“Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”
Dune (1965) Frank HerbertMonday, June 08, 2026
Sunday, June 07, 2026
Are Trump’s attack dogs losing their bite in Europe?
Are Trump’s attack dogs losing their bite in Europe?
Nationalism and opposition to immigration remain potent forces on both sides of the Atlantic. But interventions in Europe by Donald Trump’s henchmen don’t appear to be helping his political bedfellows.
London | With friends like US President Donald Trump and his attack dogs, who needs enemies?
Both Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth have gone back to the well in the past 36 hours to issue fresh denunciations of the dangers of “mass immigration” in Europe.
President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth. Does their schtick still work in a Europe that has heard it all before? AP
Vance blamed the murder of British teenager Henry Nowak on civilisational decline under lackadaisical European elites; Hegseth gave a speech commemorating the D-Day landings in Normandy to complain about foreigners storming continental beaches armed with “dangerous ideologies”.
But does their schtick still work in a Europe that has heard it all before?
First, any browbeating from Americans on the issue of policing and race is like being given lessons in fire prevention from a pyromaniac. Vance’s moral high ground is risible, given US law enforcement’s record, be it the shoot-to-kill policies of ICE agents, the lack of due process in Trump’s deportation surge or the country’s long and sorry history of police brutality and discrimination against minorities, most notably black man George Floyd in 2020.
Nowak’s murder has drawn parallels to that of Floyd, given that both victims’ final words included “I can’t breathe” as desperate pleas for help.
Floyd’s death at the hands of a white police officer, who pinned him down with a knee on the neck, sparked the global Black Lives Matter protest movement.
Nowak, in turn, was stabbed by a Sikh man, but treated as a suspect by police, who did not believe he was bleeding to death after his killer lied that the young white Briton had racially abused him.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage leapt on the death of Henry Nowak. Getty
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage leapt on the death as proof of two-tier policing, and the case has quite rightly sparked a debate about whether anti-racism training has swung the pendulum too far in how police go about their jobs.
But Vance has framed the debate in more existential terms.
“Henry Nowak died the same way a civilisation dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit,” he posted on X.
“He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.”
Relations between the US and UK are at a low point amid Trump’s frequent hectoring of Prime Minister Keir Starmer for his caution over the folly that is the war on Iran. Against this backdrop, Vance’s comments are particularly provocative as they come just days before a crucial byelection in which Labour and Reform UK are waging war.
While not naming Vance, Downing Street hit back.
“We have seen people trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement.
Hegseth’s speech was also provocative, delivered as it was at an event most associated with the beginning of the end of Nazism.
“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies — beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece and Bulgaria; boats and men arrive,” he said.
“When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.”
The question is, do such interventions still have the desired effect? Vance’s last-minute dash to help out authoritarian Viktor Orban in this year’s Hungarian election may have proved counterproductive.
JD Vance’s attempts to help Hungary’s Viktor Orbán did not pay off. Getty
Trump and his administration are unpopular in the UK and across much of Europe. While the far right may be surging in places like Germany and France, their leaders have carefully distanced themselves from Trump.
The European Policy Centre, in a new paper, has described this distancing as “recalibrating”.
“The reasons for this distancing are strategic, not ideological,” the report said. “European far-right parties are built on national sovereignty as a core organising principle, which made Trump’s more aggressive foreign policy moves – his threats to seize Greenland, his administration’s kidnapping of [former Venezuelan president Nicolas] Maduro, his trade tariffs and strikes on Iran – difficult to defend domestically.
“Aligning too closely with an administration that disregards the sovereignty of allied and third states, and whose ‘America First’ policy places European producers at a competitive disadvantage, risks undermining the very ideological foundations these parties stand on.”
It seems the White House hasn’t got the memo.
There is plenty of fertile ground over immigration and integration for the far-right to exploit in Europe and the UK. But while nationalism and opposition to immigration remain potent unifying forces on both sides of the Atlantic, the attacks being delivered in an American accent don’t appear to be helping political bedfellows in Europe.
1969 - Jozef Lettrich, 64, Slovak Foe Of Nazis and Communists, Dies
Jozef Lettrich, 64, Slovak Foe Of Nazis and Communists, Dies
Dr. Jozef Lettrich, a Czechoslovak democratic political leader in exile here, died Saturday of a heart attack in St. Johns Hospital, Elmhurst, Queens. He was 64 years old and lived in Washington. Dr. Lettrich, a moving spirit in organizations to free Central European nations from Soviet domination, had been in New York to fill lecturing engagements. He was born in Diviaky, Czechoslovakia, on June 17, 1905. The late Dr. Milan Hodza, Czechoslovak agrarian leader and Prime Minister of prewar Czechoslovakia, chose Dr. Lettrich, then a young lawyer, as secretary general of the Agrarian Students' and countryside youth cultural organizations. In the early years of the Czechoslovak Republic after World War I, Dr. Lettrich became a successful organizer of Slovak youth. In the economic field he served as president of the Farmers Mutual Savings Bank. He strove to bring Slovak youth up to the cultural level of their Czech peers, and advocated the political partnership of Czechs and Slovaks as equal nations in a common state. He became president of the Czechoslovak Society and a member of the Czechoslovak Agricultural Academy. When Czechoslovakia was dismembered by the Nazis in 1939, and a pro-Nazi Slovak state was created, Dr. Lettrich was held in a concentration camp of the Slovak state at Illava, and later released under police surveillance. He continued to organize the underground resistance of young democratic forces, and cooperated with the Czechoslovak exile government in London. In 1941 he was again imprisoned this time in a Slovak forced labor camp. After his release he intensified his underground resistance work. Dr. Lettrich was a leader in the 1944 Slovak uprising against the Nazis. When the revolt was suppressed, he escaped, was condemned to death and lived in hiding.
Active for Freedom
After the war, when Czechoslovakia was reunited, he was elected president of the Slovak National Council and was leader in Slovak politics. He was a co-founder of the Democratic party of Slovakia and was elected its president and delegate to the post-war provisional Parliament. After the 1948 Communist putsch in Czechoslovakia, Dr. Lettrich escaped to the West and settled in Washington. He became chairman of the central Committee of the Council for a Free Czechoslovakia and later of the Committee for a Free Czechoslovakia, chairman of the Czechoslovak delegation to the Assembly of Captive European Nations, and last year was chairman of the assembly. He also was vice chairman of the International Peasant Union. He published various studies in the Slovak language. His "History of Modern Slovakia," in English, was published in 1955 by Praeger. He was a member of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences in Philadelphia. Surviving are two brothers, Julius and Pavel, and two sisters, Irene and Marie. A funeral service will be held at 11:30 A.M. today at Frank E. Campbell's, Madison Avenue and 81st Street.
‘IKEA flat pack of housing’: Couple save $250k with shed-house build
‘IKEA flat pack of housing’: Couple save $250k with shed-house build
Victorian grandparents Mandy and Trevor Allan are living in a shed with their grandson. While it may sound like a miserable retirement, the opposite is true for the Allans, whose stylish and functional home has become the envy of locals in their town.
The couple spent $550,000 to build their home in 2025, including the construction of a tool shed, which is far less than the $800,000 they budgeted for a traditional home build (excluding the separate shed) in 2021, before construction costs began blowing out.
Mandy Allan and her husband Trevor in front of their shed house in Bendigo, Victoria. Bill Conroy
The materials to construct their customised two-storey home were delivered to their property in flat-pack form on the back of a truck by Shed House Australia and assembled by the company’s building crew.
Their self-designed home includes a large pentagon-shaped window that overlooks a golf course, two “massive” bedrooms, two living rooms, a kitchen, bathroom, powder room and a five-metre-long wardrobe.
The full shed home cost at least $250,000 less than their original building plans and was completed in eight months. Mandy Allan was expecting their traditional build to take from one year to 18 months.
Prefabricated or modular homes, as well as flat-pack alternatives like shed homes, DIY tiny homes from Bunnings and granny flats are becoming popular alternatives to paying for the rising costs associated with traditional home building and renovating.
The Allans chose the iron shed exterior due to the low maintenance it requires. Bill Conroy
The federal government’s winding back of negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions for existing properties – but not for new homes – aims to improve building demand to help fix the nation’s housing supply crisis and make housing more affordable for younger generations.
The Allans wanted a home suitable for multi-generational living, as their 20-year-old grandson lives with them and they wanted to provide a separate space for him.
“We wanted big, open spaces. We didn’t want to feel enclosed,” Mandy Allan said.
“We’re transitioning into retirement. We were after very, very low maintenance, and the beauty of corrugated iron is that it lasts for a very long time and you don’t have to paint it.
“We did everything we possibly could ourselves. All of the cabinetry and wardrobes are from IKEA, but you probably wouldn’t know if I didn’t tell you.”
The couple bought a block of land in the Victorian city of Bendigo, which can have weather extremes of temperatures above 40 degrees in summer and below zero overnight. Mandy Allan said their home’s insulation was working brilliantly despite their ceiling height being 9.5 metres.
“It gets cold and it got damn hot this year. We moved in just before Christmas and we had that 40 degrees [weather]. We put in a couple of big reverse-cycle heating and cooling units and we have only ever used one cooler. It worked fantastically.”
Mandy Allan, a retired project manager, managed the home build herself. Bill Conroy
Allan co-ordinated the work herself as an owner-builder, as she is a retired project manager and the couple has previously renovated homes. They hired a Shed House Australia crew to construct the framing and tradies to do the internal work, but did as much as they could themselves.
Master Builders Australia warns that customers should seek advice before purchasing any prefabricated or flat-pack housing, including on what the local council’s and state government’s rules are and to understand future financial implications.
“Housing innovation is only one part of solving Australia’s housing shortage. It is not a substitute for the barriers to supply being removed,” a Master Builders spokesperson said.
“Australia needs to see a material uplift in supply and governments at all levels must focus on policies that encourage investment, improve efficiency, cut unnecessary red tape and grow the construction workforce while delivering enabling infrastructure.”
“The cost of land has gone up. We can’t control that. The commodity that we can control is how we build.”— Katie Penfold, Shed House Australia
Builders are absorbing cost increases across new home or renovation projects of up to 8 per cent since the war in the Middle East sent fuel prices rocketing. New quotes for fixed-price contracts will soon start reflecting higher prices for raw materials across timber, steel and plastic pipes.
Economists are tipping that prices won’t go down once supply chain issues are resolved as the backlog of orders combined with the ongoing shortages of tradies only reinforces the upward pressure on project costs.
Home prices were rising due to the nation’s vast undersupply of housing but property tax changes in the federal budget, interest rate rises and the Middle East war are causing values to decline in Sydney and Melbourne.
‘IKEA flat pack of housing’
Shed House Australia was founded by Rhys Uhlich during the pandemic, before ex-Mirvac employees Katie and David Penfold came on board as directors in 2021.
“Think of it as the IKEA flat pack of housing. Once your slab is down and you’re ready to go, our future frame structure and cladding can go up anywhere between three days and a week. For some of the larger ones, maybe two weeks,” Katie Penfold said.
The company has built 150 homes across Australia in the last three years. They’ve received 20,000 inquiries in the last two years. The company designs homes for metropolitan and regional locations.
“There was just this strong underlying interest. It wasn’t us driving inquiry and looking for the people, it was more us responding to it and working out how to deal with [the interest] because there’s an obvious need and desire … as there is a lack of options for people in the market,” Katie Penfold said.
“The cost of land has gone up. We can’t control that. The commodity that we can control is how we build.
“If we can make sure that we’re providing this really refined architectural outcome in a simple way, which is faster, easier, and more efficient for people to build that in a way becomes … a bit of a no-brainer.”
While Bunnings has entered into the do-it-yourself home build space, IKEA says it is not working on any assemble-yourself housing plans.
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Lucy Slade covers real estate for The Australian Financial Review, based in the Sydney newsroom. She was previously the breaking news reporter. Email Lucy at lslade@afr.com
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