tucker is really not smart enough to understand that.”

Jack's quoting King Donald as some sort of authority?

It's just another variation on MAGA madness, and ssssh, don't mention Epstein.

And so to the closing line ...

Carlson might maintain some level of deniability, but scratch away the “just asking questions” veneer and he is never far away from antisemitism. Be it on the left, or right, or God only knows where when it comes to Tucker, antisemitism is the ugly but inevitable end to anti-war sentiment.

Just roll that one around on your tongue ...

...antisemitism is the ugly but inevitable end to anti-war sentiment.

Yeah nah, you can think in an anti-war way that the current excursion is a mad folly without ending up anti-Semitic, though you might end up with a healthy contempt for the current government of Israel.

It turns out a broken clock can take into account the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and the West Bank, and that can't be easily wiped away by an easy line proposing that it's merely anti-Semitism.

Nah yeah ... Tucker might be a compleat loon, but so are the loons who scribble each day for the Australian Daily Zionist News ...

And now this ...

The beefy boofhead is always good for a laugh ... and now this ...