old man emu

I don't see it as a victory for Trump's deal making ability. This is written in the referenced article: Ukraine floated the idea of opening its critical minerals to investment by allies last autumn. It would seem that Zelenskiy's government has been trying to work out how to pay for the US materials since before Trump got elected. Although the plan at the early stage might have been a hedge bet incase Trump did win because he was telling the voters that he was going to make other countries pay for US military aid. Trump is simply harvesting in summer the crop planted in winter. Making recipients of US aid and then making them pay for it after a conflict has been resolved has been US policy since the introduction of the Lend Lease Act during WWII. It took the British many years to repay its debt, and Australia was paying for many years. The US not only got paid for its "aid", but a lot of the repayments were in the form of leases on military facilities. No doubt Germany is still under the debt burden of the Marshall Plan, whether in money terms or real estate.

He could have drawn a circle more neatly, but Wolfie had hold of him

I'm not as harsh a Nomad. Absolvo te.

Don't know about the stethoscope, but she looks like she'd be a high producing milker with those mammaries.

Long gone are the days when an invasion armada could sneak up to the shores of another country undetected. That was not so in 1942 when there was the threat of a Japanese invasion. Plans were made to evacuate coastal areas of NSW and have the people and livestock move west across the mountains. I can't remember where I sourced this information from some years ago, but I assure you that I have read it. Here's a link to a newspaper report https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/270574182 and another to a museum collection https://mhnsw.au/stories/general/world-war-ii-1942/ Please note that I am NOT referring to the idea of "The Brisbane Line" which was pretty much a furphy.

No, but it's cheap to buy, as many Nations have done so. Foreign ownership of Australia is not something that is widely announced.

I haven't heard much from Dutton on this matter. Do you think that Dutton's mob are the "Co" part of your thought?

Without sounding like a disciple of Voldemort, I'm wondering if Australia's seemingly diplomatic silence over so many things that affect the US's international relations is simply a wait-and-see strategy. Not that I don't think its unwise to hold off at this stage, until the tariff situation is sorted. Unfortunately this silence does make one nervous about what backroom arrangements have been made. China hasn't helped by having a couple of its naval vessels take a late summer cruise through the south Pacific. But then, do we know how many US submarines are doing similar things? In a realistic world, the US has a lot to lose if we kicked them out. Their facilities here are too important to their "defence" strategies. I am yet to be convinced that China has military intentions away from its own shores. Why should they shed blood when they can get whatever they need through trade and investment?

Surely one of the aims of a tariff is to make the price of locally produced goods competitive with imported goods. Therefore, agricultural products produced in the USA which are given tariff protection should be competitive with imports. The things illustrated in the video were corn, soy beans and fruit. These are things used in large amounts in the USA, so the same things as imports should be more expensive. I did not want to concentrate on products themselves, but I wanted to highlight the propaganda aspect of the video - stating the worst to create fear. As I said, I think this video is anti-Trump, but it uses the same falsehood-telling of pro-Trump videos. Both sides of the propaganda war use lies, which is bad reporting.

Getting back to the topic of bad reporting. Does anyone know of Trump's 25% tariffs have begun yet? I was watching a video allegedly about the bad effects of the tariffs on sales of US agricultural products. What attracted my attention to the reporting was that the creator was saying that sales of those products had fallen so much that producers were facing ruin. To my thinking, at the moment there are no 25% tariffs in force, and if they were, then they would apply to products coming into the USA, not going out. In other words, is the message of the video false? Clearly since the video has an anti-Trump bias, could it have been made by radical left-wingers who used lies to instill fear into the US population?

Define "communism". I doubt if you know what the term actually means.

Closing down the US Social Security Department is the modern application of the comment, "Let them eat cake". "Let them eat cake" is the traditional translation of the French phrase "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche", said to have been spoken in the 18th century by "a great princess" upon being told that the peasants had no bread. The French phrase mentions brioche, a bread enriched with butter and eggs, considered a luxury food. The quote is taken to reflect either the princess's frivolous disregard for the starving peasants or her poor understanding of their plight. Now it's often used to describe someone who is out of touch with the needs of others, as Trump and Musk obviously are. Attributed to Marie-Antoinette, the phrase can actually be traced back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions in 1765, 24 years prior to the French Revolution, and when Antoinette was nine years old and had never been to France. Rousseau does not name the "great princess", and he may have invented the anecdote altogether, as the Confessions is not considered entirely factual.

What Trump and Musk are doing to the Government of the USA keeps bringing this short scene to mind And this one

A fool and his money are soon Partied.

Someone should tell Musk that air traffic control is not rocket science.

Good shit, man.

Is the air actually hotter near the equator than away from it, or is it an apparent feeling of heat because the humidity is so high one's evaporative cooling fails?

By the way, who told Trump he could tell the Ukraine that they had no place in the peace talks? Not one US military person fought in that war with the approval of the US government. Zelenskyy's demand to sit at the table reminds me of Billy Hughes' retort to US President Wilson at the Paris, "“I speak for 60,000 Australian war dead,” When US President Woodrow Wilson tried to belittle Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes at the 1919 Versailles peace conference by asking who he represented.

I interpret that statement to imply GON thinks that our current immigrants are radical Lefties. From my observation of immigrant settlement in the area of Sydney where I used to live, I would say that the immigrants are very conservative. Sure, there are a few deeply radicalised ones, but they are radicalised to the far Right. Every society has its nut cases. What would a Far-Right Minister for Immigration do? Ask each immigrant if they believed in equality of the sexes, or were in favour of nuclear and coal power generation over solar and wind? I think most immigrants would shrug their shoulders and simply ask for employment for themselves and an education for their children

Question Time is the parliamentary equivalent of those "reality" shows on TV. It's all theatrics.

AI and BS, not to mention also, smoke and mirrors.

I was taking advantage of the rights and priviledges of my poetic licence.

This year are you going to give your predictions earlier in the week so we can get a bet on?

That's where he got his on International Relations policy from. If you look at what he wants to do in various places, it reflects the mentality of a real estate wheeler dealer.

International public opinion surveys of the trustworthiness of various occupations consistently place politicians at the bottom, with about 15% of people thinking politicians are trustworthy. You have basically agreed on that point in your recent posts. I would attribute this lack of trust to everyone's access to what's happening in the world through internet access. I'm not going to comment on the clearly bad effects of false information. I feel that the acceptance of that bad information is due to a failure to be critical of what pops up. Those who are critical soon sort the wheat from the chaff. So I will say that without our access to information via the internet, politicians would still be getting away with things as they have done since time immemorial. How will this lack of trust manifest itself? The ideals upon which our political system evolved have been corroded by those who sought our support to place them in positions of leadership. Is it possible to eradicate that corrosion? Perhaps it could be done by only voting for non-aligned candidates who are told that ignoring the voice of their electorate can result in the candidate being made to resign the position. One flaw in my otherwise flawless plan is that being involved in the actual running of a government is something that has to be learned, much the same way that any person qualified to carry out an occupation has to learn. That is why we find that candidates have gained that learning by being involved fully in the machinations of Party politics. I introduce as Exhibit 1of a failure to gain that learning, one Donald Trump, a person upon whom Greatness has been thrust, but does not have the ability to make good of it.