In which the pond is compelled to go full war monger mode with the bromancer, Lord Downer, the Major and the Caterist making up the quartet ...

 

As the destruction in the middle east goes on, the pond would now settle for a little planetary destruction with some old-fashioned climate science denialism from the reptiles. 

But it's not to be. The pond had wondered when the reptiles would shift gear and crank in to full blown warrior mode, and today was the day ...

Buckle up, it's going to be a big one, with so much material the pond was forced to abstain from comments, go into strip down mode just to fit it all in.

The pond has only one brief note at the get go, one short thought on the matter. 

Should the federal government listen to the baying reptile mob, the bloodthirsty hive mind, and decide to get involved, it will be the last time the pond ever votes for Labor at any level of government.

The pond understands no one will notice or care, but thank the long absent lord there will always be alternatives to the beefy boofhead bashing immigrants, or an ALP inclined to kow tow.

Now on with it, with the bromancer inevitably leading the charge ...

The header: Albanese and Labor want to have it both ways on Iran; Labor wants to tell the Americans it’s fully supportive and participating, while telling its own party, Greens voters, progressive commentators et al that it’s doing nothing at all.

The caption: Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

There's never been a fight that the bromancer hasn't wanted to send others to, and he was at it again, hauling out the white feather and using the "coward" cry ...

The Albanese government is caught in a fatal web of contradictions and cowardice over the US and Israeli military campaign in Iran, and it’s a cowardice that may yet threaten the AUKUS pact and imperil Australian security.
The government took a minuscule rhetorical step towards Donald Trump over the weekend, with Foreign Minister Penny Wong acknowledging the obvious – that the so-called international rules-based order, especially the UN, has monumentally failed, over several decades, to deal with Iran – its terrorism, including against Australia, its murders, its military campaigns, its proxy wars, its nuclear derelictions.
So, Wong said, Australia is supporting the US actions, though once more she couldn’t say whether the government thinks these actions are legal or not. Here, characteristically, the Albanese government is caught between its conflicting imperatives of cowardice – it’s too scared of the left to say the US and Israeli actions are legal, or if illegal, that doesn’t matter a damn. And it’s too scared of the Americans to say intelligibly that their actions are illegal.
Wong also announced the government was considering sending military aid to the Gulf Arab states to help protect them from Iranian missiles and drones. This will be another triumph of tokenistic symbolism shielding emptiness in substance.
All the Gulf states are better equipped than Australia in both missile and drone defence. The Australian Defence Force has almost no capacity in either field.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong says the Australian military may help defend Gulf nations as the conflict in the Middle East escalates.

Most likely the government will send either an AWAC control and intelligence plane, or perhaps a Poseidon surveillance aircraft and a few individuals to help in a regional air defence headquarters.
Our navy frigates are too feebly under-gunned, and without effective missile defence of their own, to make any contribution. We could send one of our three Air Warfare Destroyers. Apparently only one is in the water. It would take a long time to get there and has very limited capacity anyway.
Or we could conceivably send a few fighter aircraft to help shoot down incoming missiles, though they have such small quantities of ordnance they would need to be resupplied by someone else.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has earned savage rebuke from Donald Trump for initially refusing to allow the US to use UK bases in the operation, then repeatedly changing his mind and finally offering to send an aircraft carrier. Trump replied that he doesn’t need help when the war’s already won but he won’t forget. Starmer is imperilling AUKUS but what a triumph this is for Albanese. Starmer offers aircraft carriers and gets a bollocking, Albanese may commit a plane, a couple of blokes and a press release and hope to get a medal.
The most bizarre intervention, however, was Albanese confirming that three Australian sailors were part of the crew of the US submarine that sank an Iranian naval vessel but that they took no part in that operation.
Even more bizarre, Albanese claimed no Australian has participated in any offensive effort against Iran at all.

US President Donald Trump salutes as special envoy Steve Witkoff, First Lady Melania Trump and Attorney-General Pam Bondi put hands on their heart while members of a US Army team carry a flagged-draped transfer case containing the remains of one of six US soldiers during a dignified transfer event at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Picture: AFP

Ah yes, that event ...

Moving along ...

This directly threatens the joint submarine efforts which are meant to be at the heart of AUKUS. Eventually, Australia is meant to have 400 sailors on US nuclear submarines. Will they hold a veto on US operations by threatening to stand down at any minute? Would the US accept that situation?
By revealing the information about the Australian sailors, the government opens itself to legitimate follow-up questions. Did the three Australians stand down from whatever duties they were performing while the operation was on? Did they retreat as a group to the submarine’s mess room, hold a group hug and chant anti-war slogans?
Or are we getting some tortured, convoluted, bureau-quackery speak to disguise a reality the government is too cowardly to admit. If an Australian sailor was helping maintain the nuclear reactor but didn’t actually press the button that fired the torpedo, does that mean he didn’t participate in the offensive action?
Albanese’s assurance that no Australian has participated in any offensive action against Iran recalls surely the single dumbest, oddest, weirdest statement ever made in military history, when the Albanese government was earlier caught in a contradiction of its own multi-directional cowardice concerning Israel.
Defence Minister Richard Marles asserted that Australia sells no weaponry to Israel, even when Canberra was briefly supporting Israel’s self-defence against Hamas. Yet Australia participates in building F-35 fighter aircraft. Like many US allies, Israel uses the F-35 as its peak fighter aircraft. This led Marles to declare, with supreme fatuousness, that Australia builds “only nonlethal parts of the F-35”.
Which part of a fifth-generation fighter aircraft is not lethal? What duties of a submariner at sea in a nuclear attack submarine in combat are “non-offensive”?

Anthony Albanese. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

But Albanese’s claim, more generally, is surely implausible. The US submarine near Sri Lanka was very likely communicated with through the Harold Holt communication station in Western Australia. Pine Gap has almost certainly given precise information to the Americans about Iranian missile firings.
On top of all that, Australians are working to maintain and repair US nuclear submarines. Do we only do that before missions where the US promises to seek our approval in advance for whatever they might need to do? Will we stop such maintenance work so that we are not participating in ­offensive actions?
Then again Australia has long had personnel integrated into the US Middle East command, CENTCOM, and the Indo-Pacific command, PACOM. Most of these Australians are fully integrated into US operations, like our sailors on US submarines. They do line jobs. They work. They are part of the command’s functioning. Their task is to deliver capability. Have they all been stood down during the US operation in Iran?
Probably not, you couldn’t run the kind of alliance we have like that.

An explosion erupts following strikes near Azadi Tower close to Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran. Picture: AFP

The truth is the Albanese government wants to tell the Americans it’s fully supportive and participating in helping the US more than anyone else except Israel, while telling its own party, Greens voters, progressive commentators et al that actually it’s doing nothing at all and has not ­accepted even the bare legality of the US actions.
So far, the Albanese government’s defence policy has embodied a kind of dark genius. It does almost nothing at all yet promises fabulous things in a distant future, about the time when an AI version of Leonard Nimoy comes back as Mr Spock in Star Trek 112 sometime in the latter half of this century. It then markets this bargain basement virtual reality as national security credentials.
Eventually, the government will be found out by its contradictions. In the meantime, Australia’s strategic position steadily worsens.

So General "Taco"  Bonespurs is our saviour? Pull the other one. 

Haven't we already seen where being on a leash might lead?

Having learned nothing from Iraq and Afghanistan, Lord Downer was also at it ...

The header: Carney and Starmer baulk and pose while Trump fights on;Western leaders are no longer unequivocal champions of liberal democracy and show no determination to stand up to authoritarians and autocrats. They just play domestic politics with international relations.

The caption: (L-R) Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, US President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer pose for a photo during the Group of Seven (G7) Summit at the Kananaskis Country Golf Course in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada on June 16, 2025. Picture: Geoff Robins/AFP

Elbows up Canucks, this isn't going to be pretty ... stand back, and let Lord Downer show you the way ...

The trouble with the West is that it has lost faith in the morality of its system. Whenever and wherever liberal democratic values are challenged worldwide, most Western leaders just huff and puff.
Western leaders are no longer unequivocal champions of liberal democracy and show no determination to stand up to authoritarians and autocrats. They just play domestic politics with international relations.
Not surprisingly, adversaries of the liberal democratic system take advantage of this fecklessness. Let’s take two recent examples.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney made a nice little speech to a joint sitting of the House of Representatives and the Senate last week. Canada is a delightful country, which I have often described as Australia on ice. After all, it’s worth mentioning that the acknowledgment of country was copied from Canadian practice.
In his speech Carney yet again repeated his Davos message that middle powers should look at developing new international rules of engagement. When you stop and think about it, it’s hard to know what this could even mean.
The truth is the Western democratic system of government, the market economy and the so-called rules-based international system have been increasingly undermined by a coalition of China, Iran, and Russia.

Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during his visit to Canberra last week. Picture: AFP

These three countries show absolutely no interest in the international legal system. They are undemocratic and, in the case of Iran, among the most egregious human rights abusers in the world. They have used force to attack and try to steal territory from their neighbours, and what has the West done in response? Not much.
Canada spends a paltry 1.3 per cent of GDP on defence and is entirely dependent on the US for its security. What would Carney’s new rules do to end the war in Ukraine, stop Iran trying to dominate the Levant and eliminate Israel from the face of the Earth, and stop China stealing contested reefs from neighbours such as The Philippines and Vietnam? Of course the answer is absolutely nothing. It’s just posturing.
In Carney’s case, his posturing is tied up with the run-in the Canadians have had with Donald Trump ever since the US President’s re-election.
To be fair, the Canadian position is entirely understandable. It’s not that anyone would take seriously Trump’s suggestion that Canada could become the 51st US state. It’s more the tariffs the US has imposed on Canada that have incensed the Canadians. Fair enough, but that’s the genesis of the Carney speech.
And in any case he’s pretty robust in his support for American and Israeli action in Iran.
The second example is British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer. He initially refused to allow the Americans to use British bases in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East in the war against Iran. The fact Iran is the most hideous, autocratic, homophobic and misogynistic regime in the world doesn’t worry Starmer. He is more fussed about losing Muslim votes in the Midlands and the north of England. At this hugely important moment Starmer and his government have done more harm to the traditional special relationship between Britain and the US than any government since the Suez Crisis in 1956.
What is more, Britain’s fecklessness has been condemned by the country’s traditional allies in the Gulf and by Cyprus.

Keir Starmer chairs a roundtable meeting in Downing Street in central London on February 23. Picture: Toby Shepheard/AFP

These two leaders demonstrate why for two decades the West has been losing in its struggle against the coalition of adversaries. They are weak and they are obsessed with placating domestic political interests rather than showing leadership. They have no moral backbone whatsoever.
Well, this war against Iran is a tipping point. It will determine whether autocratic adversaries will continue to play with the West or whether their adventurism is brought to an end. Any Westerner with any understanding of geopolitics will be hoping and praying the US operation against Iran’s leadership is successful. So far it has been a huge military success, meticulously planned and with brilliant intelligence. The Iranians are now using just 10 per cent of the number of drones they used in the first day of the war and they have reduced the number of missiles they fire by 85 per cent.

The pond has avoided its usual interstitial comments on the illustrations, so tedious are they, but feels compelled to introduce the splendid graphic the reptiles produced for His Lordship ...

What a stunning summary, as in depth as His Lordship himself, still blathering on ...

This seems to suggest that the Americans and the Israelis have found where the Iranians store their stockpiles of weapons and destroyed them. The US and Israel also have been destroying the factories that build them. This suggests the Americans and the Israelis have done huge damage to Iran’s command and control. Importantly, they have attacked and destroyed many of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps command centres and bases, and it’s the IRGC that sustains the regime.
The capacity of the Israelis and Americans to assassinate Iranian leaders is breathtaking. Of course the Iranian leadership will always be able to appoint someone else as a leader, but understandably such a person’s life will be on a thread.
That will make it difficult for any leadership in Iran to build public confidence and support, let alone fight a war successfully.

Donald Trump disembarks from Air Force One at Miami International Airport on March 7. Picture: Saul Loeb/AFP

In the short term the Americans and Israelis have demonstrated to Iran that they can devastate any military capability if it tries to rebuild that capability to threaten and strike its neighbours. Iran simply won’t be able to supply lethal force to its proxies, nor will its nuclear program re-emerge.
Not only will this make Israel safer than it has been since its modern foundation but it will also relieve pressure on the struggling Lebanese government, allow Syria and Iraq to strengthen their democratic institutions, and leave the Gulf states prospering without fear. Of course the ideal would be if the Islamic theocracy sustained by the IRGC collapsed under the weight of public opinion. I hope this happens, but it may take time.
In the meantime the leadership of Iran will be coerced into more responsible behaviour, just as the leadership of Venezuela has been since the seizure of president Nicolas Maduro.
So looked at from afar, the current Iran war is the beginning of the fight back by the Americans on behalf of the West against the coalition of autocracies that has been undermining the Western-led international system. It is a relief that our own Prime Minister has supported this action, even if the Foreign Minister calls for a return to diplomacy. That is, of course, what has been happening since the late 1970s and that weak approach has led to war after war.

Oh indeed, indeed ...

Regrettably because of an overload of regulars, the pond  had to consign Zoe to the intermittent archive, always a risky business.

Never mind, the sentiment was all in the header...

You can’t mourn the Ayatollah and say you love Australia
Australia is built on the premise that women, gays, atheists, Jews, Christians and Muslims are all equal, a premise Khamenei spent his life trying to destroy.
By Zoe Booth

Zoe managed to be incomparably insufferable ...

The tolerance we’re asked to extend to those mourning Khamenei is itself a product of a civilisa­tion he despised: liberal plural­ism. It is a specifically Western concept, with Judaeo-Christian roots. It grew, haltingly and imperfectly, from the Hebrew prophets who insisted the king was answerable to God; from Christ’s injunction to render unto Caesar only what was Caesar’s; from the long and painful Christian argument about the limits of temporal power.

Perhaps the pond can't mourn the passing of sundry mad mullahs, but perhaps the pond could mourn the c. 150 schoolgirls murdered in a US strike, which King Donald shamelessly tried to blame on Iran, despite all evidence to the contrary ...

What a pity they won't be around to enjoy the flowering of feminism promised by the complete destruction - annihilation and devastation if you like - of the country.

They'll be unable to share in the trad 50s lifestyle for women on offer in fundamentalist Xian circles, not to mention the love foisted on gays and atheists in the disunited States.

Is Zoe completely catatonic, completely unaware of the bigotry that continues in the far right? Or is she just another wannabe shifter of the fundie Xian dung?

Quickly moving along, inevitably the Major was also in full Zionist warrior mode, ready to get down and jihad ...

The header: Why Iran’s radical regime is now facing the seeds of its own destruction; Australian students and journalists think they are speaking truth by unthinkingly using the term ‘resistance’ but only because they have no idea what it means to an Islamist.

The caption: Supporters of an Iranian regime change rally in support of the US and Israeli strikes. Picture: Getty Images

This was a bigly five minutes of the Major's Zionism, and is presented unadorned by comments, what with nausea having long ago overtaken the pond:

Media critics of Donald Trump’s action against Iran may be correct about his administration’s lack of clear war aims. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and journalists experienced in the politics and history of Islamism, know why it is right to challenge Iran’s radical Shi’ism.
Commentators in Australia discuss Iran as a rational state rather than a time capsule of religious ideas. Yet those religious ideas underpin the strategies of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini: hatred of Jews, the embrace of martyrdom, and rejection of modernity.
Its spiritual leanings persuaded the regime it had succeeded against US and Israeli attacks last June and was right to kill 40,000 of its own people in January.
Yet these same ideas also sowed the seeds of its destruction, from the moment the regime did a 2017 deal with Hamas in Syria to save ally Bashar al-Assad.
Tehran saw Yahya Sinwar’s “Al Aqsa Flood” on October 7, 2023, as a great triumph but it was the beginning of the end for Iran’s regime.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed in October 2024. Picture: AFP

Israel showed Iran was less powerful than Western media imagined, killing Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in his bed in central Tehran on July 31, 2024.
It dismantled Tehran’s Hezbollah after blowing holes in thousands of fighters’ trousers with booby trapped pagers on September 17, 2024. Then Israel went into Lebanon and killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah before destroying much of the group’s weaponry.
The Mullahs of Iran could not see their failures. In Australia, the ABC could not report what was really happening, focused instead on whether various attacks on Iran and its proxies complied with international law.
Why? The national broadcaster appears to abhor Trump and Netanyahu more than it does a state that has financed terror around the world, including antisemitic attacks in Australia last year.
Observers have expressed surprise that the local pro-Palestine protest movement, marching most weekends for the past 26 months, has not stood in solidarity with young Iranians from the Women, Life, Freedom movement.
This column reckons protest leaders – such as Josh Lees, an old-fashioned socialist – don’t want protesters to understand they are at odds with the Iranian aspirations. The dreams of Iran’s real martyrs do not fit the Marxist-Islamist-anti-Western thinking that drives the pro-Palestinian narrative.

Serial protester Josh Lees at a rally in France. Picture: Instagram

Key to understanding Iran is the idea of “resistance”, something young Australian students and journalists who think they are speaking truth to power unthinkingly support but only because they have no idea what “resistance” means to an Islamist.
The Free Press on March 1 published an essay by Times of Israel’s political correspondent Haviv Rettig Gur, titled “This is how the Islamic Republic falls”.
The Arabic word “muqawama” means resistance. It is both “’the Islamic Republic’s greatest source of resilience – and the engine of its unravelling,” Rettig Gur argues.
“When used by the leaders of Iran or Hezbollah or Hamas or the Houthis … (it) refers to a sustained, never-ending campaign of violence accompanied by a willingness to absorb catastrophic levels of damage. As the damage sustained to one’s own polity grows, so the sanctity and religious meaning grows with it.”
Sacrifice is the ultimate weapon the weak can use against the powerful. Rettig Gur outlines the role of a Syrian preacher, Izzedine al-Qassam, who died in 1935 as a martyr outside Jenin in the north of the West Bank shouting: “This is Jihad, victory or martyrdom.”
His death sparked the 1935-38 Arab revolt against British rule and is emblematic for Hamas which named its key combat force the Al-Qassam Brigades and its most common rocket the Qassam.
Into this legend 1960s Palestinian intellectuals added Mao’s theory of guerilla warfare: “A militarily inferior force embedded in a sympathetic population could exhaust a technologically superior enemy simply by refusing to be eliminated.” Sound like Hamas in tunnels?
Palestinian intellectuals also adopted anti-colonial theories that gave the Algerian National Liberation Front eventual victory when France abandoned the territory in 1962.
The psychiatrist Frantz Fanon had joined the Algerian revolution. He argued violence was a cleansing force for colonised peoples that restored their self-respect.
Rettig Gur argues Hamas and Iran’s Ayatollahs believe: “You do not need to win … You need to make the cost of occupying you unbearable in moral, political and economic terms.”
Just as liberation theology in South America re-cast Jesus as a Marxist, revolutionary sociologists recast Shi’ism as a revolutionary brand of Islam.
Khomeini, leader of Iran’s 1979 revolution, argued “the weak are spiritually purer than the arrogant but powerful West – arrogant for its reliance on worldly economic and military power, arrogant for its claim that individualistic democracy was morally superior to religious dictatorship.
“The weak and humble, saved from this arrogance, can remain spiritually clean … and therefore enjoy the divine protection that makes eventual victory inevitable.”
Like Russian communism, the system contains the seeds of its own destruction.
The educated young of Iran see their rulers enriching themselves while Iran pays for weapons for Iran’s terror proxies.
Iran, with 93 million people, an educated population and enormous natural resources, has a smaller GDP than tiny Israel which has a population of only nine million and few natural resources. This is why Hamas’s October 7 pogrom was timed to disrupt the Abraham Accords negotiation process.
Normalisation of relations between Israel and the Gulf States would be a disaster for the Mullahs: Iran’s domestic protest movement is more interested in a better life than a better martyrdom.
Students chanting “Neither Gaza nor Lebanon – my life for Iran”, and “They take our bread to buy rockets for Lebanon”, know a lot more about real resistance than the keffiyeh-wearing pro-Palestine mobs here each weekend.
Somalian born former Dutch politician and prolific writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali on March 2 published a piece on Substack under the headline “Iran is collapsing, but Islamism is spreading”.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Hirsi Ali warns Europe will be tested by events in Iran, as Jihadis who have lost their financier look for new pastures.
“Iran loses ground. The Middle East turns, the United States acts. That is good news but pressure is not defeat. Radicals relocate. They find the path of least resistance … that runs through Europe. The continent’s legal protections for asylum seekers’ human rights … make prosecuting (them) nearly impossible.
“There are large, politically mobilised Muslim communities in France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Britain, and a political class that prefers the comfortable lie to the uncomfortable conversation.’’
The ABC should interview Hirsi Ali and bench international law experts like Ben Saul and Chris Sidoti who never seem to criticise Islamist terror.
Back to the opening sentence. It will not be easy for the US and Israel to defeat Iran in the conventional Western sense. While its Ayatollahs remain in charge they will simply claim even basic survival is a glorious victory while they keep the internet and media shut down.

Perhaps the Major should take a look at Israel, at the moment the prime perpetrator of terror in the Middle East.

Never mind, last and least, the cratering Caterist also returned in supine creepy crawly mode ...

The header: This is Albanese’s best chance to mend relations with Israel; For those of an optimistic disposition, there are hints that the Albanese government’s hostility to Israel may be softening in the wake of Bondi.

The caption for yet another dull photo, the lizard Oz's graphics department seeming to have gone MIA for the day: Anthony Albanese’s decision to put Palestinian sovereignty ahead of loyalty to Israel was a strategic blunder. Picture: Martin Ollman

The pond will leave the Caterist to his own devices in a moment.

The pond just wanted to take the chance to note the absurdity of the loons in the deep north (apologies to the sane ones who must dwell amongst the loons).

First a dash of Anne Twomey in the Graudian ...

...in a stunning reverse, the Queensland government, which has complete parliamentary control, cast off the constitutional armour that its bill had carefully constructed, and left its law wide open to attack. It dropped the structure of a content-neutral law that granted a regulation-making power to ban slogans that meet particular criteria.
Instead, it opted for an outright statutory ban, stating that a “prohibited expression” means “from the river to the sea” or “globalise the intifada”. Thrown out are the requirements that the minister be satisfied that the expression represents an ideology of extreme prejudice against a group, such as a racial or religious group, and that the slogan is “regularly used to incite discrimination, hostility or violence towards a relevant group”. This is problematic, because they helped tie the prohibition to the particular harm it is intended to prevent.

Stunning indeed ...what with the need to ban Likud and many Israeli politicians ... per the wiki on the phrase ...

...An early Zionist slogan envisaged statehood extending over the two banks of the Jordan river, and when that vision proved impractical, it was substituted by the idea of a Greater Israel, an entity conceived as extending from the Jordan to the sea. The phrase has also been used by Israeli politicians. The 1977 election manifesto of the right-wing Israeli Likud party said: "Between the sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty."Similar wording, such as referring to the area "west of the Jordan river", has also been used in the 2020s by other Israeli politicians, including Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on 18 January 2024.

See the wiki for the links, see the deep north for the inordinate stupidity, because it seems that if the pond quoted an Israeli politician, it would be off to the clink.

See Haaretz ...

And Haaretz again ...

And speaking of stupidity, on with the Caterist ...

In November 2022, an Israeli defence and intelligence delegation arrived in Canberra for the annual Israel-Australia Security Dialogue. They came hoping to build a co-operative relationship with the newly elected Labor government. The Israelis were prepared to share some of their most closely guarded capabilities.
As two democracies with small populations surviving on their wits in often hostile neighbourhoods, Australia and Israel had long seen each other as natural strategic partners. But the meetings did not go well. After a day of unproductive discussions with Australian officials, including Defence Minister Richard Marles, the visitors gathered for dinner at the Kurrajong Hotel. Those present recall a mood of frustration bordering on anger.
Three and a half years later, it is clear that Anthony Albanese’s decision to put Palestinian sovereignty ahead of loyalty to Israel wasn’t just ethically incoherent. It was a strategic blunder, a rebuff to an ally we sorely need right now.
For the past 41 months, Israel has been testing and refining its military capability, culminating last week with a near-perfect operation in partnership with the Americans in Iran.

Richard Marles attends a Defence Science and Technology showcase at RAAF Defence Establishment Fairbairn in Canberra on March 5. Picture: AFP

The operation’s success is testimony to Israel’s skill at deploying silicon chips as much as the superiority of US hardware or the resolve of its commander-in-chief. In an era where the evolution of warfare is progressing at a startling pace, Israel’s strategic edge is innovation, which enables it to fight the current war rather than the one it was fighting five minutes ago.
As Australia confronts its biggest strategic challenge since World War II, the US remains as important an ally as it was in 1942.
Yet we can be certain that the next military assault on Australia won’t begin with the shrill scream of an Aichi dive bomber over Darwin. Neither will start with the supersonic crack of a Dongfeng missile seconds away from Garden Island. Israel’s war with Iran and its proxies and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have radically altered the strategic landscape.

Oh FFS, Darwin?

In June 2025, the Ukrainian Security Service launched Operation Spiderweb, a covert drone attack on five air bases inside Russia that hit around 20 long-range military aircraft, destroying 10 of them.
Ukrainian-made Wasp quadcopters, each with a 3.2kg payload of explosives, were packed in container-sized wooden crates and driven to position by unsuspecting drivers on flatbed trucks. Once in position, the wooden roofs were lifted remotely, and the drones took off and were guided to their targets using the open-source software ArduPilot. They communicated via SIM cards connected to the local mobile phone network, making them impervious to jamming.
Australia’s ports are equipped to handle more than nine million containers a year. Four out of six containers come from China. Which means that Chinese containers are being unloaded at a rate of six or seven a minute.
Two years ago, a prospect that one of them might be fitted with a remote-controlled roof that released a swarm of explosive-laden drones might have seemed like science fiction. After Operation Spiderweb, not so much. Yet our ability to counter such an attack is all but non-existent.

Rockets fired from southern Lebanon are intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome air defence system over the Upper Galilee region in northern Israel, on August 4, 2024. Picture: AFP

Israel, on the other hand, has been at the forefront of military drone technology for a half-century. In the 1982 Lebanese War, the Israelis deployed them to neutralise Syrian air defences. Recently, it has become adept at counter-drone technology. Australia, too, has been at the forefront of UAV research. DroneShield, which specialises in counter-drone technology, has grown from a Sydney start-up in 2014 to become Australia’s largest defence company by market capitalisation.
Melbourne-based SYPAQ Systems developed the flat-packed, wax cardboard drones that have played a vital role in the defence of Ukraine. So, it is more than a little alarming to learn that Australian universities have been collaborating with our adversaries on drone technology research projects.
Meanwhile, the National Union of Students and National Tertiary Education Union campaign furiously for an academic boycott of Israel, urging universities to cut all ties with Israeli institutions, but turning a blind eye to the increasing amount of co-operation with Qatar, which is accused of funding anti-Israeli activism on campus.
The government’s moral equivocation has contributed to an environment in which universities may find it acceptable to co-operate with Iran on highly sensitive military technology, while a research partnership with an Israeli university is beyond the pale.
For those of an optimistic disposition, there are hints that the Albanese government’s hostility to Israel may be softening in the wake of Bondi. The visit by Israeli President Isaac Herzog in defiance of opposition from the unhinged left, Islamic radicals and the conspiratorial right was evidence that the Prime Minister might be crab-walking his way to the right side of history.
Breaking diplomatic relations with Iran after the revelation that it had been sponsoring antisemitic terrorism on our shores was the kind of decisive act we feared was beyond Albanese’s capability.
His support for Israeli and US action is in contrast to his hesitant response to Operation Midnight Hammer last June.

Israel’s Ambassador to Australia, Dr Hillel Newman, has invited Australia to deepen its defence co-operation. Picture: Martin Ollman

All is not lost. The Israelis have survived for the past 78 years by becoming pragmatists rather than haters in the realm of strategic diplomacy. A quarter of a century of sporadic armed conflict with Egypt, culminating with Egypt’s unprovoked surprise attack in the Yom Kippur War in 1973, didn’t stop the signing of the Camp David Accords six years later, which have been the basis for strategic co-operation ever since. Which almost certainly means that any overtures the Prime Minister might make towards warmer ties with Israel would not be rebuffed, notwithstanding the undergraduate churlishness that prompted Albanese to end three-quarters of a century of support for Israel by recognising Palestinian sovereignty.
Indeed, in a timely and welcome intervention last week, newly appointed Israeli ambassador to Australia Hillel Newman invited Australia to deepen its defence co-operation, including adopting Israel’s Iron Dome missile interception system and the new laser-driven Iron Beam air defence system. Newman canvassed sharing cyber and drone technology, too.
He said the presence of rogue states like North Korea and others meant that “you never know what will happen tomorrow morning. You have to be ready.”
It would be foolish to underestimate the gravitational pull of the progressive left when, after October 7, 2023, Palestine overtook climate change as its threshold cause. Neither should we forget the influence of the Muslim vote, which is shaping Labor’s immigration policy under a deeply conflicted minister. Nevertheless, the opportunity for closer military ties with Israel is surely too good for Albanese to resist.

Closer ties? And the new rules based order?

And so to close with an immortal Rowe which the pond missed but which hasn't got old ...

Of course it's all in the detail, but the pond would like to honour the inspiration ...notwith the familiar one of pudding world being carved up, but with other eccentricities... as evidence that madness never ends, no matter how many follies it produces. Still, it gives the cartoonists fresh meat on a daily basis.

In which the pond stays on a war footing, thanks to Polonial prattle, Boudica Dame Slap and the patriotic dog botherer (take that puppy out to the quarry and drown it in the flood waters) ...

 

The big question, the titillation that the pond saved until its meditative Sunday, was the matter of Polonius and the current war.

Polonius has long been a war monger and a hawk. He was still raging about 'Nam back in 2005 ...

Thirty years on, an occasion for some to say sorry (*intermittent archive link)

In those days, it was possible for a reptile to be fully woke about migrants:

 ...in spite of Whitlam, anti-communist Vietnamese refugees arrived in Australia where they have been primarily responsible for changing attitudes in Australia to Asian communism and to Australia's military commitment in Vietnam.

Polonius never gave up on the woulda, coulda, shoulda won 'Nam routine, and he loved war, Why war is hell for Labor  (*intermittent archive link).

That was back in 2003, an Iraq war hawk to the bitter end, and he was still at it in 2011:

Bush and his allies deserve respect after earlier push for Arab democracies (*intermittent archive link)

The establishment of a UN-sanctioned no-fly zone over Libya has led to the destruction of the left's position on the Middle East. The simplistic analysis of the Australian-born leftist guru John Pilger helps prove why.

Uh huh. 

The pond could go on and on - war mongers rarely know when to shut up or to repent - and there was a grim irony catching up on Libya in The Graudian's Power without a throne: how Khalifa Haftar controls Libya (try a different browser if the Graudian demands an email address with menaces):

...Inside Haftar’s territory, a simpler system applied. Since 2014, dissent has been classified as terrorism. A protest, a conversation, a Facebook post: any criticism can carry a death sentence. In October 2016, so many bodies were found on Al-Zayt Street on the outskirts of Benghazi, bound and shot, dumped among the rubbish, that locals renamed it “corpse street”. “When I enquired about a 16-year-old boy who’d disappeared in Benghazi in early 2016, they told me, matter of fact, that they’d murdered him for spying,” Buisier told me. “I protested – we were supposed to be building a state of institutions, of law. They looked at me like I was naive. One officer suggested I might be sympathetic to the terrorists myself.” Buisier left Haftar’s circle shortly after and returned to the US.

Ah democracy, Polonius style. 

Now back to that question: would he maintain his war monger status, or would he veer off into some other arena?

Lo, the prophet cometh ... but aw heck, instead of helping out with Iraq, he's declared war on the Canucks.

Elbows up Canucks, it's going to be a rough ride...

The header: Mark Carney’s US critique ignores truth that middle powers need protection; Canadian PM Mark Carney’s warnings about dangerous hegemony have been exposed as hypocritical by his simultaneous embrace of authoritarian Beijing.

The caption: Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney and Anthony Albanese in Canberra this week. Picture: AFP

On the upside, unlike a lot of other reptiles this weekend, Polonius kept his mongering and his ravaging of the Canucks to a timely four minutes.

I guess I’m in the minority – not for the first time. However, I have read the Canadian Prime Minister’s special address to the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on January 20 and found it, well, average.
Without question, Mark Carney has had a brilliant career as a banker, governor of the Bank of Canada, governor of the Bank of England and now Prime Minister of Canada. He exudes charisma and excites audiences, especially of the type who can afford to get to Davos once a year. Writing in the Nine newspapers on March 4 – reporting Carney’s speech to the Lowy Institute in Sydney – journalists Matthew Knott and Peter Hartcher commented that Canada’s Prime Minister had “electrified fellow world leaders in Davos”. Particularly that part about the end of the rules-based international order.
In his speech, Carney made no mention of the US in general or President Donald J. Trump in particular. Yet there was little doubt that this was his target. It’s true that Trump is a Make America Great Again political leader. But, as the US military operation (with the support of Israel) against the radical Islamist theocracy in Iran shows, Trump is not an American isolationist.
At Davos, Carney declared that Canada had prospered under what he called the rules-based international order. No doubt. But this didn’t stop Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s move into the South China Sea, North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons or Iran’s determination to become a nuclear power.

Another plus. The reptiles kept the visual distractions down to just one, Australia and Canada said on Thursday (March 5) they had signed new agreements on critical minerals, a sign of the developing bond between the "middle powers". The situation in the Middle East was also discussed, with both leaders reiterating the need for de-escalation.

And that created room for a celebratory cartoon:

The pond wouldn't want anyone to think that Polonius forgot his primary mission while going all droog on the Canucks ...

In recent times, Carney has popularised the term hegemony. He used the word, or its derivative, on four occasions in his Davos speech. And again at the Lowy Institute. And yet again in his address to both houses of the Australian parliament on Thursday.
The Canadian Prime Minister sees his country – along with Australia and some other nations – as a middle power. And he contrasts middle powers with hegemonic ones such as the US and China.
This overlooks the fact that Canada – along with Australia and more besides – depends on the US for its security.
Not only with respect to the preservation of sea lanes and air lanes but also in the gathering of intelligence. Canada – plus Australia, Britain, New Zealand and the US – is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence partnership.
The term hegemonic was popularised by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci as a term of abuse to describe what he depicted as the ruling class. Gramsci also popularised the term “long march through the institutions” to describe the intention of the left to come to power in democratic societies by taking over institutions internally rather than by acts of revolution. Looking at some modern democracies, it is evident that Gramsci predicted the weakness of the West.
Not long after warning of the dangers of hegemony at Davos, Carney went off to sign a trade deal between his nation and the hegemonic communist China. Much to the displeasure of Trump.
In any event, in recent times Canada, along with Australia and New Zealand, has publicly supported the US’s intention to remove what is left of Iran’s capacity to develop nuclear weapons.

And after that lecture, here it comes, those bloody cardigan wearers ruining the Polonial weekend yet again. 

Get out the black sausage, it's ecky thoomp time ...

The US’s action against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran has been criticised by sections of the left. This is particularly evident in Australia at the ABC, led by its Americas editor John Lyons.
On March 4, ABC Radio National presenter Sally Sara interviewed Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne, who was a member of the visiting Canadian delegation.
Sara asked Champagne whether the actions taken by the US and Israel against Iran were consistent with the “international rules-based order”. And whether, if the actions were not consistent with international law, “middle powers such as Canada and Australia (should) speak out or take action”.
To which Champagne responded: “Iran has been the centre of instability that we have seen in the region for quite some time.”

Actually it's not just the ABC. Cartoonists have had a field day ...

But never mind, Polonius was eventually going to wind down, but not before he could foreshadow that war with China, preferably by Xmas, and preferably with diggers leading the way (relax, the Sydney Institute will surely stage a benefit for the wounded) ...

Indeed, its undeclared war with the US began in November 1979, shortly after the mullahs took power in Tehran, when Islamist radicals stormed the US embassy and took 90 people hostage, including 66 Americans, holding 52 of them for 444 days.
The hostage-taking took place during the presidency of the weak Jimmy Carter. They were released when the strong Ronald Reagan was about to become US president from late January 1981 – minutes after Reagan was sworn in.
Since then, the Islamic Republic has attacked US personnel on numerous occasions in Tehran, Beirut, Kuwait City, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Tanzania, Iraq, Syria and Jordan. The IRGC also has been involved in terrorist attacks against Jewish institutions in Australia and elsewhere.
Many members of the give-the-international-rules-based-order-a-chance cohort have accused Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of breaking international law by bombing Iran.
But the left said nothing when, during the presidency of Democrat Barack Obama, the US dropped bombs on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia. Likewise, during the presidency of Democrat Joe Biden when US bombs were dropped on Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Somalia.
In recent interviews on Radio National Late Night Live, Helen Clark (the former New Zealand Labour prime minister) and Bob Carr (the former Australian Labor foreign minister) have taken a stance against what might be called US attempted hegemony.
Clark praised the fact that in recent years New Zealand has become a country that makes up its own mind with respect to foreign policy. This is not necessarily the position of the current government in Wellington. But Clark overlooked the fact that New Zealand security is secured by Australia and, in turn, by the Australian-American alliance.
Carr has suggested that Australia should reject any proposal by the US that it should involve itself in a US-led defence of Taiwan against an attack by China. But this overlooks the fact that Australia’s sea and air lanes are secured by the US.
Unless and until the likes of New Zealand, Australia and Canada substantially increase military capacity, it is better to be on the side of the hegemonic US than to rely on a non-existent international rules-based order. But such an expression of reality would not lead to a standing ovation at the next WEF in Davos.
Gerard Henderson is executive director of The Sydney Institute.

Guess who sucked up to the school bully and joined the bully in beating the weaklings in the playground into a pulp? And never mind where the statue might topple ...

The pond hadn't intended to turn to Dame Slap, but there's nothing so splendid as seeing a Boudica (Boadicea if you will) in full warrior, war-mongering, Queen flight ...

After that splendid opening war mongering flourish, there were a couple of snaps, with the caption Mourners attend a memorial vigil after Iranian state media confirmed the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Picture: Daniel Carde/Getty Images

Dame Slap carried on with the law of the jungle, taking up where the Ughmann had left it yesterday:        

According to this Pollyanna rules-based international order, talk soon turns to the rules – so-called international law. To understand why this is equally a dangerous joke, tune in to an international lawyer.
Listen to Ben Saul, professor of international law at the University of Sydney and a UN special rapporteur on human rights, for example. The professor is the go-to guy for the ABC. He appeared early Monday morning on ABC News Radio, quickly dispelling any notion that he, or international law generally, has anything useful to say about Iran or the US-Israeli attacks on it.
This column has frequently pointed out that international human rights law, especially concerning immigration and border security, has been a major contributor to the policy disasters and huge breakdowns in social cohesion that have beset the West in recent years. International human rights law is devoid of precise or predictable, let alone sensible, content and has descended into a contest between who can demonstrate the greatest moral vanity.
On Monday, Saul neatly and succinctly confirmed that the same is true of international law governing war, conflict and terrorism. It’s not merely a joke but a very dangerous one. It goes further than effectively granting impunity to bad actors; it actually condemns any effort to curb those bad actors in the only way that is timely and effective – namely pre-emptively. It metaphorically wrings its hands and clutches its pearls at Iran’s decades-long funding of terrorism, its killing of its own citizens on a scale not seen since Joseph Stalin, its export of destruction to faraway places, notably the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, and its repression of women and gay people. All shocking breaches of various international laws, of course.
But here is the rub. International law is not really law at all because it lacks any effective enforcement mechanism. So, the bad guys ignore it except when they can use it to complain about any effort to control their wickedness.

And this is the real reason the pond went with Dame Slap. She had an entirely meaningless graph imported from kissing cousin The Times:

The pond would have preferred a graphic showing the clever strategy in play:

With that sort of statistical insight in hand, there was no stopping the Dame:

If international law had stopped Tehran decades ago from buying missiles and drones for Hamas to lob at Israel, maybe none of the current drama would have been necessary.
Instead, international law has become an engine of oppression – doing nothing about bad behaviour for decades but swooping in to condemn efforts to clean it up in a timely and effective way. By creating an entirely false veneer of being an enforceable law, it empowers evil and constrains those who seek to restrain evil.
Saul’s interview provides the perfect illustration of why international law is in fact an enabler of global malefactors.
He started with a ringing and unambiguous declaration of the illegality of the actions of the US and Israel. No surprise there. The reasoning bears examination, though. Neither the US nor Israel acted under the authority of a UN Security Council resolution, Saul explained. That doesn’t seem like a good reason to admire international law; since China and Russia have veto powers over such resolutions, they and their allies will always be free to engage in barbarity without being concerned by this head of international law.
Neither, according to Saul, could Israel or the US claim they were acting in self-defence. Apparently under international law you don’t get this defence until the bombs are actually landing in your front yard. An actual attack is required, according to Saul, before you can rely on self-defence. So aggressors can engage in whatever grey zone warfare they like, fund proxy-war fighters such as Hamas or Hezbollah or conduct a secret nuclear weapon program without worrying their victims or intended targets can rely on a claim of self-defence.
Of course, by the time the right to self-defence cuts in, you might not have anything left to defend. An unlawfully constructed nuclear bomb has wiped out Israel? That’s just tough luck for Israel. As Saul helpfully pointed out: “You can’t use force to somehow preventively disarm a country from getting nuclear weapons.”

But wait, there's more, so big the pond had to break it into two gobbets ...

That timeline sent Dame Slap right off, right into the hands of Raff:

Now lest we be unfair to Saul, we are prepared to assume he would be even-handedly robust in condemning Iran’s brutal repression of its own people, its funding of terrorism and its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The trick, however, is that we must then ask the good professor what remedies does the world have for this wickedness under international law. On the evidence of his earlier comments, precisely none.
According to Saul, you just have to leave it to the UN and collective action by that body. “There is no basis in international law for unilateral regime change for humanitarian reasons. The proper way to do that is through the United Nations.”
Ah yes, the UN. That would be the body that in 2023 appointed Ali Bahreini, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, to chair the November 2023 UN Human Rights Council social forum. And the body that in October 2025 elected Iranian career diplomat Afsaneh Nadipour to its advisory committee to its Human Rights Council for a three-year term. At its February 2026 meeting the advisory committee considered (among other things) technology-facilitated gender-based violence and its impact on women and girls. No doubt Nadipour, whom the National Council of Resistance of Iran called “an accomplice and apologist for the crimes of the misogynistic dictatorship of the mullahs for over 30 years”, had a lot to say on that topic.
Even allowing for the NCRI’s dislike of the Iranian regime, it is simply risible to think the UN could or would do anything to stop Iran’s terrorism, human rights abuses and nuclear plans.
In a fiery speech to parliament on Wednesday, Labor senator Raff Ciccone skewered the hypocrites gnashing their teeth about breaches of so-called international law. “Where was their outrage when women were dragged from the streets for refusing to cover their hair?” Ciccone asked. “Where was their caution when peaceful protesters were executed?”

The reptiles were so enthusiastic they featured Raff ... Labor Senator Raff Ciccone has hit out at the ABC and the Greens over their stance on the Iran war.

Pleased at the company you're keeping Raff? 

Pleased to see the reptiles flocking to your banner and fawning over you? 

Pleased to see the likes of Dame Slap offering plaudits?

Ciccone was surely talking to professors of international law, not just Greens MPs and breathless ABC senior journos such as John Lyons, for choosing “comfort over courage and moral vanity over moral clarity”.
“The Australian Greens and prominent voices rush to condemn Australia for supporting action, claiming that international law has been violated,” Ciccone said. “This is the same international law that was silent as tens of thousands of civilians were murdered by their own government just weeks ago.”
Ciccone’s home truths will mean his own colleague, Labor Foreign Minister Penny Wong, will have to hit pause on her usual craven retreat behind the curtain of international law.
There are a host of reasons why international law is a crock. These range from its unelected makers accountable to no one, to the hijacking of international convention-making bodies by every far-left activist unable to get elected at home, to its convoluted and high-flying language designed to give unelected, politically appointed judges carte blanche.
But the most damning objection is that because international law has no coercive power, enforcement rests solely with the voluntary consent of those subject to it. It is the opposite of the rule of law – the only people who obey international law are those who never, or hardly ever, breach it. Countries such as Iran ignore it with impunity.
Proving that you’d actually be a complete mug to expect tangible order from international law, notice that no Iranians celebrating on the streets this week were holding up posters of the UN secretary-general.

And so to another reading from the sacred text, as the reptiles take us back to the days of great world wars, Victorian empires, and the righteous stoning of errant nations back into the stone age.

What a splendid vision it is to behold. (Why, where would SBS be without the Nazis?)

...Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can;
But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man!
If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride;
Pack-Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the head and the hide.
The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must eat where it lies;
And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies.
The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may do what he will;
But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat of that Kill.
Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of his Pack he may claim
Full-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the same.
Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her year she may claim
One haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same.
Cave-Right is the right of the Father — to hunt by himself for his own:
He is freed of all calls to the Pack; he is judged by the Council alone.
Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw,
In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of your Head Wolf is Law.
Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they;
But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is — Obey! (in full here)

The pond immediately heeled.

Obey?

Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress toward more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy--everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always--do not forget this, Winston--always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a King Donald bombing the sh*t out of a human face--forever.

What fun it is to head back to the nineteenth century, what fun it is to see Ukraine suffer at the hands of a big bully, and what fun it is to see the big bully do all sorts of backflips...

The pond regrets that it doesn't have the space for the likes of Dave Kilkullen brooding about the war in. It was a bigly 11 minute read, a veritable "Ned" Everest...

Sorry Dave, that's too long, forgive the pond if it sends you off to the intermittent archive, with only your closing remarks noted ...

...At the strategic level, one lesson is that, irrespective of Trump’s need for a quick resolution to the conflict, lest it undermine his support ahead of critical midterm elections in November, war is inherently complex and non-linear, unleashing forces that cannot be predicted or controlled. Even now, the campaign is illustrating the impossibility of doing regime change from the air, to say nothing of whether regime change is even a viable goal: 20 years of the war on terror would suggest not.
One thing I heard whispered in Washington this week was that – between Venezuela, Greenland and now Iran – others may be concluding they cannot trust American negotiators. The terms of any deal seem increasingly contingent on political whim in the White House, rather than consistent policy, and attacking a counterparts mid-negotiation makes it less likely that adversaries will themselves negotiate in good faith.
One congressional staffer gloomily told me this week that, under this administration’s force-based approach to international relations, diplomatic consistency carried less weight, but that wouldn’t always be the case. Russia and China were watching this conflict closely, she noted, and if they saw an opportunity to move against Western interests while the US was tied down in Iran, credibility with allies would matter again, fast. The broader potential for escalation – for Gulf War III to become World War III – is not in the forefront of anyone’s mind at present but the risk is real.
Impact at home
For Australia, the implications of the current conflict are stark enough. As a globally connected trading nation, with millions of Australians overseas and massive exposure to the global system, Australians’ safety and our nation’s prosperity can easily be disrupted by events thousands of kilometres away. Just one illustration of this is petroleum imports, which despite rapid growth in renewables still drive almost every aspect of our economy.
The latest Australian petroleum statistics, from December 2025, showed Australia with 50 days net import coverage, 25 days of diesel consumption, enough jet fuel for 20 days and enough automotive petrol for 26 days. In other words, if global oil supplies are interrupted for more than three to four weeks, Australia’s transportation and production systems start grinding to a halt. The government has rightly advised against panic hoarding, but fuel resilience will become a real issue as the conflict drags on.
There is also the possibility that an expanded conflict may lead to a spike in terrorism risk. Iranian-sponsored terror cells aside, unrest among or against Iranian, Jewish, Kurdish, Arab and other communities is a real issue, one that many Western governments are watching, Australia almost certainly included.
A final possibility is that, if the war drags on or escalates, Australia and other allies may receive a US request for support. Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance – including joint facilities in Australia – are almost certainly already involved. No request for warships, aircraft or ground troops has been publicly discussed but planners would be wise to be thinking ahead.
In the meantime, and much more importantly, families such as my friend’s – across Iran, Israel, the Gulf states and elsewhere – are sheltering in basements, comforting their kids, hoping they have enough food, water, cash and medical supplies, and worrying what the future holds. Tens of thousands of Australians and other expats are stranded as they seek to leave the region, and millions more locals have no exit in sight. This war is unlikely to end soon, but it has already changed the game.

It's certainly done that Dave...

And so to the dog botherer doing what Polonius was doing but doing it better, bigger, louder: blame the ABC! Blame those damned cardigan wearers for not being sufficiently war monger ...

The header: Our ABC, so why promote our enemies’ interests? When an institution actively works against the nation that funds it, drastic remedial action is required.

The uncredited caption for a collage that's wisely uncredited, so crass it is: Does the ABC show loyalty to the country and citizens who fund it?

It's no surprise that the dog botherer is the sort of flag-waving ratbag to be found in Australia Day marches:

“Australians still need things that we all have in common,” Labor’s Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Julian Hill, said last week. “Principles that everyone is expected to sign up to, values we share, and events and moments broadly marked and celebrated together.”
It was refreshing to hear this plain statement of patriotism from the Albanese government. Hill was even brave enough to back Australia Day and the flag.
The idea of national values and common aspirations, along with respectful disagreement, is something to which most of us would subscribe. This is the centrality of what passes for our national compact. It is right there in the citizenship pledge: “I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.”
So far, so good. But my question is this: Why does none of this seem to apply to our national broadcaster? Does the ABC show loyalty to the country and citizens who fund it? Or show respect for their rights and liberties?
Time and again ABC journalists make the arguments of Australia’s critics and enemies. They undervalue our rights in favour of the perceived rights of others, such as those arriving illegally by boat.
The ABC’s reflex position is to oppose foreign conflicts, amplify foreign criticism and express deep scepticism about the US alliance at the core of our national security. The national broadcaster regularly takes positions at odds with our national interest.
This is not what politicians had in mind when they founded the ABC. In his opening broadcast in 1932 prime minister Joseph Lyons spoke idealistically about the “power to promote the establishment of a lasting world peace” and the “high sense of public duty” ABC members would exhibit. The ABC charter, enshrined in legislation, demands “programs that contribute to a sense of national identity”. They should “encourage awareness of Australia and an international understanding of Australian attitudes on world affairs” – an undertaking the ABC seems to observe in the breach.

The reptiles were so shocked that they slipped in a snap of the main villain, ABC Americas editor John Lyons.

It wasn't that surprising. He was just saying what others were saying ...

For once the pond was so pleased with the way an ABC reporter had managed to agitate the reptiles that it decided to feature him at the bottom of this post- for those who might have missed it.

And for those worried about missing the dog botherer? Never fear, they're only verbal bombs, a form of diarrhea, the sort of sludge that can make a sewer overflow ...

We have seen this across the past two years after Israel was attacked by Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran, triggering antisemitism and Islamist extremism targeting the Australian Jewish community. The ABC fanned the flames of “pro-Palestinian” activism and downplayed the threat of antisemitic attacks, all the way to December’s Bondi Beach atrocity.
The ABC’s delinquency has been on display this week too as Israel and the US attempt to deal with the malign influence of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The Albanese government issued a statement last weekend offering mild support: Australia “stands with the brave people of Iran” and supports “the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon” and threatening global security.

Ah yes, America first and Australia second ...

At this point the reptiles slipped in an unfortunate swishing Switzer, still on his redemption tour.

What he was saying rightfully should have seen him branded a treasonous traitor: The Australian columnist Tom Switzer says the majority of Americans “oppose” the intervention in Iran. Mr Switzer told Sky News host Chris Kenny that Iran will need to “hold out” against the US. “If the Iranian regime can hold out for four to five weeks, then they live to see another day.”

Hang on, hang on, that's the sort of talk that would see the reptiles hang that spitting Lyons from the nearest lamp post:

“To me, that is political propaganda,” ABC Americas editor John Lyons spat. “What they actually mean, they don’t say it, but what that sentence should say, if they’re being accurate, if the Prime Minister of ­Australia is telling the truth, it should say: ‘Australia stands with Israel and the US in their new war on Iran.’ So that is absolute, in my assessment, political ­propaganda.”
Judging by his coverage of the Middle East and the Trump presidency, Lyons knows about propaganda. After the President’s first words on the Iran action, Lyons said: “My main impression listening to that is that’s Israel’s agenda, that’s Israel’s talking points, not the United States.” These comments regurgitated a tired antisemitic trope about Jews covertly controlling global power. They also ridiculously suggested Trump is not his own man.
“There’s a lot of untrue statements and narratives being told at the moment,” Lyons ranted. “They are all in unison now; I mean Anthony Albanese’s statement could have been written by the United States and Israel, it is straight out of their playbook.”

Shocking stuff, almost as shocking as discovering that the reptiles still haven't managed that rebadging of Sky Noise Down Under: Sky News contributor Kosha Gada comments on Labor Senator Raff Ciccone’s speech about the hypocrisy of the ABC and the Greens. This comes amid joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran, which killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and prompted days of mourning at several Islamic centres and Mosques throughout Australia. “There are many downstream consequences of immigration policy, and you just create this patchwork society, and there’s this coalition of the fringes then that ends up being the backbone of a political party,” Ms Gada told Sky News host Steve Price.

Hang on, hang on, that Kosha is a bloody Yank. 

What's she doing out here on Sky Noise down under? 

Who let a bloody Yank in? The last thing we need is a patchwork society where some sort of fringe loon thinks they can come in here and wank away for a Yank-owned foreign corporation. If we want a yank, we can do it ourselves.

Shouldn't she be tending the home fires? Perhaps enlisting in the cause, fighting the good fight, fallingin behind her fearless leader?

Sorry, back to the dog botherer, still in a state of high Lyon agitation:

Someone as experienced as Lyons would know allies tend to speak in unison. It seems what really angered him was Australia siding with the US and Israel; Lyons could not stomach that, even against a foe as brutal and repressive as the theocratic dictatorship of Iran.
More than two years of Iran-instigated and funded war against Israel, months of Iranian dissenters being slaughtered, decades of terror attacks across the Middle East and persistent programs to develop nuclear weapons and stonewalling in negotiations while vowing to annihilate Israel, yet Lyons and the ABC were outraged that the US and Israel would attack.
Even Iranian terrorism unleashed on our soil – the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne and a business in Sydney – was not enough to convince the ABC and Lyons that our national interest might lie in standing with democratic allies.
This is a flabbergasting failure of moral and strategic clarity. And it was paid for by taxpayers who expect government to provide security.
On the ABC, James Glenday, Sarah Ferguson, Sally Sara (and no doubt others) have obsessed over whether the Iran military action complies with international law. A better question, of course, would be whether it is justified on strategic, security or humanitarian grounds.
This legalistic preoccupation is shared by the hard left, UN multilateralists and virtue signallers of various kinds.
Sarah Hanson-Young, Mehreen Faruqi, Andrew Wilkie and Malcolm Turnbull have all been pushing the “illegal war” line – oh, so has the Iranian representative at the UN.
In fact the UN charter (article 51) allows for self-defence, and this alone could justify the war given the number of assaults against Israel and American interests by Iran and its proxies.
But the absurdity of the “illegal war” angle is laid bare when you consider that, in effect, critics are demanding UN Security Council authorisation knowing full well that Russia and China have a veto.

The reptiles decided to show a couple of snaps designed to make the dog botherer flip right out ... Sarah Hanson-Young and Malcolm Turnbull have been pushing the ‘illegal war’ line. Picture: Newswire /Martin Ollman

 

The pond has absolutely no idea why it would be called an illegal war ...

The dog botherer ended with a cry of pain ... of the sort that comes daily from the Australian Daily Zionist News...             

So the legality argument is not a serious one, it just demonstrates that the UN is a busted flush. It is a way of attacking the US, Israel and even their timid supporters such as Australia while avoiding the substance of the issue.
Valid arguments can be made against the war, relating to exit plans, unintended consequences or whether diplomacy has been exhausted. In this case those arguments are particularly weak compared with the risks Iran poses, so hardline critics run the legality nonsense and the ABC gives them credence and volume.
None of this serves our national interest. It only helps Australia’s enemies.
This coverage puts the leftist bias of the ABC up in neon, even under Labor. As we saw when the Hawke government supported the first Iraq war and when the Gillard government tried to stop people-smuggling, the ABC occasionally will attack Labor but only from the left.
When national institutions work against the nation that funds them, remedial action is required. Corrective action at the ABC would seem particularly remote, however, given its chairman, Kim Williams, exposed his own bias to the Nine Entertainment newspapers last week when discussing a love of Israel’s history.
“I don’t think (Benjamin Netanyahu) is part of that very long, deep history,” the ABC chairman said. “I think he is an aberrant creature … I think he’s frankly an aberrant creature in the history of Israel.” Catching his own words, Williams added: “But that’s a very inappropriate thing for me to say and I shouldn’t really be saying it.”
He just demonstrated how the ABC has about as much ideological diversity as the Iranian theocracy. Taxpayers are forced to fund it under the obscene misapprehension that it improves us.

What a hoot. 

The pond always loves it when the hive mind talks about ideological diversity and the dangers of theocracy, while exhibiting all the diversity of a hive mind, and the theological diversity of the Australian Daily Zionist News ... now there's a theocracy that gets the bombing done.

And after all that, after an entire weekend spent with the warrior reptiles? 

The pond's mind was left in a state as clear as mud ...

Time for a purgative, time for a correction, time for a few teaser trailers for Haaretz ...

Netanyahu Aims His Awesome Power at Iran – and 'The Enemy Within'
The cynical gang that fantasizes about toppling the Iranian regime speaks in the name of freedom, but its distance from the values of a liberal democracy is longer than the journey from Tel Aviv to Tehran. Another kind of heavy bombing will start the day after the war (*intermittent archive link)

"Only force works: when people are afraid of you," Benjamin Netanyahu said at a security cabinet meeting before the attack on Iran. The prime minister was dismissive of "experts, even ones from the leading universities of the world," who don't understand this simple truth. Anyone hearing this Darwinist monologue could have gotten the impression that when Netanyahu stressed the importance of force, he wasn't only thinking about the ayatollah regime.
The prime minister's recorded message the first night of the war opened with the words "My brothers and sisters." But he and his people see half of their brothers and sisters as an enemy no less dangerous than the Revolutionary Guards. For three years they have tried to suppress anti-government protests, claimed that the demonstrators are stabbing the nation in the back, and spread conspiracy theories about a betrayal from within.
"Terror amazons," Netanyahu called some of the protest movement's activists in private talks, demanding that the head of the Shin Bet security service handle protesters with an iron fist.
Just before the war, members of the governing coalition defended thugs who intimidated people they believed to be leftists. Now, as the missiles fall, they're demanding that the victims of their incitement join hands with them in the bomb shelters. The heavy bombing will start on the day after. The Iranian campaign will be depicted as a historic victory regardless of its actual results, and the other war will resume.
Urgent issues like the campaign to end Netanyahu's corruption trial weren't neglected this week either. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir showed up at the site where a missile killed a woman in Tel Aviv and declared that "this trial should have ended a long time ago." The prime minister immediately rewarded him by assailing Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara, who had informed the High Court of Justice, alas way too late, that she saw no option but to call for Ben-Gvir's dismissal. Petitions to the court seek his removal over the alleged politicization of the police and his alleged excessive involvement in its operations.

And again:

Everyone in This Country Has Gone Insane
Not a single voice of reason to be found among the pundits, politicians and general public, who all run to the shelters on an hourly basis but smile when they emerge, praising the Iran war and the blessings it brings. It almost makes you miss 1967 (*intermittent archive link)

Where was it determined that wartime is also a time for stupidity? Who wrote that when the cannons roar, the muses are not only silent but ought to be ashamed? It's been a long time coming, but what has happened to the public discourse in Israel this week is shattering all record lows.
It is impossible not to miss the victory albums and the songs of glory of 1967. "Nasser is waiting for Rabin, ay, ay, ay" is subtle compared to the garbage today. And who would have thought that we would miss, "Oh Sharm el-Sheikh, we have returned to you again." Today, it's "Finally we'll be able to live free, finally we'll be able to breathe, Israel is free, Iran is free, everyone hears the roaring lion, Hallelujah to the air force, Hallelujah to the army … You're our great pride" (lyrics by Pnina Rosenblum).
Except we are not just talking about songs, but the public and media discourse. Ultanationalist, we're used to it already; militaristic, that's normal too. Everything is right-aligned, there is no room for doubt, for opposition, for question marks or anything less than respect and praise for the Israel Defense Forces – that's also a characteristic of wartime. Silence – we're shooting. Only patriotism in the TV and radio studios and on social media. What's different this time is the level of the discourse, or, we should say, its unfathomably low level – never before has it been so hollow, cliched and stupefying.
A former soccer player is considered the voice of wisdom, a military-police officer the voice of morality. Every Persian Jew is a pundit. To the sock puppets otherwise known as military correspondents and their peers covering foreign affairs, who have also joined the chorus, a new cadre of analysts has been added, a type that never before filled the airwaves and social media so densely and with such exclusivity; barrages of brainwashing the likes of which have never been seen here before. That's how it is after two and a half years without real journalism, without even minimal coverage of the war in Gaza.
Try to find even a single voice of reason, someone with something to say, who actually knows something. Not a one. For Purim, media personality Avri Gilad is an air force pilot, and the children's entertainer Yuval Shem Tov sings in Farsi. Everyone is so gleeful: Why? Or maybe it will all end in tears. It's unacceptable even to raise the possibility. The orgy of assassinations is in full swing, every hit a cause for celebration.

And so on at the link, and now for that Lyons moment. 

Sure, it's already days old, but how sublime that he managed to keep the reptiles in a rage for a week ...

And now that you've had the war Ozsplained for the entire weekend, time to have it Foxsplained ...

And let's not forget the usual positive summary of positive events from the always positive and cheery Simon Marks ...