Thursday, April 28, 2016

Day 38, and it's periscopes up the Bolter and the Bromancer ...


The pond was traumatised yesterday. Well the pond is traumatised every day, as it keeps the company of sociopathic, rambling reptiles, but yesterday was special.

You see the broken clock known as Dame Slap told the time correctly in relation to Channel 9. Should the pond run a reptile sounding sensible? 

No, no, it runs against the spirit of the enterprise.

Besides, it's just as easy to link to a First Dog cartoon, Tonight on 60 Minutes we present a story so shocking you will be really really shocked, which has the virtue of pictures ... and doesn't carry on in the Dame Slap way about the good old days of 60 Minutes ... when for the life of it, the pond couldn't remember any ... just the over-dramatised, over-wrought ticking clock of commercial television ...

And then there was the matter of Miranda the Devine carrying on like a goose in her usual way ...


Oh sure after resorting to Paul McHugh and the like, there were the usual hysterical Devine bon mots ...

This is the new morality of identity. Anything goes. Tolerance has stretched into a permissiveness which threatens to destroy social norms and the boundaries of commonsense.

Because transubstantiation, invisible friends and water into wine constitutes common sense for your average fundamentalist barking mad Catholic ...

But what need of the pond, when the Bolter has taken it as his mission to ravage the Devine?


Sheesh, he even makes a Devine joke.

Anyone wanting the Devine blathering on in a way to send the Bolter into a frenzy can head off to YouTube here - are you sure you have no meaningful or useful life? - and anyone worried about that last link, relax, it just hooks up with the Devine in her Joanie of the Ark pose ...

It's a reminder to the pond of the ultimate tragedy. There's so much loonacy abroad in reptile HQ, so many signs of the end times as the reptiles devour each other, that the pond simply can't cover it all.

The Bolter is a classic case. The dear, sweet red wine-swilling, opera-loving Scarpia is in quite a tizz, a state of crisis, of late ...



Now some might marvel at the way it's taken a foreign court to show some sense of justice and humanity - in a country routinely mocked as lacking even the basics of civilised behaviour.

Fancy these judicial wretches pointing out the Stalinist gulag elements in the emperor's finely woven clothes ... and daring to mention basic justice, and how problematic it is to lock up indefinitely people whose major crime is that they've been certified as genuine refugees ...

Naturally the Terrorists decided it was all the fault of former chairpersons ...


Because the Mutton Dutton has never been a lover of the gulags, and absolutely abhors the detention centres set up by the Ruddster ...

Sorry, the pond should avoid Irony 101 ...

But it wasn't the the gulags that got the Bolter going this day, even if the Stalinists love their gulags and how tragic it is that the gulags are revealed to be ... gulags, and the work of both the major parties ...

No, it was the subs, and so there was a perfect concordance between the Bolter and the Bromancer.

Now the pond has already given much space to the matter of the subs, but it's such a piquant topic, and it exposes the infinite follies of the reptiles, that the pond happily fronted up for a return dive in Das Boot ...

You see, the reptiles are mortified by the outcome, rewarding as it does, the fiendish, diabolical orientals ...


And there was much else to hand wring about ...



Now it's clear enough where the Bolter is coming from.

The Bolter has a Malware axe to grind, and any chance to grind it, he will, and so the subs matter provided the perfect axe for the grinding ...

Indeed, indeed.

The most important thing of all is to spend a huge amount of money on subs ... so that we might then be well-positioned to defend the unemployed and the wretches attracting the ire of the Bolter for being dole bludgers and welfare frauds ...

Why the very notion of giving Australians work is repugnant. Let them join the navy and become submariners if they want work ... after all, there's terrible trouble getting anyone to turn up and person the Collins subs ...

But the bromancer was more nuanced, if just as tortured ...


Of course, reading the bromancer requires a strong constitution or a rich Treasure of Sierra Madre capacity for ironic laughter.

Presumably the pompous commentators he denounces must include himself, because the bromancer wrote about the wonderful Kev Andrews and his excellent procedure just after Andrews' departure ...

...He had rebuilt trust and respect between the government and the defence organisation, put a proper process in place to choose the new submarines, established a contin­uous build policy for future surface ships, brought forward the building of the future frigates and the offshore patrol vessels.

Indeed, the reptiles have routinely celebrated Andrews and his process, just as way back in September 2015, Andrews himself highlighted the splendid attractions of the French bid ...

In what amounts to a significant change by the Coalition, Mr Andrews talked up a pitch by French submarine builder DCNS under which about three-quarters of the building work – which will cost at least $20 billion – would be done in South Australia. His enthusiasm corresponds with a widely held view in Coalition circles, including among previously nervous South Australian Liberal MPs, that Mr Turnbull is far more inclined than his predecessor Tony Abbott to build the replacement fleet for the Collins Class submarines onshore. (google the text for source).

But then as noted the other day in the pond, the bromancer has been all over the shop in relation to the Japanese bid.

One day it was a match made in heaven, the next extremely problematic ...


But the sight of the confused bromancer disappearing up his profoundly confused fundament, shouldn't distract us from the undiluted pleasure of the Bolter in full frothing and foaming flight ...


Indeed, indeed, if only we could magically excise - perhaps exorcise - the crow eaters from the Commonwealth, how much stronger the country would be ...

But the Bolter in full frothing and foaming flight shouldn't distract us from the pleasure of the hand-wringing, cavilling, moaning and whining bromancer in full distracted whinge mode ...


Indeed, indeed, who could possibly counter these weighty considerations and arguments?


You see, there's nothing for the pond to do, but watch the Bolter devour the Devine as she tries to devour the Bolter, and the bromancer devour himself and his own arguments, and the Bolter and the Bromancer do their very best to undermine Malware while shedding a tear for the lost days of the onion eater ...

It explains why the reptiles and Monty Python are the pond's favourite form of distraction, along with reeling and writhing of course, and the different branches of arithmetic - ambition, distraction, uglification and derision ..

Well, to be fair, we should include the last gobbet of the reeling and writhing Sheridan ...


Hear hear, and the further the periscopes go up the Bolter, the bromancer and the reptiles, the more entertainment for all who read them ...

And so to a Moir cartoon that elegantly captures this spirit, and more Moir - formatted outside the wretched cropping Fairfax gallery format - here ...


And while we're at it, here's a bonus Pope cartoon, and more Pope here ...



12 comments:

  1. French and Chinese subs have the proven capability of penetrating US carrier groups undetected. In the French case during NATO war games they have also successfully attacked the carrier, and successfully escaped unharmed. This is supposed to be impossible. What have Japanese subs done?

    Why have subs? Why have any uneconomic navy these days? http://johnquiggin.com/2016/03/20/keeping-sea-lanes-open-a-benefit-cost-analysis/#more-13803

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  2. Ms Pond,
    I wonder what the $50bn covers. The french design is one thing but all the electronics and weapons systems will come from the US.
    I also wonder what work will be done in Oz. The hull maybe, but all the really interesting (innovative and exciting?) stuff will be bought in. Diesel engines, batteries, aircon , electronics (do we even make the cables to join the bits together here? the Cat 6 cable roll in my garage is made in China),and weapons will all be sourced from overseas. Leaves us with the dull and boring. A bit like a large lego exercise.

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    Replies
    1. Yair, are we going to be able to buy and fit those super-duper supersonic Russian torpedos ? Or are we just going to settle for the age-old stuff that modern subs can simply outrun.

      Delete
  3. The "disastrous" Collins-class submarines have also repeatedly shown that capability, Anony. Not sure about the getting away again.

    Great link to the John Quiggin article (though I wouldn't say "won't somebody think of the sealanes" is the only argument for having a navy).

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    Replies
    1. Do you have a link for that claim about the Collins' subs US penetrating performance, FD ?

      And when was there ever enough Collins subs operational at the same time for it to be rigorously tested ?

      And anyway, why wouldn't we just send a few drone launched missiles to down a carrier fleet instead of wasting $billions on another submarine boondoggle ?

      Delete
    2. Carrier group missile defence also is "impenetrable" except for a relatively new very very fast and at the last crazy flying Russian model. They are selling those to China...

      US carriers are still being built though - to provide a tidy profit for vested interests and to provide jobs to provide votes...

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    3. Umm, are you claiming that somehow sea borne missile detection and anti-missile defenses are now totally effective and impenetrable except for some Russian thingys ?

      Very well then, if "the security of the nation" is the prime objective and not just sucking up to our great (non)protector, the USA, then why not just buy lots of those Russian "new very very fast and at the last crazy flying" things - surely they wouldn't cost $50 billion and they'd be serviceable a lot earlier than 2032/33.

      The only good thing about this whole nonsensical submarine thing is that by the time (7 years !) the design phase is over, hopefully inflation will have eroded the true cost significantly (provided we don't have too many quarters like the last).

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    4. GB, in the past few years approaching Russian warplanes have 'switched off' US warships and then toyed with them on a number of documented occasions. They did it again just two weeks ago in the Baltic Sea. Carrier group defences are more formidable, planes wouldn't get close enough for that trick, but apparently a large and rather fast wave skimming Russian missile packing final trick moves can get close enough to strike more often than not.

      Xi Jinping, as PRC armed forces chief, last week appeared for the first time in military uniform...

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    5. I guess we're just lucky, Anony, that the Cold War ended before the Russians used their vastly superior military technology to defeat the USA and taken us down with it.

      And that being the case, I ask again why we just don't buy some of those Russian missiles (which the USA doesn't have any equivalent of, I take it). It'd be much cheaper and more effective than a dozen very expensive subs, wouldn't it.

      Always assuming that the Russians would sell us such advanced weapons, of course.

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    6. You think the Russians think the West's, the Five Eyes, and their Cold War ended? If it did then the US Long War with the same objectives began immediately.

      Anyway, cheaper would be to run a dozer with rippers down through the US flight decks anchored ashore in northern Oz... then maybe drop the blade and knock over the command, control, and communications centres such as Pine Gap.

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  4. Indeed, sealanes are only one of the spurious arguments used for navies. There's pirates, too. More relevant to submarines is this post

    http://johnquiggin.com/2016/02/26/refighting-world-war-ii/

    Money grafs

    Wikipedia gives a list of submarine actions since 1945. There have been six of them, three involving the sinking of surface ships, and three involving the firing of cruise missiles, something that can be done from craft as small as corvettes.

    Submarines have been much more notable for sinking themselves. Wikipedia lists four US submarines sunk at sea since 1945, two with all hands. The Russians have done far worse, losing 18 subs, most notably the Kursk, lost with all hands in 2000.

    Submarines aren’t obsolete in all their possible uses. If the world ends in a nuclear holocaust, the final missiles will probably be fired from nuclear-armed submarines. But the revival of old-style submarine warfare, using our subs to sink (say) Chinese naval vessels seems remote: the increasing power and range land based anti-ship missiles will soon make naval power obsolete. Even more remote (thankfully) is the use of submarines to attack merchant ships without warning, as was done in both World Wars.

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    Replies
    1. If you have a half hour free at some time ProfQ, you might find this interesting:
      http://www.strategicspace.com.au/Strategic-Policy/2016-Defence-White-Paper-Analysis/

      Delete

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