In which Our Henry nails the spirit of the season with the help of Thucydides, and sundry other reptiles struggle to match the master's insights...

 

Steady, steady. No pushing or shoving. Please form a line and keep the line moving.

There will be no distractions or deviations. The pond will put on hold celebrations of the big loan to Ukraine. The pond will defer consideration of the desire of the pasty Hastie to kiss the ring of mad King Donald.

The pond will avoid contemplating the journalist murdering, Christ statue bashing, settler killing fields and the ethnic cleansing of the current government of Israel.

Sure the pond would like to spend time with MAGA Navy Boss Spreads Unhinged Theories About Witches and Cannibalism, but the pond has long known that ever since Salem a secret cabal of witches has ruled America. Hillary! Teleporting Waffle Houses!

And the pond pond promises not provide any nuze you can uze on the strait of Hormuz, not even a list of the many goods that you will not be able to uze or which will face price abuze as the mad King holds the world's economy to ransom (Condoms! Plastic storage boxes!).

Instead the pond will plunge straight into the good oil, the drum, that will amuze, straight from the horse's mouth by way of the lizard Oz's best and brightest muze.

You see, it's the season, and Our Henry is right on it ...

The header: Do we, as Australians, merit the sacrifice of those first Anzacs? The Dawn Service’s ritual centre, with its ‘They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old’ speaks of the living’s relation to the dead.

The caption for the fiery snap: A Dawn Service at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance.

The pond realises some will be disappointed. After that build up, it's just Our Henry, ancient warrior war monger, performing the seasonal ritual and taking five minutes about it?

What about the actual realities of the war currently unfolding? What about some Italians wanting to act as scabs and score a place in the World Cup by subterfuge rather than winning on the field?

Pshaw, the pond says.

This is prime Henry. The pond guarantees there will be time spent in ancient Greece! There will be confirmed sightings of Thucydides!

There will be a full parade by the pompous pedant of a range of portentous references, as solemn as the French Foreign Legion doing a slow march in wobble mode, hands pointed down, beards jutting, axes draped over aprons.

Please, allow Our Henry to gush, and what a sweeting blessing, without a single reptile visual distraction: 

At dawn in the high summer of 413BC, when the Peloponnesian War was in its 18th year, two trophies faced each other across the narrow strait at the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf. The day before, a Corinthian fleet had met an Athenian squadron and for the first time had struck the Athenians more forcefully than they could strike back.
The Corinthians knew the Athenians’ larger fleet and masterly seamanship gave them a crushing advantage. To counter it, they modified their ships’ prows, making them shorter and stouter to withstand ramming. Having neutralised their adversaries’ superiority by departing from the conventional Greek ship design, they raised their victory trophy at Erineus on the Achaean shore.
But despite extensive damage, the Athenians held the water at the fighting’s end, recovered the wrecks and the dead and, according to traditional standards, were the victors. In the hours that followed, they rowed across the Gulf and planted a counter-trophy at Molycrian Rhion, on the Aetolian side.
By the early morning light the two trophies therefore came clearly into view only three kilometres apart. Longstanding rules, that awarded victory to one side or the other, had been breached; but it was something far deeper that lay broken at Erineus.

Are you not amuzed?

Did the pond not guarantee a fine old time? Can it get any better? Of course it can. Let there be Nazis, because they are not just the remit of Mark Felton or SBS. Our Henry likes to take them on his cruze:

German intellectual historian Hans Blumenberg – who had experienced the rise of Nazism – put it best. Human beings, he argued, are constitutionally incapable of living in unfiltered contact with reality, exposed to the overwhelming, undifferentiated threat of a world that offers no given orientation, no protection. We therefore connect ourselves to it through the mediating tissue of myth and ritual, metaphor and story.
These do not give us access to the world as it is; they render it intelligible by investing events with significance and placing them within a widely understood frame. And what makes a society viable is sufficient overlap between its members’ mental maps to allow them to manage their differences.

And now for what correspondents always lust after, are always panting for in eager anticipation. Thucydides!

When the common repertoire of memories, symbols and words breaks down, that connective tissue is not merely strained; it is torn apart. The result is what Thucydides called stasis: a condition in which conflict can no longer be contained by the civic order, driving society towards rupture.
The war, as Erineus revealed, had shredded the Greek world’s shared frame of significance – undermining ritual, dissolving trust and corroding alliances once deemed secure.
However, the process ran not only between poleis but within them. And nowhere was the descent into stasis more disastrous than in Thucydides’ beloved Athens.
Against stasis, Athens had, at the war’s outset, one extraordinary bulwark: the city as Pericles had taught his generation to see it. What distinguished the Athenians, Pericles said in the Funeral Oration, was that they loved life and lived it fully, yet were ready to die for their city, precisely because the city gave them so much.
But claiming love of, and loyalty to, the city was easy when both were without cost. Once the plague descended on Athens in 430BC, bringing sudden and unpredictable death, Athenians began to live for the moment, placing present appetite above future concerns.
Soon after, with Pericles dying while the plague raged, his demagogic successors devoted their specious rhetoric to inflaming division rather than fostering collective purpose.
It was, however, the war that consummated the rupture into opposing camps. “War,” Thucydides writes, “filches away the easy provision of the everyday.” The civic decencies proved dependent on peace and plenty; when citizens were forced to bear even the slightest hardship, the thinness of the civic compact was exposed.
By then, dialogue had collapsed and the factions were hermetically enclosed in their own myths, entrenching the hatreds between them. The war had come home. It was only a matter of time before external enemies administered the coup de grace to a body that had already lost its capacity to cohere. Thucydides’ formula is terse: the Athenians did not succumb to Sparta; they succumbed to one another.
Thucydides, with what Nietzsche praised as his “courage in the face of reality”, diagnosed the disease as its victim lay dying. But he did far more than that. His History is itself a compensatory act of significance-making in the face of significance’s dissolution.

Incroyable. Nietzsche as a bonus! 

And wait, yet more Thucydides, with a fine example of Our Henry speaking in ancient tongues:

By giving the war a shape, a language, a set of themes that still organise political thought, Thucydides produced a “ktêma es aiei”, a possession for all time. He wrote, he tells us, so that future men, when they see similar tragedies looming – and the nature of human affairs makes their recurrence inevitable – may recognise the risks and act accordingly.
Two and a half millennia later, his warning resonates. Once again, we are in a war marred not only by the clash of arms but by a cacophony of contradictory claims.
War, by its nature, shrouds gains and losses in secrecy, deception and misrepresentation. Worse still, assessments of its likely course are vitiated by the inherent unpredictability of action and reaction: what Thucydides called “to astathmëton” – the irreducible contingency of a world that can be acted upon but never fully mastered.
But despite those factors, which urge caution, there is an extraordinary rush to judgment, pronouncing outcomes, and anointing victors, before they are decided. And no less extraordinary is the vehemence with which opposing views are held, assigning all success (and tactical shrewdness) to one side and all failure (and strategic folly) to the other.

And so at last to the modern world, and a little both siderism worthy of the New York Times:

The barely disguised schadenfreude of Donald Trump’s haters, and the matching ire of his supporters, are, no doubt, part of the explanation. 

Oh no doubt, no doubt. 

Is the man not in perfect balance, is there not an appealing symmetry to this presentation?

And now let us draw together the threads, so that the entire meaning of the season is unveiled, in a way that was only hinted at in that service in the Yabba in Wake in Fright:

They are, however, symptoms rather than causes, visible manifestations of the stasis Thucydides acutely analysed: the withering, here as throughout the West, of the common repertoire of values and practices through which contending arguments can be advanced, differences addressed, tensions however imperfectly contained.
And yet the crowds at the Anzac Day dawn service – one of the few occasions on which Australians still gather the frayed threads of historical significance – show the longing for a shared framework of meaning persists.
Inaugurated in another time of bitter division, after the searing antagonisms of the conscription referendums, the dawn service’s ritual centre, with its “They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old”, says nothing of the dead’s relation to eternity; it speaks instead of the living’s relation to the dead, conferring enduring meaning on events that unfolded more than a century ago in war’s all-enveloping fog.
The Last Post is sounded into the dark; the silence is kept; the Rouse follows as the sky begins to brighten. Between the two lies a held breath in which the nation briefly becomes, once more, a community.
That is a pause, not a cure. But if, in those few moments, we can resolve to remember not only the fallen but the achievements, now so often derided, of the nation for which they fought and died; to refuse the continued perversion of truth and the escalation of hatred; and to renew the capacity – when the reckoning comes, as it will – to stand-to at dawn beside those who stand with us, then this will be a country that has merited their sacrifice.

The pond does believe this is one of the finest of the hole in bucket repair man's outings in recent times, a vintage excursion in to the meaning of war.

The pond didn't think anyone could match JD explaining Catholicism to the Pope ...

... but Our Henry has surpassed him!

It's a tough act to follow. Some might want to venture into a reptile EXCLUSIVE.

The best the pond could do was to send it to the intermittent archive ...

EXCLUSIVE
Cell to cenotaph: Roberts-Smith vows to take part in Anzac Day commemorations
Australia’s most-decorated soldier backs accused war criminal and fellow Victoria Cross recipient’s right to march, insisting ‘what happens in war, stays in war’.
By Jamie Walker

What happens in war stays in war? 

What a tremendous variation on what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.

If only the Nazis had that legal defence in the Nuremberg trials, they could have walked out of prison free and proud warriors, and Our Henry would have been stripped of a valuable reference. 

I say, old chaps, we might have done a few beastly things to the Jews, but the Jews are being beastly to the Palestinians, and remember the old adage, what happens in war stays in war. (And the reptiles at the lizard Oz will write it up for the delectation of the hive mind).

And for more in the same area, some might want to contemplate the meretricious Merritt, helping out with ...

Australia’s civil justice system is on the brink of an uncivil war
Soldiers’ cases expose critical weaknesses in Australian law
In return for passing up their right to silence, four soldiers were promised their evidence would not be used against them in the future.
By Chris Merritt
Legal Affairs Contributor

The pond personally supervised that listing in the intermittent archive and trusts that it holds good for at least this day ...

And then there was an old digger trying to compete on Our Henry's sacred turf ...

The Ode tells of true significance of Anzac Eve
We instinctively understand the power of the eve – the quiet moments before momentous days. Anzac Eve deserves such a place.
By Peter Cosgrove

But how could he possibly match the hole in bucket man? 

And besides, after that surfeit of Henry served in such spiffing style, the pond has had a surfeit of the spirit of the season for the moment ... so the pond carefully supervised its placement in the intermittent archive, pausing only for a celebratory 'toon.

And what about this shocking piece? 

The pond has heard many rogue opinions in its day, but a reptile suggesting that we need to follow China's lead in anything is absolutely outrageous, entirely beyond the pale ...

We need to follow China’s lead on regulation of AI - ChatGPT has huge responsiblities (sic, AI checked and approved) that it is choosing to ignore
By Toby Walsh

Chatbots in the US have been linked to self harm. In one case, it is claimed that ChatGPT even offered to write the suicide note.

The pond did wake this morning to rather old news regarding AI spreading the word on a fake disease, which was written up in Nature:

Scientists invented a fake disease. AI told people it was real

Bixonimania doesn’t exist except in a clutch of obviously bogus academic papers. So why did AI chatbots warn people about this fictional illness?

Got sore, itchy eyes? You’re probably one of the millions of people who spend too much time staring at screens, being bombarded with blue light. Rub your eyes too much and your eyelids might turn a slight, pinkish hue.
So far, so normal. But if, in the past 18 months, you typed those symptoms into a range of popular chatbots and asked what was wrong with you, you might have got an odd answer: bixonimania.
The condition doesn’t appear in the standard medical literature — because it doesn’t exist. It’s the invention of a team led by Almira Osmanovic Thunström, a medical researcher at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, who dreamt up the skin condition and then uploaded two fake studies about it to a preprint server in early 2024. Osmanovic Thunström carried out this unusual experiment to test whether large language models (LLMs) would swallow the misinformation and then spit it out as reputable health advice. “I wanted to see if I can create a medical condition that did not exist in the database,” she says.
The problem was that the experiment worked too well. Within weeks of her uploading information about the condition, attributed to a fictional author, major artificial-intelligence systems began repeating the invented condition as if it were real.
Even more troublingly, other researchers say, the fake papers were then cited in peer-reviewed literature. Osmanovic Thunström says this suggests that some researchers are relying on AI-generated references without reading the underlying papers ...

And so on, and in that spirit the pond made sure that Prof Walsh's piece was saved to the intermittent archive, and will offer a teaser trailer, even if it involves the reprehensible concept of following China's lead ...

But even though the pond shares the prof's fears about AI and has more than a fair amount of contempt for Sam, the pond believes that nothing can match the experience of that noble Our Henry reading.

After experiencing it, the pond almost felt a Macbethian moment come upon it...

I have lived long enough. My way of life
Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have, but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath
Which the poor heart would fain deny and dare not.

Put it another way ...

Picking itself up from that trough of despond and confusion, the pond allowed itself one last outing. 

How could the pond avoid Mein Gott and his hearty renewables bashing ways?

He was sure to confuze the greenie foolz ...

Not for him a desire to return to the lying rodent and Petey boy days. 

Here was a reptile who can embrace the spirit of the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, here was a reptile who could deliver good nuze, despite whatever was happening in the strait of Hormuz ...

What a stunning opening, and what contrasting snaps.

There was the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way looking vigorous and angry, while Satan's little helper looked at best bemused, and at worst completely bewildered, lips pursed like a carnival clown making ready to receive a ping pong ball.

The world weary Mein Gott continued on, in a way he has done many times before ...

As I have written many times, our nation has tremendous potential to use the photosynthesis process to profitably absorb carbon emissions. Bowen also now understands that we are going to need a lot of gas and he opens the way to link gas development with housing timber and agricultural carbon storage. As I pointed out in 2022, saltbush and similar plants can slash global carbon emissions and become a major source of world protein to relieve world food shortages. Carbon is stored in the root systems.
In the process, Australia has the potential to be a Middle East in reverse.
Bowen also understands the need for Australia to make its own nitrogenous fertilisers and, as my readers are well aware, we have the technology to extract oil and carbon from Victorian brown coal and use the carbon to make nitrogenous fertilisers.
We could start almost immediately but the Victorian government leaves diesel and fertiliser to Albo. The government and opposition need to consider combining to declare Victoria a state of sovereign risk.
But Bowen has not yet come to grips with the fact that while our solar-wind generation and transmission operation made sense a decade ago, the incredible cost blow-out now will set our nation back many decades. The rapid changes looming in technology already make it look obsolete. Maybe one day Bowen will change his mind.
That’s what Angus Taylor has done.
In a wonderful industry address he said: “Building tens of thousands of kilometres of power lines to nowhere, frankly, right now, is not what we need. It is only going to make the energy system more expensive and is going to drag down the government budget.”
I can’t think of anything more truthful than those Taylor words, and it provides real hope for the nation that he is prepared to make a stand in the national interest.
But telling the truth in this situation is very dangerous for Angus Taylor.

We'll all be rooned. It's not just Dame Groan who knows how to recite that poem, as the reptiles interrupted with a happy snap ... A politician confessing a mistake is such a rare event in Australia that it will send the environmentally friendly media into a frenzy. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass

How Mein Gott loves the positive role that Barners, Tamworth's ineradicable shame, plays in this conversation ...

When he was energy minister and Scott Morrison was prime minister, he undertook a memorandum of understanding with the NSW government which was designed to foster massive solar and wind generation plus transmission projects that he now says are “only going to make the energy system more expensive”.
Worse still, the regulator suggested that transmission towers near Riverina farmland should be limited to 330kV.
Taylor played a role in increasing capacity to 500kV, so increasing the height of the towers and their damage to Australian agriculture. This spread to other areas.
In hindsight he clearly made a fundamental mistake but to be fair, at that time, politicians on both sides were being told by cost estimators that the project would be economic because the cost was low.
We are now looking at the vicinity of $400bn capital outlay plus secret financing deals which will take the cost close to $1 trillion spread over 35 years.
That totally changes the game, particularly as all the signs are that we can reduce emissions at a fraction of the cost.
A politician confessing a mistake is such a rare event in Australia that it will send the environmentally friendly media into a frenzy but will highlight to the community the amount that will be needed to be raised via higher power prices to fund this disastrous project.
And on the wings is, of course, One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce.

Go Barners ... why, the reptiles will even give you an EXPLAINER AV distraction, The former political foes have joined force, Greg Brown reports.

And so to the wrap up ...

Barnaby would of course like to talk about the cost, but my guess is that he can smell a scandal in the secret funding. Many of the developers knew that the whole plan was uneconomic and were reluctant to proceed without guaranteed high rates of return. That is why it had to be kept secret. Barnaby will do his job and relentlessly work to uncover the finance scandal secrets.
And the discovery that Angus Taylor is now publicly contradicting his former stance as energy minister will send Barnaby into a frenzy of joy. My advice to Angus Taylor is to get in first.
As a nation Australia is being fundamentally changed by the Iran war which underlines our isolation and dependence on others. We have major projects in energy and defence that will require large sums of money and if we saddle these new enterprises with much higher power prices along with a $1 trillion community bill over 35 years our nation will be in a very dangerous situation.
We now have the Liberals, the Nationals and One Nation who all understand the folly of what is taking place and there must be genuine politicians in the ALP who will bring the subject up with Anthony Albanese.
Already the Prime Minister has prevented two mistakes by the Treasurer – the tax on unrealised gains and the extra tax on gas which would have reduced our supplies of diesel, aviation fuel and petrol. Now he has to bring his energy minister into line with the national interest.

The world's energy issues solved in a trice, thanks to Mein Gott and Australia as the new middle east, with due credit to Barners and prime Angus.

And you thought you were over the nuze that would amuze.

At last have it pasty Hastie ...

The Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie says doubling down on the US relationship has eroded Australia’s sovereign capability, including its defence industry, as he warns the country must “get serious” about national security to rebalance the alliance.
In a speech to the Robert Menzies Institute in Melbourne last night, the shadow minister for industry and sovereign capability said the reliance on the US meant “strategic trade-offs” that had hastened the deindustrialisation of Australia and “weakened our hard power”.
He said it had cost Australia “sovereign capabilities like a robust defence industry” and “strategic freedom of action” in ways that were now becoming clear amid the Middle East war.
Hastie said under Donald Trump the US “should not be expected to guarantee much except its own strategic interests”, which meant Australia must “get serious about our own national security” by rebuilding its industrial base and a defence force “with teeth”.
To put it bluntly, if Anzus is going to continue for another 75 years, we need to invest in our industrial base and our defence force.
The former soldier has been an outspoken critic of Trump and his war in Iran, striking a different tone to the opposition leader, Angus Taylor

What could possibly go wrong?

And so to an aside, with the transcript here ...Penn & Teller & the Supreme Court & BS

In which, after celebrating King Chook with the bromancer, the pond does a reptile survey, and somehow ends up with in the spirit of the Dardanelles season ...

 

The pond was surprised to learn, via the Graudian and Graham Readfearn that the war criminal network (7) had joined the lizard Oz war against EVs and renewables, in Channel Seven's Spotlight dug for dirt on renewable energy. Here's what they left out.

The pond was surprised because it suddenly remembered that there were still four FTA networks in Australia, and that the Seven network actually still existed. 

The pond can't recall watching a single show or even five minutes of Seven the last couple of decades, helped by not giving a toss about the AFL. 

When ever in Melbourne, the pond stares blankly into the distance when asked what team it supports, and ABC news updates (many bulletins are in the grip of that spreader of brain damage and dementia) are enough to be able to mock members of the extended family devoted to losers like Richmond.

As for Ten, it takes the pond fever dream moments to remember decades of drivel of the Number 96 kind, with the pond unable to recall the name of a single show since.

And about Nine the pond says nothing, save to note that they've helped in the ruination of Australian media in multiple ways. Long gone are the days when Paul Sheehan could wax prolix pretending to be a prole while enjoying ten buck sourdough bread in Paddington.

As for that war, Wilcox managed to leave out one important empty box in her 'toon of the day...

Where's the empty "invisible thing" box for "benefits to the planet flowing from addiction to fossil fuels"?

Never mind, the pond appreciates news of what's going down in declining empires, even if there's no real need to care.

After all, the pond has the mother lode of the axis of weevils in the shape of the lizard Oz hive mind, and its nefarious offshoots, with occasional second hand insights turning up to reveal what Sky Noise down under is doing to degrade the hive mind even further.

And so to the latest news, and to the bromancer advising on mad King Donald's mindless middle east folly, set in progress with the aid and encouragement of the bromancer's employer, the Emeritus Chairman, and cheered on by the bromancer's Faux Noise US kissing cousins ...

Poor bromancer ...or should that be poor world?

The header: Is this the ultimate presidential TACO? Donald Trump faces a military stalemate with Iran as his repeated threats lose credibility and Tehran refuses to negotiate under pressure.

The caption for the dire collage celebrating the return of Emilia, at last given a credit for her ongoing demeaning of the graphics department: Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei and President Donald Trump both want the war to end but neither wants to be seen as having come off second best. Artwork: Emilia Tortorella

It's a peculiar, perverse pleasure, watching the bromancer showing every sign of being up for a turning. 

It only takes three minutes of his time, and anything he talks about might well change in a nanosecond, but he's growing more and more testy with mad King Donald, with the latest his throwing about of that key sign of TDS, talk of King Donald as a weak-willed chook.

The bromancer cunningly poses it a question - he's just asking questions - but the weight falls on signs of chookdom. My chookdom for a Taco sauce:

Is this the ultimate TACO? Donald Trump chickened out from enforcing his umpteenth deadline for Iran to comply with his wishes by reopening the Strait of Hormuz and surrendering its 60 per cent enriched uranium stockpile.
Or is the US President preparing one last, massive military escalation?
The more extravagant Trump’s threats, the less likely he is to carry them out.
Thus, there was no chance that Trump would act to “end the civilisation” of Iran through massive bombing. This language offended Americans, outraged world opinion and drew a rebuke from Pope Leo XIV.

By golly, he's taken to listing mad King Donald's assorted crimes, and speaking of second hand news of that remote Sky Noise down under empire, the bromancer's piece was instantly interrupted by by the reptiles flinging in an AV distraction (how's that rebrand going?):

FDD Iran analyst Janatan Sayeh claims US President Donald Trump sees the next phase in the Iran war as being “even more catastrophic, going beyond just military”. “He sees the next phase as being even more catastrophic, going beyond just military and going after somehow using something from within Iranian territory against the regime,” he told Sky News host James Bolt. “That’s the only way they can meaningfully ensure that in the long term, at least you’re not just dealing with a wounded Islamic Republic and you’re not going back every six months to a year, bombing the regime, treating then bombing them again.”

Slurp down the bromancer's discontent while you can - it seems generations ago that he was hot to trot for a war with China by Xmas; now he's riven by fearsome doubting Thomas insights and billy goat butts:

But Trump has attacked militarily at the least likely times, such as during formal negotiations.
The uneasy balance is that Washington maintains the blockade of Iranian ports, while Iran blockades the Strait of Hormuz to all other shipping.
The President has extended the ceasefire indefinitely, allegedly at the request of the Pakistani government, which brokered US-Iran talks, and to allow what he describes as a “seriously fractured” Iranian government to present a consolidated position.
Iran says it has no intention of resuming talks under a deadline and accuses the US of plotting to launch another surprise attack.
The war has already gone on for eight weeks.
Trump keeps managing to talk the markets into believing it’s just about to end.
But this stage of negotiations has so far favoured Iran. It got a ceasefire, the suspension of the US and Israeli bombing campaign, and it got Trump to order Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to suspend military operations in Lebanon.
Tehran has used the pause to dig out buried missile launchers, missiles and drones. Estimates vary widely but there is significant Western and US briefing that Iran has more than 1000 missiles left, some 40 per cent of its pre-war drones and maybe 60 per cent of its missile launchers.
If these figures are remotely accurate, they show that Trump’s claims of damage to Iran’s war stocks have been seriously exaggerated.
It also means Iran may well be capable of renewed and even sustained attacks on Gulf Arab energy infrastructure, as well as on Israel and other targets.
Iran may have other ways of escalating the conflict, such as getting some of its proxies, Shia militia in Arab nations as well as the Houthis in Yemen, to attack regional energy infrastructure or ships sailing in the Red Sea.

The one indicator that this might not be a TACO moment is that Trump has brought a third aircraft carrier to the region as well as thousands of marines and amphibious troops.

The reptiles again interrupted, and again the pond reduced the distraction to a screen cap: U.S. forces operating in the Arabian Sea enforced naval blockade measures against an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel attempting to sail toward an Iranian port, April 19

Could the bromancer top his usual preferred dismissive "that's nuts"?

Trump plainly wants to avoid this, just as Iran wants to avoid the resumption of US and Israeli bombing of Iranian targets. So the fragile, unstable, temporary balance of the twin embargoes may be the way of things for a while.
The embargo is costing Iran hundreds of millions of dollars a day, in an economy already on its knees.
But Iran has stockpiled supplies, has some oil at sea, can do some trade overland, and has some arrangements with international supporters such as Russia, China and North Korea.
Indeed, the fact Russia and China have blatantly helped Iran, militarily and economically, and yet paid no price for this, has weakened US standing vis a vis the other great powers.
Trump now wants to finish the war quickly. It’s likely that Iran will ultimately offer some kind of fudge/compromise/deal on its nuclear materials.
But it will want massive sanctions relief in return.
It’s very unclear that Iran will allow the free passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
It was for many years a standing risk in all geostrategic calculations that Iran may seek one day to shut off the Strait.
It didn’t do this mainly because it feared massive US retaliation.
Now it has already suffered the massive American retaliation, so it’s going to be very reluctant to give up its colossal new leverage.
If Iran can survive a blockade for six months, and that, like everything else, is very uncertain, Trump surely cannot continue this war, which is so unpopular among ordinary Americans, and so costly and disruptive, for six months.
Trump has so devalued his own word that it now bears almost no relationship to reality, or perhaps an inverse relationship.
For example, in 2018 Trump announced that North Korea would give up all its nuclear weapons. No such thing happened.
After an Alaska summit with Vladimir Putin, Trump announced he’d solved the Ukraine war.
Utter nonsense. None of the peace agreement provisions Trump announced for the Gaza Strip has come to fruition.
And during this war Trump entirely reverses narrative on average twice a day.
The Iranians know Trump now very much wants out of this war, so the US President must do something highly unusual for him – play a weak hand brilliantly.

Well, it ain't talk of "nuts", or even mad King Donald, emperor of bone spurs boasting that he would have won the Vietnam war in a week or two, but the pond will settle for "Utter nonsense" as a sign of the bromancer's ongoing disenchantment with the mad king...

After that it was all down hill.

The pond noted a few days ago that the reptiles seem to live in a distant past populated by long lost figures of the Jim Cairns kind.

This day Geoff chambered another round by reminding the pond of a politician now wreathed in memories like a Network Ten show.

Luckily the intermittent archive is working, so the pond had only to pause to note what appalling snap the reptiles had managed to feature at the head of Geoff's outburst.

Doesn't she look like a demented gesticulating harridan, a mad witch? Is the parrot standing by with a chaff bag to help out Geoff? First the link, then the teaser trailer:

Only Labor can fix up Julia Gillard’s NDIS mess
Labor faces a high-stakes gamble as it prepares to slash $15bn from the disability scheme’s costs by removing participants the scheme was never designed to support.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

Enough of that already ...

And it's a ritual of the pond's never to give petulant Peta the time of day, though there was a whimsical desire to return to ancient days in her headline ...

Where are adults to save us? Howard and Costello took our debt to zero
By Peta Credlin
Columnist

This government has fostered the growth of productivity-smashing union power that has made new resource projects almost impossible.

Sheesh, they're still banging on about long lost picket fence days?

They're still dragging Petey boy on to Sky Noise down under to offer useless advice, even though the pond can vaguely remember - it's so long ago - that he never had the ticker?

And just look at the fossils featured in the snap at the top of her piece, and marvel that she didn't tip the nod to the onion muncher, now at a loose end as his authoritarian Hungary holidays come to an end ...

And that's more than enough of that.

Meanwhile, as the pond was speaking only yesterday about the reptiles ongoing devotion to jihads, the pond should note this effort by over boiled rice...

Yep, it's one of their hysterical patented EXCLUSIVES for a world that just doesn't care ...(be a loyal plastic robot, TV dinners by the pool, brown shoes don't make it - oh Frank, Frank, why did you zap the pond with political incorrectness?)

EXCLUSIVE
Medical regulator ‘captured’ by powerful trans lobby
Peak medical regulator ‘compromised’ by partnership with trans lobby group
AHPRA faces explosive claims it has been compromised by its partnership with trans lobby group ACON, with doctors now ‘too scared to dissent’ on gender treatments.
By Stephen Rice

Transphobia is one of the least appealing aspects of the hive mind, and one of the more pathetic jihads the pond always tries to avoid, as it gets the pond's TG friends agitated (has anyone in the hive mind ever met a TG person? There aren't that many out and about, for all the demonising and the hysteria).

It puts the reptiles in the same company as Vlad the sociopath (good news for Ukraine at last with the onion muncher's master no longer able to block), the Taliban and fundamentalist US evangelicals, and so all the pond can do is point to the jihad in the intermittent archive.

Ditto the pond has neither the time nor the space for women writing about men in heartfelt tones ...

Carving out space for men and boys beyond the shed
There’s been an erosion of the spaces where men gather. Traditional sites of male sociability are in long-term decline.
By Suzana Hardy

So few had cared that the pond had to personally supervise the piece's appearance in the intermittent archive.

Speaking of tradition, whatever happened to traditional spellings of Shoshan or Shoshannah, or if you will Susan, Susanna, or Susannah? The pond has been unnerved ever since Sussssan lost out in her battle with the lettuce.

The pond will also merely note the Thursday presence of Jack the Insider ...

Starmer flailing in a mire of his own making
Rather than seizing the opportunities, the British PM has spent his time stumbling around in a room full of upturned rakes.
By Jack the Insider
Columnist

Again the pond had to do the hard intermittent archive yards, and the pond does appreciate Jack's ongoing attempts to present as one of the more sensible reptiles, interested in life outside the hive mind, but why on earth would the pond want to waste time with him when the pond could revert to Marina delivering a jolly good Hydeing a few days ago in It’s a nightmare on Downing Street: Starmer has no one left to blame for this Mandelson horror show?

Phew, even doing a reptile survey is thirsty work, and the pond is in need of a break.

Actually that Luckovich is in the spirit of the proceedings, because as a final offering, the pond should note that the season is now in full swing, with the latest dire attempt to invoke the spirit of Gallipoli coming in this form ...

The pond settled for a couple of screen caps because it's such a pitiful and wretched searching for relevance, an attempt to use current events to fit into the spirit of the Dardanelles season that's so naked that it has no shame.

If wanting to talk of US military fiascos, any number of more recent examples spring to mind ... from 'Nam through the Iraq folly to the Afghanistan debacle, with that resulting in a never ending horror for the women of Afghanistan, while the latest reward for those Afghanis who supported and helped US troops is to be deported to the Congo. (Oh the mad King and his minions are so cruel in so many appalling ways).

Forget all that - somehow it's the spirit of the season to drag the Dardanelles back into the picture ...

Really? The spirit of a Dardanelles inquiry might assist the United States in sorting out its seemingly endless appetite for military excursions and adventures, even as the mad King campaigned for his re-election on the basis of no more wars and no more adventures and an isolationist America first?

Sigh, best whip up a batch of original Tamworth recipe Anzac biscuits in the spirit of the season.

Oh wait, the pond still has a spare pack of Aldi Pfeffernüsse cookies left over from the Xmas season! 

Is that in the spirit of the current season, or like peppermints, will it give a dire hint of an appetite for Blut und Boden?

Best turn to the immortal Rowe to close with a reminder of Geoff chambering that round ...

And here's an echo of the bromancer ... because while Sir Keir might just be skidmarks on the tar after the next round of UK local council elections, the hapless Poms still have the pleasure of noting the real multiple car freeway pile up ...

In which a number of honourable mentions are capped by Dame Slap carrying on jihading ...

 

With mad King Donald's ongoing war in the middle east a spectacular mess, and with too many convolutions to track on an hourly basis, the lizard Oz editorialist felt the need to emit a squawk this day ...

Oh dear, so much for the war with China, and as for mad King Donald, put it another way ...

Shades of Sideshow Bob...

And now, thanks to the intermittent archive currently working, the pond decided to make a series of honourable mentions, on a thanks but no thanks basis ...

New tax on gas could backfire spectacularly
Australia’s proposed gas tax threatens to break our word with key trading partners
Australia’s gas belongs to Australians and we have the right to tax it any way we like, but it comes at a cost.
By Saul Kavonic

As a heads up, Saul is credited by the reptiles as: Saul Kavonic is head of energy research MST Marquee

Head off to the company website, and you'll see this in Saul's CV... He has worked in commercial and strategy roles at Woodside Energy, Australia's largest oil and gas company ...

Thanks but no thanks, but the pond is happy to put it another way ...

Also deserving of intermittent archive honourable mentions ...

Butler’s NDIS plan lets kids down
Mark Butler is walking away from children who have serious needs
For many without supports, their autism or development delay is a barrier to participate in everyday life.
By Amanda Camm

Amanda's credit ran ... Amanda Camm is the Queensland Families Minister.

The reptile trick here is to run countless numbers of articles and stories bashing the NDIS as out of control, a disaster for the economy, even worse than renewables, and then just as the hapless government attempts to do something about it, drag in a deep north ministerial toad to deplore said attempts.

In a similar vein ...

Our ‘lifeboat’ for those most in need is sinking
‘Lifeboat’ for those most in need is sinking with rorting, inefficiency and buck-passing
Parliament unanimously backed a national scheme built around fairness, dignity and choice – with significant ambition.
By John Della Bosca

This was an even more cunning reptile ploy, as the reptile credit explains, John Della Bosca is a former Labor politician who led the campaign for the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

It's the old reptile ploy of getting 'em coming and getting 'em going. Don't do anything, and its a disaster; do try to do something, and it's a disaster.

Moving along, the pond would have liked a reptile excuse to segue to the Wilcox of the day, but whatever ...

And so to the first sign of the season, a bit like listening to the Delius tone poem, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring.

Come on down Jason ...

Let’s recommit to the nation our Diggers defended
We must never abandon the Australia our soldiers defended
Our political class have treated freedom as a limitless resource that can be extended to its enemies without consequence.
By Jason Thomas

Um, actually Jason, the Australia early diggers defended was inclined to racism, misogyny, bigotry, and a full on war between tykes and proddies, together with assorted other malfunctions and mistreatments of minorities (fancy being a gay in the the war years in Tamworth?).

Some of those aspects of "freedumb" needed to be abandoned ...though it has to be said that the reptiles at the lizard Oz still valiantly attempt to defend those ancient times, what with the war on China by Xmas a daily torment ...

For the record ... Jason Thomas is director of Frontier Assessments.

And if you head off to Jason's website, you're served a word salad which begins this way ...

Dr Jason Thomas specialises in geo-political, field-based assessments in complex operating environments to assist with due-diligence, capital raising, feasibility studies and early works of major projects and humanitarian operations. 
Jason has a specific interest in complexities of cross-border projects or those located near porous international boundaries. He develops locally tailored approaches to establishing stable community and political relationships to protect a project’s commercial value. 

A teaser trailer will explain why the pond gave the Jason game away early ...

There you go ... all that blather about a cohesive Judaeo-Xian democracy, and talk of Islamist-influenced utopias and so on and so forth.

On the other hand, Jason did mention George Orwell, for which the pond is profoundly grateful, because the pond had promised to itself that the first time it came across a George reference, it would run T. S. Eliot's rejection letter for Animal Farm (click on to enlarge):

(The story at the Graudian: It needs more public-spirited pigs': TS Eliot's rejection of Orwell's Animal Farm)

Does it have anything to do with Jason bleating about Judaeo-Xians and kicking atheists and secularists to the kerb? 

Nah, but it's really funny to read the words of a conservative English ponce who simply didn't get a classic bit of writing ...

And so to the reptile treat of the day, courtesy Dame Slap ...

The header: You can teach people to count ... but you cannot make them think; Critics who tally story numbers to attack this newspaper have missed the point entirely.

The pathetically defensive caption for an uncredited, truly pathetic collage: The truth matters. And we said so. When did the left get so timid about challenging those who wield power over us?

Dame Slap is one of the sturdiest (and some would say silliest) reptile jihadists of them all. 

She was conducting jihads on climate science long before she donned a MAGA cap and stepped into the New York night life to celebrate the arrival of a mad king, thereby giving free rein to a whole new world of jihads.

The Dame particularly dislikes uppity women, especially if they have an Islamic hue, but today she spent a bigly five minutes being curiously defensive about the jihadist lizard Oz ...

There is a new fad among critics of this newspaper. They count how many stories we run on a particular topic and claim the final sum as a scoop of proven wrongdoing. Some have gone even more granular, counting words. Lost in the bloomless fields of accounting, their exercise is misguided. Perhaps purposely so.
The best one can say is they can count – though that’s up for debate. But they sure can’t think.
Famous for being unfairly sacked by the ABC, Antoinette Lattouf claimed a journalistic coup recently by counting how many stories this newspaper has run about Israel-hating extremist academic Randa Abdel-Fattah.
Working with a data analyst and mathematician, Dr Robert Bean, Lattouf thinks she struck journalistic gold: their counting exercise found this newspaper ran 412 unique articles mentioning Abdel-Fattah – which apparently was “more than Nine Newspapers, ABC News Online, The Guardian and Australian Community Media’s Canberra Times, Newcastle Herald and Bendigo Advertiser COMBINED”.
With a Trumpian flourish like that, Lattouf and Dr Bean might be in the running for the Walkley’s new award for bean counters of the year. Except on our count Abdel-Fattah was mentioned only 268 times during the relevant period.
Double counting by the intrepid counters aside, the bigger point is: so what? Thinkers will notice why our coverage differs from other media outlets. Unlike most other media organisations, we take antisemitism seriously. If you’re at a loose end, Antoinette, count the number of stories we ran from Australians calling for a royal commission into antisemitism.
As an aside, before it folded in early 2025, the group co-chaired by Malcolm Turnbull – Australians for a Murdoch Royal Commission – caught the counting bug too just weeks before the voice referendum. When it was clear the Yes side would not prevail, the group released research about how many pieces News Corp outlets ran supporting the No case to suggest wicked bias. As it turned out, the more interesting number was the 9,452,792 Australians (or 60.06 per cent) who voted against the constitutional change. They did so for sound reasons that The Australian and other News Corp outlets explored in far greater detail than all other news outlets combined. (No caps needed for emphasis.) We call this public interest journalism.

What's funny about this? You don't need to count numbers to realise that the lizard Oz routinely conducts jihads and one of their leading jihadists is Dame Slap.

Why bother disputing it? Why not wear it as a badge of honour? If you're going to carry on like a Taliban extremist or a ratbag mad mullah, why not just own it?

The problem with the counters is they don’t understand what really counts. Lattouf’s maths scoop failed to expose inaccuracies in our coverage or make a case that reporting about Abdel-Fattah was not in the public interest.
Instead, Lattouf regurgitated Abdel Fattah’s belief that “being a woman who is Palestinian and Muslim makes her a prime target for The Australian”. That sort of fatuous argument finds friends in the knee-jerk world of identity politics.
In the serious world of public interest journalism, being a woman who is Palestinian and a Muslim does not warrant any more scrutiny and – importantly – any less scrutiny than any other ethnic or religious background.

She squawks and bleats and protests too much, though that is the jihadist way.

The reptiles once again reminded the hive mind of the subject of one of their never-ending jihads - a jihad which incidentally the pond has largely ignored because it's been so angry and over the top: Coverage of academic Randa Abdel-Fattah has become a focal point in media criticism debates. Picture: AAP

Dame Slap used this chance to carry on with the jihad, regurgitating all the reptiles standard jihad talking points...

This newspaper reported on Abdel-Fattah’s behaviour – which included leading children’s chants of “intifada” hate speech at a protest at Sydney University, and updating her Facebook profile with the image of a parachutist in the colours of the Palestinian flag a day after Hamas terrorists parachuted into Israel to murder and kidnap hundreds of civilians.
The paper ran news stories on her circa $900,000 taxpayer-funded grant from the Australian Research Council, on her bragging about how she “bends the rules” on her grant and on her exclusion – then inclusion – at Adelaide Writers Week. All this was most certainly in the public interest.
The fact that Macquarie University took no action against Abdel-Fat­tah, that the ARC decided her grant was in order and the Adelaide Festival board decided to cave to pressure and re-invite her to speak at the 2027 Adelaide Writers Week, all of which we faithfully reported, invites more questions about our educational and cultural institutions. It turns out that readers were very interested to learn about how tax dollars are spent and the laughably hypocritical culture of writers festivals.
The only thing the counters have revealed is that Abdel Fattah owes The Australian a note of thanks. She is no longer an obscure academic. After all, what’s the point of all that bleating about Israel if no one hears you?
Amanda Meade at The Guardian likes to count too. After the Australian Press Council decided against this newspaper concerning a complaint by former ACT chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold, Meade counted how many words – apparently 4000 – we wrote putting our case that the press council got it woefully wrong.

The pond was exceptionally pleased to see the venerable Meade get a mention.

She must really have stuck in Dame Slap's craw, and what a chance to provide a link to The Australian throws 4,000-word tantrum at press council ruling as Drumgold waits for just one" sorry.

Of course another Dame Slap jihad was at the heart of it ...

When the press watchdog ruled that Murdoch’s broadsheet published three misleading, unfair and inaccurate articles about the former ACT prosecutor Shane Drumgold, The Australian responded by having a tantrum.
We say tantrum because the newspaper published on Thursday an extraordinary 4,000-word riposte, including a front-page story, a timeline, two comment pieces and a thundering editorial questioning the Australian Press Council’s competence and integrity.
This railing against the umpire is all the more bizarre, given News Corp effectively controls the APC as a majority member which pays up to 70% of its annual $1.7m budget.
The columnist Janet Albrechtsen wrote all three pieces that were criticised, although the Sydney bureau chief, Stephen Rice, shares a byline on one. Of Albrechtsen’s role, the council said it was “a significant omission” not to disclose the writer’s role in the inquiry into the Bruce Lehrmann trial for which Drumgold was the prosecutor.
In 2024, the ACT supreme court ruled Walter Sofronoff’s extensive communications with Albrechtsen gave rise to an impression of bias against him during the inquiry into the Lehrmann trial. The judge found Sofronoff’s 273 interactions with Albrechtsen gave the impression he “might have been influenced by the views held and publicly expressed” by her.
Drumgold complained to the council that three pieces written by Albrechtsen after the ruling misrepresented the findings. The APC ruled in Drumgold’s favour despite a last-ditch attempt by the Oz to change its mind.
When The Australian received the preliminary adverse finding it responded by commissioning two independent legal opinions. The council said the legal opinions were not relevant and it was only judging whether the publication had breached its editorial standards.
Drumgold responded to The Australian’s dummy spit with a post on LinkedIn: “Who needs the truth, when you have a whole newspaper … Sorry seems to be the hardest word.”

So when Dame Slap wrote the words "we wrote putting our case", she's deflecting from the real problem. It was she that wrote all three pieces judged to misrepresent the findings.

That's what happens when you're a jihadist intent more on ideology and theology than on giving someone a fair go, or admitting an error.

The reptiles decided this would be a good point to fling in a snap of the victim, Shane Drumgold. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Jihadist Dame Slap carried on bleating ...

It was telling that a journalist chose to count our words rather than read them. The substance of the matter was simple – should journalists and newspapers meekly kneel before the press council when they know a council ruling is wrong?
The truth matters. And we said so. When did the left get so timid about challenging those who wield power over us?
Of course, at the heart of this counting-as-journalism fetish is a discomfort with the nature of our news, analysis and opinion pieces. If Lattouf or Meade agreed with the stories, they wouldn’t have their calculators out. Most important, if these critics could find something genuinely wrong with our reporting – inaccuracies, for example, are always a good place to start – they would surely go hell for leather on that front. Instead, to borrow a phrase from Paul Keating, each has reduced themselves to a human abacus.
The most recent number-counting exercise to try to justify a claim this newspaper has done something dreadfully wrong concerns our reporting on the serious allegations about white art gallery workers intervening in the artworks of Indigenous artists and concealing that intervention.
The Australian’s “white hands on black art” investigation into the APY Art Centre Collective was high-quality journalism. Based on numerous sources, the 2023 investigation included a disturbing video showing a white staff member from APYACC-affiliated art centre Tjala Arts painting on the canvas of award-winning Indigenous artist Yaritji Young.
It’s understandable that groundbreaking investigations that question the status quo will raise the ire of vested interests. But these were matters of profound public interest for everyone involved in the Indigenous art world and beyond.
The reporting has proven deeply inconvenient for many at the centre of the allegations, and for institutions that carried out their own reviews.

It was a relief when the reptiles decided this would be a good time to con hive mind suckers out of a few shekels to keep the Murdochian clan in their accustomed US citizen lifestyle ...

PREMIUM
Yaritji Young paints Tjala Arts centre
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That provided Dame Slap with a chance to regurgitate another favourite reptile jihad. 

The Dame has always been up for a little bashing of uppity blacks, so why not indulge in her favourite pastime?

The APYACC was expelled from the Indigenous Art Code in 2023. Its state funding was suspended. An independent investigation by the National Gallery of Australia, into 28 paintings that were going to be shown at the APYACC exhibition at the NGA, excluded the video from its investigation because the relevant artwork was not part of the exhibition, before deciding all the paintings met its provenance standards. The SA government has still not released the findings of a tri-government inquiry. However, APYACC’s state funding has been restored.
Those who are deeply uncomfortable with The Australian’s investigation have failed to show concern for the truth. A partisan website launched last week to coincide with the APYACC exhibition makes wild claims about the white hands investigation, focusing on the volume of stories. The APYACC’s catalogue, on sale in the NGA’s gallery, carries an essay claiming, in effect, that the white hands on black art investigation might have been timed to defeat the voice referendum. This is a crazy conflation of two very serious matters.
In the end, readers will decide what matters. They read The Australian because we run important stories, not comfortable ones. They focus on substance, not numbers. For the record – to save our critics some time – this piece is 1253 words.

Oh that must have hurt, there's a lot of smarting and cheek-burning going on in that epic bout of defensiveness. 

How tough it is to be a jihadist and cop all those slings and arrows and word counts.

That noted, by the pond's count, Dame Slap's piece was 1249 words too long. 

Just a few words would have sufficed: The reptile jihad continues ...

And so to the Rowe of the day ...

And speaking of Orwellian ...

In which the bromancer resorts to prayer and Dame Groan goes back to ancient times in search of Dr. Jimbo ...

 

After the bliss of a walk down Smith Street and a Vietnamese style pancake in Richmond, the pond decided it was well over mad King Donald and his lunatic ways, but how could the pond sweep aside the bromancer, sent in by the reptiles to contemplate and deal with the mess?

The header: What next in Iran? It’s a good time to pray; With a fragile ceasefire nearing its end, stark choices face the US and Iran — and missteps now could reshape global security and trade.

The caption for the mad king looking bemused, or possibly bewildered, or contemplating a heaven he'll always be denied: Donald Trump’s decisions in the coming days could determine the war’s trajectory. Picture: Getty Images

Prayer? That's the bromancer's answer to it all? It's a good time to pray?

The reptiles were so astonished that they didn't attempt any visual distractions, and instead allowed the bromancer to let loose a four minute existential spray, beavering away at a mad King Donald dilemma which apparently could only be resolved by divine intervention:

We are now in the most dangerous and perhaps the most promising few days of the Iran war. This is evident in the US Navy boarding and seizing Iranian cargo ships and the supposedly non-existent Iranian navy firing on international tankers that tried to transit the Strait of Hormuz, some even apparently with what they thought was Iranian permission.
The ceasefire ends on Wednesday. Several outcomes are possible. Donald Trump could announce a grand bargain in principle that opens the strait while negotiations are finalised. The US would suspend its blockade of Iranian ports. Alternatively, Trump could announce he thinks a deal is close and so the ceasefire continues, but so does the US blockade and Iranian actions keeping the strait closed. Third, the Iranians could capitulate, giving up their 60 per cent enriched uranium and agreeing never to block the strait again. That’s total US victory. Fourth, Trump could end the ceasefire and resume bombing, with Iran resuming attacks on Gulf Arab oil infrastructure. Then it’s a question of who can endure pain longer, Trump or Tehran.
Finally, the US could accept some crippling concession, such as Iran down-mixing its enriched plutonium to make it less dangerous and allowing Iran, perhaps in partnership with the US, to charge tolls on ships navigating the strait.
Trump has often raised this last possibility, suggesting the US could charge international ships a fee to escort them militarily through the strait. That would be devastatingly bad because it would commit the US, for the first time in its history, to a policy of international piracy. It would irretrievably repudiate the doctrine of freedom of navigation that the US Navy, more than any other institution in the world, upholds. This benefits the US and the entire globe. It’s the most basic of security “commons” that the US has underwritten with the support of all its allies and most other nations as well. The precedent for other nations then to charge fees for what was previously innocent passage through straits or even international waters that simply abut their territories would be colossally damaging.
Such an outcome is just possible, however, because it’s one of the few formulations that would allow both Trump (albeit fraudulently) and the Iranians to claim victory.All outcomes are possible and all, except total US victory, are very troublesome for the world.

Total US victory? Perhaps by wiping Iran off the map entirely? Nothing like a genocide to warm the cockles of the hive mind.

At this point, the bromancer dared to be so bold as to roll his trousers up, walk upon a beach and perhaps devour a peach.

You see, gasp, he's been highly critical:

I’ve been highly critical of the way Trump has waged this conflict. His often grotesque language and social media posts have the whole world worried about his stability, have destroyed public support for the military campaign and made it impossible for allies to actively engage with his campaign because it has been at the political level so incoherent, changing and abusive of allies and innocent third parties (such as the Pope).

Um, no mention of the role that the Emeritus Chairman played in setting this folly in motion?

Perhaps that's a little too close to the bromancer bone. Do carry on:

Trump also declined to task the US national system to take all manner of preparatory actions that would have strengthened its position in the war, from elementary moves such as filling up the US oil reserve before the war began, to retaining in service the last US de-mining ships, to rapidly developing cheaper counter-drone capabilities instead of so wantonly using up scarce supplies of missiles and interceptors. Most important, perhaps, because he wrongly thought the war would be quick and easy, Trump didn’t convince the American people of its importance or win even a smidgin of bipartisan support, or secure social licence for a period of sacrifice and difficulty. This is where Trump’s personal performance is so important and so destructive.
Nonetheless, and here is the most important consideration of all, it’s overwhelmingly in the interests of humanity that the US and Israel triumph in this war against Iran. The Iranian threat through nuclear, missiles, proxy forces and terrorists, combined with its savage killings of its own people, mean the campaign was not disproportionate.
Indeed, so far the US and Israeli bombings, aimed carefully at military targets, have killed far fewer Iranians than the Iranian government has done this year alone in suppressing protests.
More troubling is the question of whether Iran represented an imminent threat. Iran has consistently attacked Israel, the US, Western societies such as Australia, its Arab enemies and its own citizens, but it has done so mostly using proxies and clandestine agents in a way that often falls just below the level that would provoke an immediate military response.

It wouldn't be the bromancer without a little tyke blather about a just war, though truth to tell, there's not the slightest indication that the mad king is interested in justice for the Iranian people:

This reality goes a long way towards meeting the criterion that a threat must be imminent before military action is morally defensible. On balance therefore, and although it’s not absolutely clear, you can make a good case that the war was justified, which is one reason the Albanese government and the federal opposition both supported US actions initially. However, Trump’s wild and self-contradictory statements and the lack of obvious and necessary preparatory actions have clouded the moral case.

Clouded the moral case? Oh dear, the bromancer couldn't even come at the just war carry-on that Our Henry and Polonius peddled to the hive mind with their prattle.

But wait, don't despair, the bromancer still has it in him to celebrate the deeds of Kegsbreath:

The US blockade of Iranian ports, in a war in which Iran itself is blockading the whole strait except for vessels linked to its commercial gain, is morally, militarily and strategically sound. In fact the US should have done this weeks ago because, with minimum violence, it cuts off the revenue Iran needs to pay its soldiers and to keep its government going.
There is obviously now deep division within the Iranian government, though the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps clearly still has the upper hand. Regime collapse is just possible and would be the best outcome. Blockading the ports seems to put Tehran under more pressure than the bombing campaign did. But for most of the war so far the US tolerated Iran closing the strait but simply allowed Iran to let its own oil go to market on various ships.
This was one of many US misjudgments. However, the US embargo nonetheless has big risks. Would the US board and take custody of a Chinese ship trying to transport oil through the strait? Not only that, despite all the happy talk about opening the strait by force, even the US Navy won’t sail in the strait itself. So the blockade has to be conducted from outside the southern entrance to the Persian Gulf. It is resource-intensive and unsustainable in the long term.
What next? If you believe in the power of prayer, now’s a good time.
Greg Sheridan is The Australian’s foreign editor.

Prayer? That's the best the bromancer's got? 

But what if the Islamics got the right god? What if it's the Jews' main non-trinitarian man? What if Christ is indeed just a minor prophet and a naughty boy? What about the Hindus or the Buddhists?

Who to pray to, and what sign prayers have been any use in the past, with prayers not having noticeably shorted a couple of world wars and lots of minor ones?

Luckily Wilcox had a prayer to hand ...

And so to the rest of the reptile rabble, and with the best will in the world, after all that, the pond simply couldn't summon up the strength to go into simplistic Simon raging at pigs ...

Where are our governments in the fight against the feral pig plague?
Of all the things Australians love to boast about, this probably isn’t one of them— there are now more feral pigs roaming our vast continent than there are humans.
By Simon Benson
Political analyst

Perhaps simpleton Simon could get hold of a gun, and head outback with other shooters determined to tackle the pigs? (YouTube link, warning, rampant night time pig killing. Beware what your logarithms might throw up - and just be aware it's more Tamworth than Tamworth).

It was off to the intermittent archive with him, and ditto away with Geoff chambering another round ...

Grim Jim spinning up a whirlpool in sea of red
The Treasurer has mastered the art of fiscal spin, but behind the budget curtain lies a sea of red ink that threatens to expose the government’s economic management.
By Geoff Chambers
Political editor

The only reason the pond offers a teaser trailer for Geoff is to draw attention to the photo at the top of the piece ...

You see? 

That snap of Jimbo in despair.

It's a classic reptile offering, featuring Jimbo looking downcast, perhaps a tad sullen, a battered and defeated man.

Now guess what snap the reptiles featured at the top of this day's Dame Groan outing, cheek by jowl with Geoff?

The header: ‘Anti-economist’ Treasurer Jim Chalmers fails on spending, inflation and real wages; Jim Chalmers’ approach to looming crises hark back to a failed predecessor from the 1970s. It could be a long road back.

The caption for exactly the same snap, recycled endlessly on a loop of doom: Treasurer Jim Chalmers ‘distrusts markets and thinks government intervention and spending can produce superior outcomes’. Picture: Martin Ollman

Talk about predictable, but that's why the pond didn't bother with Geoff firing off shots.

Why settle for second best, when you can get a classic Dame Groan in peak "we'll all be rooned" form?

These are tricky days for any treasurer. The economic implications of the conflict in the Middle East are unclear and the degree of uncertainty is extremely high.
Even if there is an early resolution to the war, which looks unlikely, there will be a hit to our economic growth rate with headline inflation increasing. Certain sectors of the economy will be particularly hard hit, including agriculture, tourism and potentially parts of mining. Asian refineries will be able to supply Australia only as long as the flow of crude oil keeps up to accommodate overall demand. In the event of any shortfall, expect countries to cater for their own needs well ahead of ours.
It’s not necessary to have studied economics at university to be a good treasurer. Some of our best treasurers never went near a university economics course.
The principle of opportunity cost, that the cost of doing A is the cost of not doing B, just makes sense to them. Similarly, the central role that incentives play in driving behaviour is obvious, as is the scope for government as well as market failure. The need for budget discipline is self-evident lest the cost of excessive spending leads to inflation and imposes a burden on future generations.
Sadly, our current Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, is not one of those people who simply gets it. Indeed, he is essentially an anti-economist who, Sisyphus-like, is trying to transform the Australian economy from Canberra. He distrusts markets and thinks government intervention and spending can produce superior outcomes.

And at this point the pond has to ask exactly what is the demographic the reptiles and Dame Groan are aiming at, prompted by this still ... Dr Jim Cairns, also ‘way out of his depth’.

Are there any younglings whatsoever that have the first clue about Dr. Jimbo?

The pond can recall the times when the pond was living in Windsor and would head off to the Prahran markets, and see Dr. Jimbo sitting at a humble table, flogging his books.

But the pond is of an age. Are the reptiles really only interested in ancient times and ancient audiences?

Dame Groan possibly thought this was a killer reference, but she might just as well have referenced Jack Lang feuding with the banks in his Lang plan.

What on earth is the point, save to establish that you have to be old to stay in touch with this ancient chook's ranting.

Even Dame Groan had to admit that she was wandering a long way back ...

We need to go back a long time to identify another anti-economist who held the position of treasurer: another Dr Jim. Jim Cairns was also a politician way out of his depth who took the reins at a critical time – an oil shock, rising unemployment – and made a complete hash of it. We may be about to see history repeat itself.
In many ways, Chalmers has been one of the luckiest treasurers ever. Escaping from the clutches of Covid, commodity prices have soared and the terms of trade have recorded historical high levels. But unanticipated revenue has been quickly spent, often on very low-value ends.
Forget the nonsense that Chalmers spouts about the Labor government saving $112bn; it has saved nothing and has spent even more. The figures tell the story.
On-budget spending is up by $160bn since Labor took office. Payments as a proportion of GDP have gone from 24.3 per cent to 26.9 per cent. Then there is the explosion in off-budget spending. The now more meaningful figure is the headline cash balance, which shows a deficit of around $63bn next financial year. This compares with Chalmers’ preferred measure, the underlying cash balance, of minus $34bn. It also needs to be pointed out that government debt has risen by more than $100bn during Chalmers’ term in office and is now approaching $1 trillion.
When Chalmers left Australia recently to confer with finance ministers around the world, he made the astonishing claim Australia “is better placed and better prepared” than many countries.

If comparing Jimbo to Dr Jimbo is the best Dame Groan can do, then truly these are desperate times for an aged and out of touch hive mind, compounded by a completely meaningless snap which illustrates three fifths of f*ck all (*google bot approved): Asian refineries will be able to supply Australia only as long as the flow of crude oil keeps up to accommodate overall demand. Picture: Eddie Russell

Is Dame Groan's text so bland and boring that a snap of gas guzzlers in a queue to guzzle gas is the best they can do?

Isn't the reptile joke that it's EVs that have to line up for hours to access a charger?

Dame Groan was keen to absolve mad King Donald of any responsibility for the dismal state of the world, the sort of shufty that the reptiles love to perform, a quick peep before moving back to the main blame game ...

Carry on groaning ...

Was this some sort of joke? We have one of the lowest number of days of liquid fuel reserves among advanced economies; he has used up what fiscal headroom we could now have by his constant overspending; and domestically sourced inflation was a clear problem well before Donald Trump pulled the trigger. Chalmers, the anti-economist, had previously demonstrated his muddled thinking when he declared spending hundreds of millions of dollars on cost-of-living measures would miraculously reduce inflation. Higher interest rates have been one of the outcomes.
One of the important roles the treasurer plays is to block the unachievable ambitions of the spending ministers. The most successful treasurers have kept a close watch on the spending ministers as well as examining the policies they propose. On this score Chalmers is a failure, largely going along with the damaging and expensive ambitions of too many other cabinet ministers, including Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen.
The fact Chalmers can even talk about the care economy shows he completely misunderstands this role. In his world, uncapped spending on social welfare will lead to higher living standards. Demand-driven, non-means-tested programs have become almost universal, leading to runaway spending and an inability to forecast future outlays.
It’s not just the National Disability Insurance Scheme that’s out of control; think aged care, childcare and other badly designed programs.

It's as if the long years of Tory rule had nothing to do with the current state of affairs, and then came the bog standard reptile fear of EVs and renewables and all that jazz, with Satan's little demonic helper in the thick of it ... Energy Minister Chris Bowen has seized on the fuel crisis sparked by the conflict in the Middle East to declare the government must keep ­electrifying the nation and build Australia’s sovereign capability through renewables. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Then it was to the closing Dame Groan gobbet of despair.

How many times can she scribble that we're all rooned, how many ways can she spin her sorry tale of woe? 

Sadly by this stage in her anti-economist career, there aren't that many, it's the predictability that's the feature, not a bug ... 

The responsible way to look at government spending on social welfare is that budget affordability is the key. A strong economy with solid productivity growth is the means whereby taxpayers can afford to help the more disadvantaged in society.
Another area of profound weakness is Chalmers’ misunderstanding of the labour market. He thinks real wage gains simply can be mandated and workers will enjoy the benefits without any downside. The fact he is part of a government arguing for a “sustainable real wage increase” at the annual wage review at the Fair Work Commission makes the point. Without any increase in productivity, there is no sustainable way real wages can be increased, but Chalmers thinks these things can be imposed. The timing of this intervention couldn’t be worse.
Without a coherent economic framework, Chalmers’ response to war-induced economic difficulties is likely to be ill-advised and ineffective. His instinct will be to ditch any budget plans for real savings – note here the difference with reprioritisation – and to pour money into pump-priming the economy through more handouts. The minor tax reforms in the budget will be piecemeal and designed to shift attention away from the loose fiscal settings.
Chalmers may have the gift of the gab but the fact per capita income has gone backwards during his term is really all you need to know. He has abandoned the lessons of the Hawke-Keating era where a limited government role was accompanied by market forces largely determining the allocation of resources.
It will be a long road back from the ill-effects of having an anti-economist at the helm.

It reminded the pond of the sort of litany you get in a Catholic mass, with the high priestess blathering about productivity and pump-priming and handouts and so on and so forth, and then expecting a response from the hive mind. Et cum spiritu tuo ...

The immortal Rowe preferred to take to the high seas, and he at least gave mad King Donald a commanding role ...

And as EVs and renewables and all that jazz have been mentioned, the pond realises that it didn't provide an update on the EV running time for the return trip between Melbourne and Sydney.

Unfortunately, the timing was skewed because the pond stopped not just for charging but at other places it likes - the sweet little town of Euroa for coffee, the submariner town of Holbrook for a visit to the IGA, a genuinely odd rustic barn of a supermarket, and Gundagai, just because it's there, a dinkum reminder of Jack O'Hagan.

Boosted by listening to a four part podcast about the arrival of the Samurai and the Shōgun in medieval Japan, the pond was looking to an eleven and a half hour trip, a bit longer than usual but not so bad.

There was NIL competition for chargers, save for one bunch fairly close to Sydney that was full. All the pond did was drive on to the next set of chargers, where there was no competition whatsoever.

It was looking good. And then the pond hit Sydney.

First the motorway was clogged to the brim, full of cop and ambulance party hats attending multiple gas guzzler collisions. No way through there ...

Then the pond followed navigator Google's suggestion to get off the main road - never a good idea - and took a back way through Canterbury Road. 

You guessed it, two more gas guzzlers had decided to collide and clog the road.

At this point the pond's schedule was shot, but it wasn't the fault of the EV. It was the fault of the gas guzzlers, wanting to live out J. G. Ballard's Crash. What they needed was a little of the accident avoidance tech that comes standard in EVs.

In short, EVs are fine for distance travel. If you want to ease range anxieties, pay more for a fast charging vehicle with good range (these days the speeds and the ranges on offer are remarkable, but there's a premium involved). 

If you want to save money for local city stuff, get a little suburban EV runabout.

These days you can get one cheaply, with the pricing on a par with gas guzzlers. If your interest in cars has gone, stick to public transport - trains and light rail and trams and even some buses are electric, and it's all good.

Forget the reptiles. There's a reason this is in the news ...

Along the way, the pond did score one visual souvenir, from Euroa, a town better known for its magnificent magpie statue.

This one seemed to summarise what the pond would experience as soon as it plunged back into the hive mind...

Yes, it was a sense of impending ...r,r,r,rage ...

Of course it isn't what it seems on the surface ...

In 2026, RAGE will proudly present its inaugural Recycled Art Exhibition - a major celebration on the war on waste tapping into the creativity, innovation, and talent thriving in our communities. (Here)

Judging by their limited range of illustrations, the reptiles are also in to recycling, and that's why it seems worth reviving this immortal Rowe ... go electric younglings, you only have the hive mind to lose...