In which Our Henry is legendary, and more than makes up for disappointing outings by Killer and the craven Craven ...

 

Amazing scenes ...

The pond didn't expect to wake up to the lizard Oz breaking the news that the Emperor Penguin and the Antarctic fur seal were in a spot of bother.

Sssh, never disturb the reptiles when they're in their climate denialist slumber.

The reptiles love themselves extinction events and do everything to make them possible. It requires quiet, diligent unostentatious work, and the rewards are in the deeds themselves ...

Nor did the pond expect the reptiles to care about Melania trying to deny any connection to Epstein. (Oh dear, the tabloid Beast video take is here, and it seems the denials are accompanied by the worst poll figures ever). 

The reptiles long ago forgot about those files, so who cares if Melania blowing all that smoke hinted at a some hidden fire.

Instead, what with the lizard Oz being the Australian Daily Zionist News, the pond had expected a celebration of the sociopathic current government of Israel, and its current mission to arrive at a greater Israel ...

But when the pond turned eagerly to read Our Henry on a Friday to cop its daily dose of Zionism, the dear lad, the pompous pedant, went one better ...

The header: Why Donald Trump is the bastard son of the Enlightenment; It is an illusion to think that fundamentalists are driven by a rational assessment of interests rather than by their fanaticism.

The caption for the snap of the mad King showing off his tiny hands: President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office. Picture: Alex Brandon / AP Photo

Our Henry this day returned to top form, ably assisted by the lizard Oz graphics department, burrowing through ancient archives to find royalty-free images.

The old humbug modestly admitted to eccentricity and perhaps a touch of blasphemy as he blamed King Donald on ancient nobs.

Yes, King Donald is all the fault of the Enlightenment ...

It may seem eccentric – if not positively blasphemous – to suggest that Donald Trump is a child of the Enlightenment. Voltaire, Hume and Kant would scarcely have recognised him as their progeny; they might have winced, incredulous at history’s cruel irony.
Yet the family resemblance is real. For it was the long 18th century’s great philosophers who advanced one of modernity’s most consequential wagers: that interests would subdue passions. If human beings could be induced to pursue their interests rather than defend dogmas and chase glory, conflict itself might be domesticated – shifted from the battlefield to the bargaining table.
This was, in other words, the intellectual origin of “the art of the deal”: the belief that, in the end, every actor has a price, and that rational self-interest will draw antagonists toward compromise. Strangely, the 19th and 20th centuries – whose wars grew ever more destructive – did not abandon that conviction but entrenched it, even as the evidence mounted that it obscured more than it revealed.
The intellectual genealogy, too complex to detail here, runs from the early modern rehabilitation of self-interest to “Mar-a-Lago on the Gaza shore” – but the crucial moment lies in Duc Henri de Rohan’s 1638 distinction between passion, grounded in impulse, and interest, grounded in calculation. His maxim, rendered in English as “interest will not lie”, eventually became, in JA Gunn’s phrase, “the most fashionable political concept in the 17th century”.
Interests, Rohan maintained, were stable, reasonable and predictable. Passions, by contrast, connoted volatility, irrationality and barbarism. The genius of the moderns was to transform conflicts over values into conflicts over interests – interests that could be divided, negotiated and settled.
What gave this idea its force was the rise of commerce, the domain of calculation par excellence. A powerful chain of reasoning followed: a commercial society would cultivate habits of calculative rationality; those habits would permeate social norms and expectations, and; over time, coolly defined interests would supplant tempestuous passions. The result would not be the disappearance of conflict, but its intelligent management: regularised, negotiated and, above all, contained.

Here's where the reptile graphics department helped out, what with their incessant thirst for free images pillaged from the full to overflowing intertubes ... Immanuel Kant. David Hume.

Inspired, the hole in bucket man plunged on with his thesis, which was a nifty way of distracting from the sociopathic ways of Benji and his minions ...

Montesquieu coined that proposition’s most celebrated formulation in 1748. “The natural effect of commerce,” he wrote in The Spirit of the Laws, “is to bring about peace. Two nations which trade together render themselves reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling.” In this way, “the spirit of commerce unites nations”.
More ambitiously still, commerce offers a “cure for the most destructive prejudices”; for, “wherever there is commerce, there we meet with agreeable manners” – the “mild” (doux) habits that sustain contracts between traders and agreements between states.
In Montesquieu’s thought, this tendency had a providential cast. The 19th and 20th centuries translated it into a secular idiom. It was no longer commerce alone that would inculcate rationality, but the expanding authority of science and, even more, of complex technology – domains whose effective operation seemed to require disciplined, instrumentally rational thought. Although rarely stated so baldly, much of the “modernisation” literature of the 1950s and 1960s implied a simple syllogism: anyone capable of building missiles must reason as the boffins in Langley do – and, sooner or later, will act with similar calculative restraint in both conflict and co-operation.
The consequence was that fanaticism – what David Hume called “enthusiasm” – would gradually recede. Hume argued that disputes “from interest are the most reasonable and the most excusable”, precisely because they admit of bargained resolution; those of religion, by contrast, are “more furious and enraged than the most cruel factions that ever arose from interest”.
But the extinction of “enthusiasm” did not require religion’s disappearance. It was, said Alexis de Tocqueville, enough that religion evolve toward forms that reinforced the mundane virtues of co-operation, moderation, tolerance and self-mastery. And that, the modernisation theorists believed, was precisely the direction the major faiths would take in technologically savvy societies.

Now the pond will concede that Our Henry showed off his Zionist Islamophobia ... never let it be said that his enthusiasm slacks off or recedes ...

Clifford Geertz cast doubt on that optimism. In Islam Observed (1968), synthesising years of fieldwork in Morocco and Indonesia, he argued that modernisation – and the spread of education – could inflame rather than tame religious extremism.
Minds trained to prize analytical coherence had, in his experience, recoiled from the tolerant syncretism of Moroccan Sufism and from Indonesia’s gentle blend of Islam, Hinduism and animism, turning instead toward more rigorous, purified and uncompromising forms of faith.
It was therefore no accident that, as Albert Hourani observed in Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (1983), Jamal al-Din al-Afghani anticipated later currents of Islamic fundamentalism, despite being one of the 19th century’s most influential Muslim advocates of science and technology. “If someone asks: why are Muslims in retreat?”, wrote al-Afghani, “I will answer: when they were truly Muslims, the world bore witness to their excellence.” Nor was it accidental that several of the September 11 terrorists were highly trained engineers.

The pond acknowledges that Our Henry seems incapable of contemplating the worst excesses of rabid Xian fundamentalists and evangelical bigots, or for that matter, the outer reaches of weird fundamentalist Judaism.

But feel the width of all the guilty parties ... Francois Voltaire. John Stuart Mill.

Sock it to 'em ...

Technical mastery did not inevitably advance the spirit of bargaining and moderation. On the contrary, the ability to build missiles could give zealots the means to hasten the apocalypse, dismember the infidels, and honour a compact not with other men but with God – a compact that admits neither compromise nor restraint. Utterly irrational ends could be pursued by eminently rational means.
That conjunction – technical sophistication in the service of fanaticism – is the Iranian regime in miniature. That does not mean the regime will never enter into agreements. But, following the precedent set by the Prophet Muhammad at the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, any such agreement is a “hudna” or temporary armistice at best, a fleeting ceasefire at worst, to be systematically violated whenever possible, and openly repudiated as soon as practicable.
Far from vindicating the Enlightenment’s hopes, those agreements show how readily fanatics can advance their cause by exploiting the West’s illusions, knowing that it lacks the stomach for a prolonged fight. And to make things worse, the agreements’ record is a miserably poor one. As John Stuart Mill – whom no one could plausibly accuse of warmongering – warned, the lesson of the centuries is that “barbarians cannot be depended on for observing any rules,” nor to “reciprocate concessions”.
Time and again, the tiny seed the Due de Rohan planted has therefore borne bitter fruit, as striking deals with fanatics becomes, all too often, an excuse for compromises that turn out to be capitulations.
Yet the “art of the deal”, and the confidence that every conflict is merely a high-stakes version of a real estate negotiation, has a magnetic hold on the Western mind – and on few minds is its grip firmer than on that of America’s 47th president. That his negotiators with Iran have been commercial deal-makers, not hardened experts in handling rogue regimes, should therefore come as no surprise.
Yes, as they look down from on high, Voltaire, Hume and Kant may shake their heads in disbelief. But this much is undeniable: Donald J. Trump is the Enlightenment’s bastard son.

Splendid stuff. That's the way to wrap your bigotry, in a word salad of pretentious bile ...

And so to Killer, and after the hole in bucket man's splendid effort, the pond must confess to being disappointed...

The header: Why more pollies in federal parliament just makes sense; There’s been no significant increase in federal parliamentarians since 1984, despite a near doubling of the population.

The caption for a snap of a den of iniquity: Anthony Albanese during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The pond will always pay attention to Killer, but the heady days of Covid, masks, vaccines and such like are long gone, and this was contrarianism pushed to a stupefying level of dullness ...

When the Institute of Public Affairs and the left-wing Australia Institute agree on a policy, it’s likely a meritorious one that deserves consideration.
It’s a reminder of how broken our political system has become when a proposal to increase the number of members of federal parliament was killed off by the Prime Minister late last month after the Coalition dared the government to publicly support it.
Sensible people in the Labor and Liberal parties have supported an increase, as the number of voters per federal seat – almost 121,000 – has become absurdly large, making a mockery of the idea that MPs share a deep connection with constituents. There’s been no significant increase in federal parliamentarians since 1984, despite a near doubling of the population.
Then Liberal MP James Stevens in 2024 asked the Parliamentary Budget Office to cost an increase of 24 new MPs and 16 senators. Labor minister Don Farrell has been promoting a similar change too.
Representation isn’t the only argument in favour of change. Committees with odd numbers of members are logically able to produce clear majorities, yet our half-Senate elections make only six Senate spots available in every state (and four for the territories).
Whatever the trials and tribulations of individual parties, those of the right and left in Australia enjoy the support of about half the electorate, which tends to produce impotent 3-3 voting blocs. Half-Senate elections of seven or nine senators per state would make the upper house more likely to produce ideological majorities – and more quickly.
Significantly more members and senators would help transform the parliament from a costly rubber stamp for the government into what it was meant to be: a check on power and a forum for a genuine exchange of ideas.

The pond supposes it should quibble. 

Why is the Australian Institute dubbed "lefty", while Killer avoids describing the Institute of Public Affairs as an extreme far right organisation in the grip of big tobacco, big mining, and anything else big enough to keep paying their wages?

Is there anything worse than Killer trying to sound normal, mounting staid, tedious arguments for more pollies? 

Even the distracting snaps are incredibly dull: Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer speaking during the weekly session of Prime Minister's Questions. Picture: House of Commons / AFP.

Perhaps Killer means well, but the pond would much rather be off with Melania ...

Section 65 of the Constitution mandates that the number of ministers “should not exceed seven in number … until the parliament otherwise provides”.
It’s a great shame that second part was included, because the number of ministers and hangers-on dependent on government largesse has exploded, ensuring no backbencher dares criticise the government for fear of ruling out a potentially lucrative promotion.
While our question time has become a stage-managed joke, in the UK’s 650-member House of Commons MPs in the cheap seats routinely rise to slam senior members of their own party – the ratio of ministers to backbench MPs is tiny.
Meanwhile, in Canberra, the ratio is ludicrously large. In 2019, for instance, I wrote a column that pointed out how 96 of the 104 Coalition members of the federal parliament were ministers, former ministers, committee chairs or deputy chairs, or holders of some other parliamentary ­office that bumped up their salary.
Comically, more than 40 per cent of Coalition MPs were ministers given the Morrison government’s previous slim election victory.
Angus Taylor warned that expanding the parliament would cost $620m including all associated staff and travel costs. But that was over eight years, and amounts to a farcically small share of the $786bn the federal government plans to spend this financial year alone.
The National and Liberal parties apparently didn’t think to make their support for any increase strictly conditional on permanent budget savings, a move that doesn’t inspire confidence in their ability to slash the budget by far more than a relatively paltry $78m a year.
Educated proponents of the prevailing number of seats might well quote the great conservative writer Edmund Burke, who famously told voters in the late 18th century in Bristol that their representative in London “owed you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion”.
Naturally, members of parliament should think for themselves and be prepared to persuade their constituents of what he or she believes to be right. But surely Burke assumed MPs would at least know what their constituents’ views were to begin with.

How dull could the distractions get? Why, it's ancient history time ... Canada’s former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Picture: Chris Wattie / Reuters

The pond gets it.

It's incredibly bold and brave for Killer to push back against the likes of the beefy boofhead, or to mock the liar from the shire, but this faux attempt at peace-making is tedious as all get out ...

Rapid population growth in the cities relative to the regions has created numerous vast federal seats larger than most European nations, making it practically impossible, and even dangerous, for MPs to attempt to meet voters. Durack in Western Australia is larger than France and Spain combined.
Moreover, as urban seats become larger and larger, they necessarily become more similar to each other, neutering the whole point of a Westminster system that is meant to give different regions and suburbs a unique voice.
The modest increase currently on the table would still leave the federal parliament critically smaller than its peers. Canada’s federal lower house includes 341 members, for instance, while New Zealand’s has around 30,000 voters per member.
Perhaps fearful of the direct financial impact of One Nation’s rise, the two major parties recently got together to legislate a massive increase in their claim on the public purse. Soon the per vote taxpayer-funded subsidy of political parties will jump from around $3.50 to $5, the biggest increase ever.
The IPA and the Australia Institute probably would not agree on that outrageous gouge. If only the two parties had chosen instead to conspire on something that would both benefit them as well as the voting public.
Alas, for now that seems too much to ask.
Adam Creighton is chief economist at the Institute of Public Affairs.

Quick, back to scribbling about masks, vaccines, and the ways to score a FIFA peace prize...

As for the rest, the reptiles over on the extreme far right were focussed on that upcoming trial.

The meretricious Merritt was busy with his usual serve of FUD.

Why Ben Roberts-Smith may be denied a fair trial
This country needs to come to terms with the fact that there is a real risk that Ben Roberts-Smith will not be given a fair trial.
By Chris Merritt
Legal Affairs Contributor

The pond was forced to send this to the intermittent archive, always a dodgy thing to do.

It was barely working this morning, but at least a teaser trailer would show the cut of his jib and give correspondents the chance to think about whether they really needed to read the rest of the FUD ...

Yeah, yeah, FUD ...

The pond had to toss the rest ofthe meretricious Merritt FUD into the void to make room for the craven Craven.

Not that there's anything interesting to read in the outing, save that it's a chance to see the craven Craven sailing against the meretricious tide ... and just like Killer, the craven Craven will always find a home in the pond, no matter how tedious or righteous he manages to sound ...

Say what? Jail the meretricious Merritt for contempt of court?

Well if being a baying commentator is the crime, then he's guilty as hell.

After those opening flourishes - surely the reference to Charles I keeps the spirit of Our Henry alive? - the craven Craven began to sound righteous in a most un-reptile way ...

....Fundamentally, he cannot be found guilty unless a rigorously selected jury finds him so beyond reasonable doubt. This is the appropriately high bar for the punishment of any Australian citizen, particularly on charges as dreadful as these.
So the rule of law both holds Roberts-Smith to account – and protects him. He is bound by the law, but cannot be convicted without due process against a prodigious standard of proof, before a rigorously selected jury.
This is what his extra-legal supporters have to understand. You cannot have one without the other. If you ditch the law of criminal responsibility, you necessarily ditch the corresponding principle of the presumption of innocence. Of course, rule of law is pretty easy when you are dealing with common burglary or embezzlement. But put it in the context of a national hero fighting a dirty war against treacherous opponents and fault lines emerge.
Add to this a large evidential cast of fellow soldiers, friends, detractors and even potentially actual Afghan enemies and you have a legal witch’s brew.
Then stir in the evidence and outcomes of Roberts-Smith’s utterly ill-advised defamation action to produce a quagmire of confusion. In principle, these civil outcomes should not affect the criminal trial, but they will identify plenty of bushes for the prosecution to look under. Certainly, they will influence public opinion.
There is a natural temptation – even a commonsense intuition – to assess the alleged actions of Roberts-Smith exclusively in the context of the Afghan War. What are you meant to do when everyone is a potential armed enemy?
There also is the siren’s song of rampant pragmatism. How can we expect Australians to enlist as soldiers for horrific wars if they know they’ll be legally abandoned at the first sustained legal volley?
These arguments have been put forward by my friend, Tony Abbott, and my very much non-friend, Pauline Hanson. But they are wrong, both in terms of the legal process and legal principle.

What was in the water this day? Killer calling for more pollies, the craven Craven renouncing the onion muncher?

Luckily the reptiles blurred this snap so the pond didn't have the foggiest idea who it was ... Ben Roberts-Smith arrested at Sydney Airport over alleged war crimes. Picture: Australian Federal Police

Perhaps a snap featuring tatts would have helped ...

Extraordinary hidden meaning of Ben Roberts-Smith's 'Crusader' tattoos - as he removes one forever

The pond took the chance to provide a little balance to Our Henry's wise words ...

On his right side, there is a Spartan helmet emblazoned across his ribcage, in a nod to the fearsome warriors of Ancient Greece...
...The father of twin girls also has a Jerusalem Cross across the right side of his chest, with what appears to be a knight on a horse inset into the centre of the motif.
The Jerusalem Cross is also known as the Crusader's Cross.
The cross is rooted in the Crusades of 1095-1291, when European Christians fought Muslims for control of Jerusalem, which Muslims ultimately won.
Donald Trump's US Secretary of War and ex-Fox News host Pete Hegseth also sports a Crusader's Cross tattoo over his heart.
The former National Guard member claims he was pulled from duty on the day of Joe Biden's 2021 presidential inauguration because his cross tattoo 'unfairly' identified him as an extremist.
The Crusader's Cross can also be seen on the national flag of Georgia.
Above Roberts-Smith's cross are the words 'I shall never fail my brothers', written in cursive script...
...On left side of the soldiers's body, there is a small cross with a loop at the top, visible underneath the start of his intricate dragon sleeve.
The crucifix-like image is an Ankh, or the ancient Egyptian 'key of life' symbol.
Inside Roberts-Smith's left-arm sleeve, along his inner forearm, are the Latin words Decus Prosapia Tellus, roughly translated as 'Glory/honour of the family's land'.

And so on, and now back to the craven Craven ...

On process, now is not the time to be ventilating material that either hurts or harms Roberts-Smith. It is indispensable to a fair trial that no jury be potentially contaminated by speculation or contumely. Anybody who tries it will be guilty of contempt.
This applies particularly to investigative journalists inclined to bask publicly in their triumph. A prison cell is a cold place to receive a Walkley. As a matter of principle, the presumption of innocence requires trial by law, not media. Evidence is to be formally sifted and tested, not advanced by irrefutable innuendo.
But these cannot be used as arguments that Roberts-Smith should be “let off” because he is a war hero, was in a rotten war, faced a corrupt and deceptive foe or simply had no choice in the matter.
We should remember that the situation alleged did not actually amount to an impossible choice, as sometimes happens in war. Roberts-Smith and his men did not face certain death – or even capture – without a field execution. The survival of a plausible enemy in their vicinity certainly elevated risk in an already dire situation of a small group of men stuck in hostile territory against a background of almost unimaginable stress.
But the fundamental question is stark. Are we really Nazis or Stalinist commissars who see death as a transactional calculation? Do we believe the killing of ostensibly unarmed prisoners is merely a question of circumstance, to be argued away by what our legal system traditionally has referred to as “necessity, the devil’s plea”.
There are philosophers who have argued the point. But no philosophical formula can ever argue away the proposition of common human decency that even a besieged soldier cannot kill outside actual, deadly combat.

In a rotten war?

Dear sweet long absent lord, the pond's world is falling apart, what a relief that the reptiles offered a couple of snaps of genuine heroes ... Senator Pauline Hanson. Senator Pauline Hanson. Former prime minister Tony Abbott.

And so the final gobbet ...

Ironically, this is a pungent expression of the same basic value that must protect Roberts-Smith. Just as an enemy operative cannot be slaughtered as a matter of calculated tactical advantage, neither can an accused Australian soldier be locked up for the edification of hostile journalists or army-hating progressives.
In these sorts of awful matters, there is indeed a point at which the pressures of surrounding horror, uncertainty and homicidal hostility become relevant. But hard as it is to say, that is at the point of sentencing and punishment, not trial.
If we accept that Australian soldiers can execute as well as kill, we can have no argument against our enemies doing the same to us. Moral equivalence cuts both ways.
I have no idea what I would do if I were trapped in a hostile country with every stone, tree and person an enemy. Probably, I would hide under a rock or run screaming away, coward that I am.
But admiration for the brave can never excuse atrocity. Otherwise, the difference between us and the war criminals of WWII is merely one of great degree, not difference.
Greg Craven is a former vice- chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.

He even invoked the Nuremberg clause?!

Is it time for the ICC to make a move, because clearly senility, dementia, sundowning or infancy is no defence ...

And so to a brief mention of some thoughts that could be found in Anne Applebaum's latest open letter...

As the onion muncher has been mentioned, it's worth remembering that he has been a lickspittle fellow traveller,  a worshipper at the feet of Orbán ...

...The re-election of Orbán would be bad for Hungarians and bad for Europe. Inside the EU, Orbán functions as a Russian puppet, blocking European aid to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia. In telephone conversations with the Russian president, leaked to Bloomberg, the Hungarian prime minister can be heard telling the Russian president that he is a “mouse” to Putin’s “lion.” The Hungarian foreign minister also makes regular calls to his Russian counterpart after EU meetings. Given that Russian missiles are still killing Ukrainians every day, that Russian cyberattacks and sabotage continue to destablize Europe and that Russian propaganda still seeks to undermine European democracies, Vance’s mere presence in Budapest was deeply offensive to millions of Europeans.
It was also very strange. Vance, while interfering in Hungary’s election, baselessly condemned the EU for allegedly interfering in Hungary’s election. He talked about “faceless bureaucrats” from Brussels, a phrase borrowed from British politics that illustrates real ignorance. Important decisions in Brussels are taken by the political leaders of the 27 member states. During his speech, which you can watch here, Vance also peddled a myth that Hungary is under threat from “a small band of radicals” who hate Western civilization. But Peter Magyar, leader of Tisza, the large Hungarian opposition party, waves Hungarian flags and used to be a member of Orbán’s own party. Tisza is not some kind of revolutionary Marxist cell.
In truth, Vance knows little or nothing about the country he is visiting, and in this sense he resembles Trump. Like Trump, Vance is using American foreign policy for personal self-promotion. He knows that Orbán has symbolic importance to the autocratic far-right, especially in the US. Project 2025 was heavily influenced by the Hungarian example, as was the Trump administration’s assault on American universities. By paying homage to Europe’s leading autocratic populist, Vance is symbolically supporting those American projects. He has no more interest in the people of Hungary, their prosperity and well-being, than Trump has in the people of Iran. If he did, he would not be there at all.

Well yes, and now this is just to troll Our Henry ...

In which the bromancer and Joe are gloomy, but the Lynch mob arrives in the nick of time to save the day ...

On the downside, every so often the pond looks outside the incestuous hive mind of the lizard Oz, and discovers there are even worse possibilities out there ...

No, Iran Isn’t Winning the War aka The Iranian Advantage Is an Illusion (*archive link, no guarantee it's working)

Bret Stephens is a doofus of the first water, and therefore in the perfect position to serve as an NY Times columnist ... the rag always has both siderist needs, and Stephens offers the side that's all in on stupidity.

The target for this particular set of insights, and the existential despair they should be feeling, the loss of comfort they're suffering?

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a gifted midcareer intelligence officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

But only imagine that if you can fit it into the complacent mindset of a triumphalist American scribbler ...

Right now, there’s no telling what will happen. But as you survey where Iran stands now compared with where it stood just three years ago, you are overwhelmed with a sense of loss. Your once-powerful proxies in Gaza, Beirut, Damascus: decimated, deposed or dead. The Arab states: increasingly on side with the Americans and Zionists. Your nuclear program: set back for years or decades, if not forever. Your economy: in even deeper crisis than it was before the war, with no turnaround in sight. Your most capable leaders: dead. Your own people: waiting for the war and the state of emergency to end so they can rise against you again.
It’s a solace of sorts that sophisticated Western commentators think you’re winning this thing. From wherever you are now hiding — since it’s not safe to go to work — it doesn’t feel that way.

This is a man ostensibly writing informed commentary for one of the United States' alleged great newspapers.

Yet somehow his take got old really quick.

As any number of Stephens' readers pointed out - why they subscribe remains a mystery - the Iranian regime's main aim was to survive the war intact. Anything else would be a bonus. They never had a chance to win militarily, but if they get sanctions lifted and get to impose an excise tax on tankers, they'll have an unexpected form of revenue.

Stephens offers the sort of stupidity that allows some Americans to still go around boasting about the many ways they won the 'Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars ...

For a moment it almost seemed like he got intimations of his own stupidity:

For all the damage the United States and Israel have inflicted on Iran’s leadership ranks and war-making capabilities, the regime remains intact, unbowed, functional. There has been no mass uprising, thanks to the brutal crackdown that followed protests in early January. Closing the Strait of Hormuz, which required minimal military effort by Iran, has exercised maximum leverage over the global economy while boosting your oil revenues. The war is even more unpopular in the United States today than it was at the start; it is also causing more Americans to rethink the wisdom of their reflexive support for Israel. President Trump’s expletive-laden social media posts increasingly sound more desperate than they do fierce. And the I.R.G.C. is more powerful than ever.
One insight, repeatedly cited by Western pundits as evidence that Iran has the upper hand in the current war, has led you to its source, a 1969 critique of U.S. policy in Vietnam from none other than Henry Kissinger.
“We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process, we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: The guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win.”
This should bring you comfort. It doesn’t.

Imagine you're a completely whacked out opinion columnist for the NY Times, so clueless they can't even take on war criminal Henry's advice 

Meanwhile, over in that other place which the pond rarely visits...

Why Trump may have changed the world’s oil markets forever (*archive link)
Stephen Bartholomeusz
Senior business columnist

Inter alia ...

...Iran’s response to the war has been to attack US allies in the region, damaging their energy infrastructure in retaliation for the devastation the US and Israel have wrought. That damage, and production in the region that has been shut in because the oil couldn’t be shipped, will take time to be restored.
Qatar’s massive Ras Laffan LNG facility has for instance, suffered significant damage that it says will take two to five years to be repaired. In the meantime, Qatar, which supplies about 20 per cent of the world’s LNG, has lost about 17 per cent of its LNG capacity.
That, like the spike in WTI prices, is good for US shale oil and gas producers, but not so good for US domestic gas consumers– or companies and consumers elsewhere in the world.
It is, of course, conceivable that the ceasefire doesn’t hold and Iran closes the strait again. In any event, the world of oil will never be the same again because Iran has done what it has threatened but never done before and demonstrated its ability to take out a material chunk of the world’s oil supply.
The premium at which WTI traded over Brent could easily become a permanent feature of the market, with oil industry customers, having experienced a deliverability crisis, looking for the security of sourcing their supplies from places other than the now even more volatile Middle East.
Trump, thanks to a war he started, but has yet to provide a coherent rationale for, may have structurally increased, not just global oil prices but US domestic energy prices, raising inflation rates and lowering global and US economic growth rates in the process.

But enough Tootling off the rails and wandering into forbidden pastures. 

It's a matter of national and professional pride to make sure a reptile at the lizard Oz can match Stephens' rampant idiocy ... and look who turned up at the bottom of the "news" early this morning ...

The bromancer!

How could the pond turn away the bromancer, especially as he's always been inclined to the triumphalism of a Stephens?

The proud warrior has always been up for a war with China, preferably by Xmas, and is always willing to contemplate bunging on a do, what with war just being a natural extension of politics.

Uh oh ...

The header: Scepticism aside, it’s difficult to see a strategic triumph here for the West; Iran may gain control of the Strait of Hormuz and charge ships $US2m tolls under Donald Trump’s ceasefire deal, despite his claims of achieving ‘total victory’ against Tehran.

The caption for the snap of the mad King: US President Donald Trump has agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran. Picture: AFP

The bromancer sounded surprisingly gloomy. 

Has his Weltanschauung taken a turn for the worse?:

If the two-week ceasefire announced by Donald Trump means Iran gains effective control of the Strait of Hormuz, that’s a significant strategic win for Iran, and a tremendous setback for the US, its allies and, in the long run, the global economy.
At first blush, this looks like a good deal for Iran.
Of course it’s impossible to know at this stage how the ceasefire will actually play out because the deal Trump describes, and the deal the Iranian government describes, seem to inhabit wholly different universes.
Trump says the US has won “a total victory, no question”. Iran says it has comprehensively defeated the US and that’s why it’s willing to talk.
One disturbing element is that Trump has said the ceasefire came about because Iran submitted a 10-point plant that is a “workable basis” for negotiation.
Trump didn’t release this
10-point plan. (sic)
Iran did release a version, and it’s full of provisions the Americans couldn’t possibly agree to, such as the withdrawal of all US troops from the region, acceptance of Iran’s uranium enrichment program and payment of reparations to Iran for its war damage.
No one in Iran thinks any of that could ever happen. In the best light, those are just declaratory negotiating positions, but Iranian foreign ministry and national security statements say ships will travel through the Strait of Hormuz under the supervision of the Iranian military.

Even worse, the bromancer talked with petulant Peta and remained resolutely gloomy ... The Australian Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan says if the Iranians control the Strait of Hormuz, they have “won an enormous victory”. “They have withstood the worst that Trump can give, and they haven’t buckled,” Mr Sheridan told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “The Islamic Revolutionary Guard is still in control in Iran. “That is a big victory.”

Despite his desire to disclaim scepticism, the bromancer found a little scepticism went a long way ...

There are widespread inter­national reports that Iran expects to levy a toll, putatively of $US2m a ship, for container vessels passing through the Strait. If the Iranians are bluffing and in fact plan to let ships through unhindered, without any toll, Trump has secured a reasonable deal. Even if the US doesn’t get the 400kg of uranium enriched to 60 per cent, Trump can claim he’s degraded Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities, as he said he would, and re-established free movement through the Strait of Hormuz.
If the Iranians get to charge a toll, they’ve had a huge victory.
We should know what’s happening on that fairly soon.
Trump’s people have briefed the US media that Iran has agreed to give up all its nuclear enrichment activities, including the enriched uranium, agreed to allow fully and free passage through the Strait of Hormuz and so on.
It is not evidence of Trump Derangement Syndrome to treat these claims with extreme caution, if not outright scepticism. During his first term, Trump declared he’d solved the problem of North Korea’s nuclear weapons, that Kim Jong-un had agreed to denuclearise.
That was just flat-out wrong and Pyongyang has continued enlarging its nuclear weapons arsenal and long range missiles.
More recently, Trump announced a detailed peace “agreement” for the Gaza Strip, including Hamas voluntarily disarming, the establishment of a technocratic government for Gaza, a new police force, inter­national peacekeepers and much else.
Almost nothing of that has come to pass.

The reptiles were so desperate to cheer up the bromancer that they flung in a serve of the Bolter ... Sky News host Andrew Bolt discusses the US and Iran agreeing to a two-week ceasefire, which has led to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. “Well, shock and surprise, there’s a ceasefire in the Iran war, after just five weeks. Both the US and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire while they talk peace. And the Strait of Hormuz is meanwhile open to oil tankers again,” Mr Bolt said. “Fact is, this ceasefire puts the lie to so much of what you were told by Trump-hating journalists, and politicians, and activists, and assorted experts. Remember how you were told this would be the forever war, how this was a quagmire, how it was Trump’s Vietnam War, with Trump having no plan or offramp, all those predictions which have now been proved wrong.”

There, exactly the sort of triumphalism designed to put the bromancer in a cheery mood - victory is ours Mein Herr... but for some reason the bromancer remained perversely, obstinately in a depressive state.

Was it that heart attack that made him aware of the fragilities of life?

So far, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps remains in control within Iran, the enriched uranium hasn’t been handed over, Tehran has maintained missile and drone attacks on Israel and Gulf Arab states, it’s getting strong support from China and Russia, it’s making more money from its own oil exports than it did before the war began and it may keep control of the Strait of Hormuz.
So while Iran has sustained severe damage, it’s difficult to see a strategic triumph for the West.
Trump has damaged the US ­alliance structure. A more considered president would have brought US allies with him, at least in some measure.
Trump’s rhetoric has been self-contradictory and increasingly verbally bizarre. Apart from the juvenile scatological references, he threatened that “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”, presumably by sustained strategic bombing of Iran.
This follows earlier threats to bomb desalination plants.

Quick, a serve of the dog botherer boasting of significant wins. 

That should fix up the bromancer ... Sky News host Chris Kenny gives his opinion on the Iran ceasefire. “The ceasefire is due to last two weeks while a permanent settlement is negotiated. Iran has undertaken to open the Strait of Hormuz to shipping,” Mr Kenny said. “So, all in all, with much left to unfold, it appears to be a significant win for Trump and for Middle East security, and the global economy. “We are all used to Trump's wild rhetoric, and we all knew he was attempting to threaten Iran into accepting a deal, but still, the words used by the President, the leader of the free world, yesterday, well, they were shocking.”

Nothing worked, as the bromancer stayed mired in the gloomy mud ...

These comments were widely condemned, including by many who usually support Washington.
Anthony Albanese was right to describe them as “inappropriate”. The Prime Minister joined Nat­ionals’ leader Matt Canavan and Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie in condemning Trump’s language.
It’s right for political leaders to be careful to avoid needlessly provoking Trump but they are obliged to deal with reality.
Australia is one of the most pro-American countries, yet polls show more than 70 per cent of Australians believe Trump has handled the war badly. A majority of Americans concur.
Previous presidents understood the need to gain public support, at home and among allied countries. Apart from Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, any allied leader who backs Trump now does so in the face of settled hostility from their own publics.
It’s good that the fighting in Iran has stopped for the moment. But this whole saga still has a long way to run.

Come on bro, it's a new age ... rediscover your inner Cro-Magnon man...

And now for a quick survey of what's lurking in the lizard Oz outside the war in coverage.

Luckily the intermittent archive was working - no guarantee it still is - and that allowed the pond to send off a number of reptiles to that swamp-infested land.

State Liberals’ biggest woe? Their own president Phil Davis
Criticism of Victorian Liberal leadership highlights deeper tensions over strategy, identity and voter drift to One Nation.
By Peta Credlin

The pond usually avoids petulant Peta, and this day it was a good thing, what with it being a bout of navel gazing about Vic Liberals, compleat with the notion that bigoted transphobe Moira Deeming was the way forward.

The pond also had no time for this attempt to lather up EV fear ...

EVs could power the grid — but at what cost to owners?
Electric vehicles promise cheaper, cleaner energy and grid support, but hidden costs and unanswered legal questions pose risks.
By Mark Le Grand

It was a pile of alarmist, hysterical tosh, and the pond had to wander down to the credit to work out why ... Mark Le Grand has served for five decades in the law and with various law enforcement bodies.

Arrest those vehicles, seize that grid, come out with your hands up.

The pond also gave this short shrift ...

Ditching ACON first step in reclaiming truth over ideology
After ending funding for ACON’s Pride in Diversity, the ABC faces scrutiny over media coverage and ideological influence on reporting.
By Sall Grover

Again the credit gave the game away ...

Sall Grover is the founder of Giggle, a women-only social app, and is a women’s rights advocate.

The pond knows what that code means .. and couldn't even raise a chuckle.

The pond also had to send away Yoni, grinding out a different brand of hysteria, fear and panic ...

Why the Taiwan Strait could eclipse the Middle East crisis
Could China deploy Iran’s playbook in the Taiwan Strait? A new report warns the consequences would be catastrophic, especially for Australia.
By Yoni Bashan
North Asia Correspondent

The pond could at least allow this Yoni a teaser trailer ...

Not content with one disaster?

Imagine another ... but don't worry Yoni, the pond is sure the bromancer will start feeling his oats again, and be up for that war with China by Xmas.

Then it was back to the war with a lesser member of the Kelly gang...

Back from the brink into fragile uncertainty
The Strait of Hormuz is reopening and markets are cheering. But the Iranian regime is unbroken and its list of demands maximalist.
By Joe Kelly
Washington correspondent

While the pond found a home for Joe at the intermittent archive, the pond found his gloom piquant, down there with the bromancer's, and so worthy of proper treatment ...

Joe was as determined as the bromancer to be gloomy ...

...Yes, Trump has avoided a dangerous escalation in the war and the globe has dodged an economic catastrophe and humanitarian crisis in the Middle East but the hardest part is to come. And Trump has incurred a high cost to arrive at this point.
His threats to kill off Iranian civilisation were shocking public remarks unbefitting a US president. They will be remembered as a symbol of the changed character of American leadership in the world.
A large grouping of Democrats have used the threat to call for the removal of Trump from office; the MAGA base has fractured.
Trump has also alienated America’s closest allies and taken NATO to breaking point.
Key Iranian figures are already framing the shift towards diplomacy as a major victory.
On Monday, the US President said the Iranian plan was “not good enough”. But as his 8pm deadline shifted closer into view on Tuesday, he seized on it as an opportunity after the intervention by Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
Iran’s push for a new protocol in the Strait allowing the regime to charge ships up to $2m for safe passage must not be accepted.
It would accede to Iranian extortion in the Strait and see the regime emerge in a stronger financial position with a valuable revenue stream worth billions of dollars each month.
A strong argument can be made that this is a far worse outcome than what existed before the war.
Trump will also need to impose restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program if he is to convince Americans the intervention was worth it.
Preventing Tehran from obtaining a nuclear bomb has become the central justification for and objective of the military campaign.
It is hard to see how Washington and Tehran can bridge their differences on these issues, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has consistently played down the likelihood of progress being made through diplomacy.
Both sides are now back to where they were before Trump launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28 – the negotiating table.
The progress of talks over the next two weeks will determine how Operation Epic Fury will be seen.
At this stage, there can be no certainty the final outcome will leave the US – and its allies – any better off.

Sheesh, but all our wars have gone incredibly well, and shown how good it is to be manly in battle ...

The pond was determined to lift the reptile spirits, and then a miracle happened. 

The Lynch mob came along to set things right ...

The header: If Iran is not our foe, then what’s the point in having enemies? Too much of the global left want Iran to represent some brave resistance to Western imperialism.

The caption for the lickspittle surrender monkey who lacks the Lynch mob's spine: A demonstrator holds a sign during a protest against US military action in Iran in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Picture: Charly Triballeau / AFP

Huzzah, and in due course the pond will be able to demonstrate that it can match King Donald at doing a weave.

But first please allow the Lynch mob to contemplate the joys of nuking those bloody Islamics ...

On July 16, 1945, president Harry Truman learned of the first successful explosion of a nuclear bomb. Nine days later, he authorised its use against Japan. On August 6, that attack took place. A second followed three days later.
The decision to use the A-bomb was not a vexed one. Instead, how to use it consumed the president and his advisers. It was only after Japan’s surrender that Truman wrestled with the ethical implications. The “thought of wiping out another 100,000 people is horrible”, he said. “Killing all those kids” repelled him. “You have got to understand that this is not a military weapon … It is used to wipe out women and children and unarmed people, and not for military uses.”
Donald Trump’s moral struggle over means and ends probably doesn’t match Truman’s. There is nothing in the Democrat’s rhetoric to suggest he wanted to end Japanese civilisation. Indeed, he began its rebuilding. But, like him, the incumbent President has relied on hard power against civilians to force his opponents’ capitulation.
OK, we have a ceasefire with Iran’s depleted leaders rather than their total surrender. But we would be historically myopic not to see how the threat of destruction has resulted in behaviour modification. We would need a deep cynicism to not discern a better future for all those afflicted by Iranian power.

At this point the reptiles flung in snaps of two presidential giants ... President Donald Trump; President Harry Truman

The Lynch mob was all in on history lessons, what with breathtaking comparisons between a world war and a regional carry on ...

Nuke 'em, nuke 'em all, the long, the short and the tall...

Neither Imperial Japan nor Islamist Iran prioritised civilians in their warmaking. Both displayed a criminal disregard for the lives of their citizens. No democracy could countenance losing so many in pursuit of its survival.
In the history of war there is no perfect analogy. Scholars of the Cold War will recoil at a favourable comparison between Truman and Trump. But I think the Iran war is replete with similarities.
An uncouth Trump and pious Truman does not render the 33rd president superior to the 45 and 47th in his transformational power. Indeed, Trump’s war (even if this ceasefire doesn’t hold) almost certainly will not entail the slaughter of Truman’s.
I understand why Trump’s rhetoric has confirmed for many his unfitness for the office he holds. But speaking coarsely while carrying a little stick has resulted in the severe weakening of Iran’s power.
Trump has set back the cause of Iran’s sharia supremacy – the constitutional principle that Islamic law (sharia) has ultimate authority over all state laws, institutions and political decisions in the Islamic Republic. He did this while fighting a war with the goodwill of more Arab allies than any in US history. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pushed Trump to make war with Iran, framing the US-Israeli offensive as a “historic opportunity” to reshape the region.
International lawyers have complained at the death of Iranian civilians. We should mourn the loss of innocent lives in any war. But Trump’s violence has killed a fraction of those killed by the regime’s own security forces – more than 40,000 by some estimates.

Dammit, kill all the innocents, it's the only way forward. (And maybe borrow Pontius Pilate's bowl of water and towel, for the washing and wiping of hands thereof)

Then the reptiles had to produce a downer in the form of Rita, lovely meter maid ... Centre of the American Experiment President John Hinderaker says the US “can’t trust” any agreement with Iran. Mr Hinderaker told Sky News host Rita Panahi Iran will “promise,” which cannot be trusted. “They might promise not to seek nuclear weapons or to stop supporting terrorism, but as long as the regime remains in place, they’re going to abandon those promises as soon as they are able.”

Trust the mad mullahs?

Nah, but it goes without saying that everyone can absolutely trust every word that comes out of King Donald's mouth ...has there ever been a more consummate and convincing con artist?

Crusader Lynch mob carried on with his crusading ..

Trump has made a 47-year experiment in theocratic repression seem temporary, toppleable. No amount of UN resolutions and Obama-Biden nuclear deals had this effect. The loss of US military lives in pursuit of this transformational objective – a Middle East denuded of its chief terrorist exporter – is tiny. A Ballarat tradie who needs cheaper diesel may demure. I do feel his pain and have seen my superannuation fall. But, again, what price was worth paying to hasten the demise of Ali Khamenei?
Trump chose a nemesis that surely meets every definition of just war. Khamenei made misogyny basic to his rule. His regime denied homosexuality existed, while murdering more than 5000 gay men. His HHH axis – made up of Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis – targeted civilians in Israel and across the Gulf. Hamas made rape a weapon of war.
If the Iranian regime is not our enemy, we are no longer capable of having an enemy. Too much of the global left want Iran to represent some brave resistance to Western imperialism. The mullahs are not that. Rather than Che Guevara-style guerrillas, these theocrats have controlled for nearly a half-century a state of ancient lineage, to minimal strategic or ideological gain. Their co-religionists deplore them. The Great and Little Satan have combined to assassinate their supreme leader.

Um, so theocracy is the issue?

How about Israel?

If madness while in possession of nukes is a problem, when do we launch a war on North Korea?

The reptiles interrupted with another snap designed to agitate the Lynch mob ... A demonstrator holds a picture of Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei in Tehran. Picture: Francisco Seco / AP Photo

And this is where the pond can show the power of the weave ...

The regime’s own bureaucrats, who keep the wheels of the state turning, are surely questioning the wisdom of their political leaders. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps promised to safeguard a proud, nuclear-armed Iran. Instead, Trump has made them the organisers of human shields.
Bret Stephens at The New York Times imagined what lower-level officials in Tehran and Mashhad must be thinking: “Your economy: in even deeper crisis than it was before the war, with no turnaround in sight. Your most capable leaders: dead. Your own people: waiting for the war and the state of emergency to end so they can rise against you again.”

You see? 

There was the monstrous stupidity and triumphalism of Stephens replicated by the Lynch mob.

The reptiles can produce commentary as dumb as a stick, and  more than a match for anything as silly as that emanating from Stephens of the NY Times...

Trump failed to predict, let alone pre-empt, Iranian shenanigans in the Strait of Hormuz. Voters will punish him in the November midterms. I do wonder, however, if history will record a more enduring turning point, one that matches the collapse of Imperial Japan in global significance: the ending of a failed experiment in political Islam and the building of a better Middle East.
The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the rebirth of Japan. That enemy went on to become one of the freest, wealthiest and closest allies America has ever enjoyed. This was the inauspicious but necessary beginning of a regional transformation. Trump has started his own – at a fraction of the civilian lives lost.

Yes, nuke 'em, nuke 'em all, it's the only way forward to an enduring civilisation.

And so cheap in terms of lives lost. Bargain basement transformation.

Credit where credit is due, because the pond can never resist defaming the University of Melbourne's tattered reputation:

Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne.

The long absent lord help his students ...

And so to a footnote and a commendation, though Geoff really should have chambered a larger round ...

That's the best the reptiles could do in their attempt to inflate the tyres of the Canavan caravan?

So much winning.

Dark days indeed ...

And so to turn to the immortal Rowe for the closer ...

It's always in the details, and the pond did like these ...nice tatt ...

Could it get any weirder?

Of course it could ...JD Vance Confronted With Report the Pentagon Allegedly Threatened Vatican with Military Foce.

No couch or pope can feel safe ...

 

In which the swishing Switzer does some bog standard fossil fuel worship and Our Henry makes a non-canonical appearance ...

 

All - as a correspondent recently noted - is a sour mash of slop, feculence, and slime, not to mention sociopathy and war crimes - and amazing scenes where even Marge and gravel-voiced Alex are in a dither:

Oh yes ...

How are the reptiles coping with this Emeritus Chairman, Faux Noise production?

Well Dame Slap did the wise and sensible thing.

Ignore it all together, forget the night she donned her MAGA cap and walked out into the streets of New York in a state of ecstatic triumph, and return to the ancient and noble reptile sport of black bashing ...

Why aren’t Indigenous leaders demanding an audit?
We should never forget the bullet we dodged when this country rejected a constitutionally entrenched voice.
Janet Albrechtsen
Columnist

Moi don a MAGA cap? Can't remember, everything's hazy ...

Sadly the intermittent archive was in yet another of its funks, so the best the pond could do was offer a link in the hope that it might come in handy down the track

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Fwhy-arent-indigenous-leaders-demanding-an-audit%2Fnews-story%2F6a2c46c434abbd376aac5b034323c7bf?amp

The pond had to do the same for Jihad Jack, as Jack the Insider cheerfully joined in the current reptile jihad.

There are some who think that Jack is better than your average reptile, but he's just your average jihadist, happy to toil away in the belly of the beast.

Get hold of a keffiyeh. Make a big noise … and let the dollars roll in
Abdel-Fattah’s hypocrisy knows no bounds. From the comfort of academia, she fights against racism by fomenting a lot of it.
By Jack the Insider
Columnist

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Fget-hold-of-a-keffiyeh-make-a-big-noise-and-let-the-dollars-roll-in%2Fnews-story%2Ffd59ab5c355ac380825a8c6e613e77af?amp

Jack, doing a Boris, was just joining Natasha as she indulged in another bit a Bita bitterness ...

EXCLUSIVE
C-grade review yet ARC gave grant ‘OK’
Confidential documents reveal stark divisions among peer reviewers over anti-Israel activist Randa Abdel-Fattah’s $889,000 taxpayer-funded research grant.
By Natasha Bita

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/education%2Franda-abdelfattahs-889000-grant-awarded-by-arc-despite-cgrade-review-and-formal-warnings%2Fnews-story%2Fa391ec5a8f239b34be9a476e8bc78bb8?amp

None of them had any appeal to the pond. 

What a pity then that the intermittent archive spluttered and conked out, so that the pond couldn't personally send these efforts to that dank, dark cornfield.

But that left the pond with very little to do today.

It's already been established on the probabilities that BRS (as the reptiles call him) is a war criminal guilty of appalling war crimes, and the news that Pauline launched a fierce defence of him only made his guilt more plausible.

Marvel at the way that in the midst of King Donald acting as god and promising a genocide, the reptiles still found space to highlight not just BRS, but their current jihad ...

On the BRS matter, over on the extreme far right a soggy Rice attempted to do a little cooking to save the day...

War crimes prosecutors will face challenges convicting BRS
The VC recipient’s defamation case was an own goal, but war crimes prosecutors will have a much more challenging time proving their case beyond reasonable doubt.
By Stephen Rice
Sydney Bureau Chief

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary%2Fwar-crimes-prosecutors-will-face-challenges-convicting-ben-robertssmith%2Fnews-story%2F96fc1de3f4164781ea35c21bd4ffdaf8?amp

In the end, the pond settled for a standard serve of renewables bashing and climate science denialism, served up by the swishing Switzer, still on his never ending rehabilitation tour ...

The header: The era of climate policy consensus is dead. So why are we digging in? The Iran crisis has performed an unintended service: it has exposed, with brutal clarity, the folly of Australia’s energy policy.

The caption for Frank's inimitable effort, Anthony Albanese. Artwork by Frank Ling.

That image of Albo, emerging once again from the lizard Oz's antediluvian swamp, reminded the pond of previous Frank efforts...

Sure enough, it wasn't new and fresh, it was as stale as week-old reptile bread.

It had been recycled, no doubt to help save the planet...

Good old Lloydie of the Amazon, just the right company for the swishing Switzer.

Frank's unifying artwork spread far and wide, with another member of the Kelly gang also entranced ...

Haven't thought about Craig for yonks, but what a relief to see he's landed on his FEE feet ...

Oh wait, it's not that one, it's this mysterious one, see Crikey ...(paywall)

Sheesh, how did the pond end up there, amidst cranks and kooks?

Truth to tell, the pond just wanted to establish that the swishing Switzer and the lizard Oz hive mind were still keeping the right sort of company, and all thanks to Frank's incredible artwork.

As for the swishing Switzer offering, it was short weight, just three minutes, so the reptiles said...

Anthony Albanese is now our longest-serving prime minister since John Howard – long enough to own, in full, the consequences of his government’s policies. And as we now know, those consequences on energy are becoming impossible to ignore: Australia is exposed, vulnerable and paying the price for a government that prefers ideology to pragmatism.
For several years now, Canberra has layered intervention upon intervention: price caps, market controls, regulatory uncertainty and glacial approval processes for new projects. At the same time, Australia has failed to reinvigorate exploration for gas and oil and allowed domestic refining capacity to erode – with only two refineries now operational.
As this newspaper’s Chris Uhlmann has argued, energy is not just another commodity but the foundation of economic life and national security. Australia now sits at the end of long supply chains, reliant on imported liquid fuels to keep the economy functioning. With more than 90 per cent of our energy still derived from coal, oil and gas – and diesel the indispensable fuel of industry, transport agriculture and mining – any serious disruption was bound to bring the country to a standstill.

Here the pond should note that the reptiles, at the mention of his name, provided a link to the Ughmann ... and though it's already been featured in the pond, here's a reminder of the company the swishing Switzer likes to keep...

Enough of that, the Ughmann features regularly in the pond, as the swishing Switzer got down and dirty with the climate science denying dog botherer ... The Australian’s Columnist Tom Switzer says the US President Donald Trump has made a “monumental mistake” with his attack on Iran. Mr Switzer told Sky News host Chris Kenny that Donald Trump most likely assumes striking Iran would “be enough”. “To bring down the regime, he probably in hindsight, should’ve followed the advice of his America first instincts.”

There's nothing new to see here ...

To be sure, this predicament did not begin with the Albanese government. As far back as 2019, The Wall Street Journal captured the absurdity with a stark headline: “Australia, a Top Natural-Gas Exporter, Considers Imports to Stop Blackouts.”
A popular online parody of Albanese captures the same contradiction: an Australia that boasts of climate leadership while exporting vast quantities of coal and gas, importing refined energy at home, and relying on China to process the minerals it claims are strategic. The joke lands because it is so close to the truth.
But this is no longer a laughing matter. Against the backdrop of the Iran crisis and tightening global supply, our vulnerability is being exposed.
And the consequences are increasingly grave: disruptions to petrol supply, renewed inflationary pressure, higher interest rates, weak growth and rising business failures – all pointing to the spectre of stagflation.
A serious government would use this moment to reset policy – acknowledging that fossil fuels will remain central to Australia’s economy for decades and acting accordingly.

Uh huh, and so to a snap of the chief villain, Chris Bowen pictured speaking at a press conference outside his electorate office in Fairfield West. Picture: NewsWire

The pond didn't have the heart to interrupt the swishing Switzer with another tale of the planet going downhill fast...

That would require difficult but necessary decisions: opening new gas fields, encouraging oil exploration, revisiting refining capacity, removing barriers to investment and broadening the energy mix to include options such as nuclear power. It would also mean recognising that energy security is inseparable from national security, requiring greater investment in defence capability and industrial resilience.
The question, as Graham Lloyd recently put it, is whether this government is capable of such a shift. Albanese and Labor remain wedded to the belief that climate change represents such an overriding threat that the world will unite to phase out fossil fuels. And much of the mainstream media encourages the government: now is the moment, we are told, to accelerate moves to renewable energy.
But this is not how the world is behaving. Electricity demand is rising and emissions continue to hit record highs as fossil fuels remain the surest path out of poverty in the developing world.
Even in advanced economies, political resolve is weakening – as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has conceded, the consensus on climate policy has gone.
Yet Canberra persists with an approach that risks making energy more expensive and less reliable, with little measurable impact on global emissions. In doing so, it is not only placing pressure on living standards but also increasing our dependence on imported technologies and supply chains.

Yes, why do anything, when you can do nothing, or perhaps trot out a snap of Sir Keir, Keir Starmer speaks during a press conference at Downing Street. Picture: Getty Images

And that was pretty much it, with the swishing Switzer nobly battling the activist establishment ...

None of this is to deny that the Trump administration has created turmoil in the Persian Gulf, with consequences that are proving difficult to contain. The longer the Strait of Hormuz remains closed or the more damage is done to Middle Eastern oil infrastructure, the more the war will roil the global economy.
But the crisis has performed an unintended service: it has exposed, with brutal clarity, the folly of Australia’s own energy policy.
We are a country that could be far closer to energy self-sufficiency. Instead we have chosen dependence – on imports, on fragile supply chains and on the goodwill of others in a tightening world. The Coalition is right to reject Labor’s net-zero agenda. It now has an opportunity – and an obligation – to press the case relentlessly and unapologetically: for supply, for sovereignty and for a policy framework grounded in economic and strategic reality.
Such a course would be fiercely contested by Labor, the Greens and much of the activist establishment. But if the Coalition – alongside One Nation – is prepared to prosecute the argument, it may yet force a long-overdue reckoning and give Australia a fighting chance of securing our energy future and, with it, our economic potential and national security.

Oh yes, let Pauline and the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way get together and help destroy the planet.

Thanks for that astonishing insight and credit where credit is due ...

Tom Switzer is presenter of Switzerland, a podcast about politics, modern history and international relations.

Why does the pond feel like it's running on empty?

As a little coda, the lizard Oz editorialist was also out and about today, no doubt alarmed by news of the recent surge in EV sales figures...

Not a clue - EVs already do things better and at a lower cost for consumers and trust the pond, the Hume highway is a doddle except for those whale-killing windmills in the beefy boofhead's home turf - and luckily the infallible Pope was on hand to help out ...

The pond has been insufferable lately asking the extended family about how their infernal diesel machines are going.

And so to the bonus, and here a fierce dispute broke out in the pond's editorial offices.

Our Henry had made a rare mid-week appearance, but was it non-canonical?

There was much argument, but consider the Cambridge university dictionary definition ...

not part of a set of works or subjects that are generally agreed to be good, important, and worth studying:

• non-canonical texts can still be very influential.
• non-canonical book The Bible translators did not believe the Apocrypha were inspired, but translated these non-canonical books because of their historical significance.
• non-canonical literature The ruling party viewed noncanonical literature with suspicion.

For starters, how could this outing in the lizard Oz be good, important and worth studying? 

How could it be looked at without harbouring a deep suspicion?

The pond contended that the presence of Pincus made it non-canonical, and a fey reference to Pride and Prejudice proved this was not authentic 'hole in the bucket' man musings.

This wasn't the stuff of Our Henry's ponderous, portentous, pompous Friday outings.

Sure it was back in the days of the industrial revolution, but Darcy? Bingley? Why it was no better than chique chick lit. 

Accordingly it could be tossed off in a few screen grabs, because who would want to do a cut and paste, merely so that they could comment on Our Henry referencing Our Jane, as if he was some kind of brooding, introverted Matthew Macfadyen?

Even that distraction seemed non-canonical - Petey boy as the distraction?! - and the final gobbet was equally dismal, as it failed to mention Thucydides once!

The pond might have reconsidered if there'd been a reference to ancient Greece or Rome or the 300 Spartans or Xerxes, or even better, a medieval theologian or philosopher, but it was just a heap of blather about the dismal art. (Well you could hardly do a Carlyle and call it a dismal science)

That might appeal to some cultists, but only in a non-canonical way ...

Boring!

If only Our Henry had mouthed off some theological and philosophical platitudes, but that pesky Pincus got in the way. Vulgar youff will have to search for alternatives to lead them into the future.

And now, with the bromancer resting, it was left to the lizard Oz editorialist to deal with King Donald ...

His objectives in Iran remain estimable?

Apart from annihilating a civilisation, what exactly are those those objectives?

Never mind ... it's all going well ...

Weird times ...