In which the bromancer, a war mongering Liz, Mein Gott and Killer Creighton all jostle for attention amid the war fever ...

 

At last a feel good green energy/renewables story to start off the day, courtesy Politico (sorry, the intermittent archive is playing up this day)...

Just the thing to come in handy if there's an oil crisis!

But that chance to escape the miseries of the war was crushed when the reptiles turned up to play this day ...

Luckily the reptiles were right on it, and finally headlined a matter which should have been attended to earlier, without King Donald needing to claim the headline ...

It's all very odd, considering this MAGA man attracted the applause of the likes of Laura Loomer with this proposal ... (sorry, likely paywall, and the intermittent archive is currently down)

Talk about a warm glow and a sharing sense of caring for the sisterhood ...

Down below in the hive mind it was all war, war, war ...

Eek, not travel insurance! 

War is hell.

Over on the extreme far right, the bromancer led the way, but he was starting to wobble like a snowflake jellyfish  ...

The header: Iran’s defiant message turns heat back on Trump; The balance of risk in this whole operation is starting to move back to Trump. This odious regime has not run out of will power and self-belief.

The caption: Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, pictured during a protest marking the annual al-Quds Day on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Picture: Saeid Zareian / Getty Images.

Strange, the pond had thought the mad Mullahs would just flap around a bit, hold up white flags, and head off to the ICC to be tried for domestic crimes (if only King Donald recognised the ICC).

It seems that they might be a bit stubborn, but the bromancer did his best to sound all in...

The selection of Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to be Iran’s new supreme leader is a defiant, in-your-face, maximalist and rejectionist move by the government in Tehran. It contains several messages, some explicit, some implicit.
First of all, it’s a public declaration of will. This odious regime has not run out of will power and self-belief. This Iranian dispensation survived eight years of grinding, brutal war with Iraq, at a time when Iraq had tacit support, especially intelligence support, from the West.
Its primary goal has always been regime survival. The calculus behind the US and Israeli military strikes has been in part to convince the regime that its best chance of survival lay in coming to some arrangement with Washington – ditch the nuclear program, ditch terrorism, make a deal.
But the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which now clearly runs Iran, so far is not remotely interested in that option. So the choice of Mojtaba represents a determination to defy Washington and Jerusalem.
It’s a message to the Iranian people as well; essentially a message of government continuity. Most Iranians will be very unhappy about this. They greeted the death of the old ayatollah with joy partly because they thought it meant fast and fundamental change to their government and, as a result, their lives. No such change is forthcoming yet.
However, the IRGC has also been sending messages to other elements of the Iranian state leadership and these are messages of contempt.

And what about the message from Pete Hogsbreath?

The bromancer made a double appearance, flinging around the word "cowardly", entirely fitting thanks to his many years in uniform fighting the good fight, thank you for your service, sir: The Australian's Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan details how the Albanese government is behaving “cowardly” amid the US-Iran conflict.

As for that old rule about not assassinating heads of state? Fergeddit ...

The poor old Iranian President, Masoud Pezeshkian, and some of his civilian colleagues, keep saying, in public, to regional neighbours that the Iranian military won’t attack them any more. Pezeshkian even apologised to Gulf countries for the attacks they had endured so far. Almost as soon as his words were uttered they were overruled by IRGC leaders and judicial figures, and the drones and missiles kept flying at Gulf countries and other neighbours.
Pezeshkian is exactly the kind of relative moderate the regime would have put up as the notional leader if it had been at all interested in compromise. In fact it treated him with contempt, happy to humiliate him publicly and repeatedly.
What about Mojtaba? He himself has a long history with the IRGC. He also has a taste for luxury accommodation and the good life, like so many senior figures in allegedly revolutionary regimes (the classic text on this dynamic is still George Orwell’s Animal Farm). He doesn’t have credentials as a religious scholar comparable to his father. Reports are that the IRGC bullied the Assembly of Experts into choosing Mojtaba, perhaps exactly because Donald Trump had said he would be unacceptable.
So this is a big vote of confidence in Mojtaba, right? Well, not necessarily. So far, one result of the military attacks on Iran has been to reveal, and to accelerate, the complete control of the state by the IRGC. The IRGC obviously thinks it can control Mojtaba. But there are other dimensions as well.
By naming Mojtaba so brazenly, in obvious defiance of Trump, the IRGC knows it’s put a huge target on his back. Both US and Israeli forces will surely now make killing Mojtaba a high priority for however long the conflict continues.

Next came a reminder of that other war hero... President Donald Trump speaks during an event in Washington. Picture: Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP Photos

The bromancer was troubled by a sense of a tear, a rupture in the MAGA force ...

Unless the IRGC has Mojtaba hidden in the deepest possible bunker, with his whereabouts known by the smallest possible number of people, with only analogue communications available, mainly whispered conversations and perhaps the odd cryptic handwritten note, the IRGC surely knows it has radically shortened Mojtaba’s life expectancy.
And if he holds on past a ceasefire with the US, then surely the Mossad is still likely to get him in the end. Perhaps the IRGC is quite sanguine about creating a new martyr for Shia legend, while its leaders remain as anonymous as possible. Their hope, surely, is that they can outlast Trump, not to win a victory, but just to survive. No regime on Earth more thoroughly deserves to be ousted than the Iranian regime, but their chances of outlasting Trump’s resolve are not negligible.
The balance of risk in this whole operation is starting to move back to Trump. The Iranians have succeeded in closing the Strait of Hormuz and disrupting the Gulf oil trade. The price of oil is skyrocketing. Stockmarkets around the world are plunging.
Trump began this war with quite low support for it among the American people. The MAGA base is ambivalent and anxious, not enthusiastic. This is especially so among extremist nut jobs such as Tucker Carlson, but he and other opponents of the operation on the right have huge social media followings, mainly among the MAGA crowd.
You can take your pick of polls but about a quarter, or just over, of American voters supported the war at its outset, which contrasts with strong majority support for George W. Bush’s intervention in Iraq.
Trump is saying publicly that he wants total Iranian surrender and nothing less will do. He’s threatening to send in ground forces, though this is almost certainly a bluff. It’s just conceivable that a lightning-fast US special forces incursion, to take possession of the 400kg of uranium enriched to 60 per cent, which Iran is believed still to possess, could be extremely popular. But it would also be unbelievably difficult and dangerous.
The midterm elections are already looking pretty dreadful for the Republicans. They will almost certainly lose the House of Representatives and could lose the Senate.

Never mind, here's a snap of someone to be assassinated, what with him being a president n'all, y'all, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian during a joint press conference alongside Armenia's Prime Minister in Yerevan, August 2025. Picture: Karen Minasyan / AFP

The bromancer wrapped up by sounding a gentle alarum ...

That would make the last two years of Trump’s presidency much more difficult, and much less productive, than the first two years have been. All of Trump’s domestic advisers are urging him to get back to domestic politics and focus on the economy. A Democrat House in the midst of global economic dislocation could even move once more to impeach Trump.
Therefore, there’s a certain logic in thinking Trump goes on for a certain period longer – one week? Two? – from his point of view hopefully eliminating Mojtaba, then declares victory and goes home.
If he does this, even without achieving full regime change, he will have transformed global geo-strategic equations. China and Russia have lost three important allies – Venezuela, Syria and Iran; for, whatever happens, Iran is massively weakened out of all this.
Higher oil prices could help the Russian economy, and indeed higher energy prices also help Australia. Beijing and Moscow may also be pleased to see the depletion of the US stock of hi-tech missile interceptors and the like. But the broad authoritarian axis they were building has suffered serious blows.
Trump is good at declaring victory and moving on. He’s also well capable of overreach. The days ahead are critical.

Never fear bro, Liz was on hand, and she had just the right solution.

The header: The US has a missile problem – can we rise to the occasion? Operation Epic Fury has exposed strains in the US missile stockpile and defence industry. Australia has a rare opportunity to strengthen the alliance by becoming a key producer of missiles.

The caption for the tremendously revealing and informative snap: US missile launches during Operation Epic Fury have highlighted pressure on Western stockpiles. Picture: AFP

What an excellent idea. There's simply not enough death and destruction reigning down from the skies. (Then the long absent lord rained down brimstone and fire and Liz's missiles and all was well).

Instead of devising ways of protecting ourselves from such destruction, why not help spread it around the world?

Thanks Liz, you're an ideas winner ...

As Operation Epic Fury enters its second week, it is manifestly obvious that Donald Trump’s “Arsenal of Democracy” is running low.
The US, Iran and Israel appear to be locked in a race to the bottom of their respective missile stockpiles. Last week Israel estimated that Iran held about 2000-2500 ballistic missiles. Since the beginning of Epic Fury, Tehran has launched over 800 ballistic missiles at Israel and its neighbouring Gulf nations. In recent days, Iranian launches have fallen some 90 per cent as the US effectively targeted Tehran’s missile production and stockpile assets. But the effort to cripple Iran’s strike capability has drained US resources.
Washington’s missile stock is not getting replaced at the pace and scale our global environment demands. The ledger does not look great, with a widening window of opportunity for Chinese strikes on Taiwan – a war certainly much closer to home for Canberra.
Within days of Epic Fury, the limits of the US missile (and interceptor) stockpile were exposed. Indeed, the operation has revealed the true extent of a strained and quite deficient US defence-industrial base.
This should ring alarm bells for Australia – our principal provider and security underwriter is under strain. And in Trump’s world, America comes first.
This is Australia’s opportunity to bolster its strategic utility to Washington and position itself as America’s “missile man”. It is now or never. Canberra must take advantage of this situation and deepen the alliance by enabling diversification of America’s industrial base. By producing missiles, especially key components such as solid rocket motors and interceptors, Australia can directly support US power.
Washington is moving quickly to redress shortfalls in its munitions-industrial base. Recognising L3Harris as the leading producer of rocket motors for priority missiles and interceptors, the US government has announced it will take an equity position with a $1bn investment in the company’s rocket motor division.
L3Harris manufactures many of the critical components for in-service ADF guided weapons. For example, our government is spending over $8bn dollars to acquire both Standard Missiles and Tomahawk cruise missiles. Not a single skilled job will be gained in Australia as this money passes offshore. Moreover, we’re unlikely to receive these missiles until Washington has replenished its rapidly dwindling stockpile.

The pond can't emphasise enough how pleasing it was to read Liz's plan for world mayhem, fuelled by dinkum down under diggers, perhaps even crow eaters,  The Port Wakefield plant will assemble Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System rockets for Australia and its allies.

What an excellent shed. What an excellent snap of a shed. What a shed to bring woe to the world!

Meanwhile, Liz was still in full war monger mode ...

Through partnership with the very entity the US government has backed, Australia has a low-risk opportunity to bolster its strategic position with Washington.
This would embed into the alliance a robust element of self-sufficiency and offset any future concerns or demands for lifting Defence expenditure in Australia. We would simply point to our defence-industrial base as an enabling element of US power.
Australian missile manufacturing would inject true resilience into Washington’s military-industrial footprint. Australia’s geographical proximity to the Indo-Pacific theatre creates a value proposition that is unmatched for Washington – forward-based stores and trusted, scalable, industrial capacity.
Australia’s politically stable environment and skilled workforce make us an obvious choice. Canberra has a golden opportunity to address insufficiencies plaguing US missile inventories, while at the same time fortifying itself as an indispensable ally. To do this, Canberra must evolve from its modest ambitions and move beyond the aspirations of an assembler to that of producer.
Supply chains and stockpiles have long determined who wins wars. Diversified and resilient industrial bases will ultimately set competitors apart in future wars. Yet Australia’s missile course remains more of a “framework” of a plan.
The government celebrates plans to manufacture up to 4000 missiles a year by 2029. The new Port Wakefield facility is the first outside the US to produce Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems. The government has been quick to produce media releases patting itself on the back, lauding the facilities role in supporting defence resilience and “reducing supply chain dependence”.
More recent operations in Gaza, the Red Sea and Iran have also illustrated that Washington’s most immediate replenishment needs have moved beyond shorter-range, ground-based rocket systems to the higher-end, interceptor munitions. But, again, we are not manufacturing missiles, Australia is assembling them. There is a monumental difference. The government’s grand plan is merely a slight of hand with crafty wordplay.
Signals of deeper integration between the Australian and US defence-industrial bases are not being seized by Canberra with the tempo that our strategic environment demands. For example, take the Precision Strike Missile. The US has just confirmed the first combat use of PrSM occurred during Operation Epic Fury, and it certainly performed.
Australia has an agreement with Washington to work towards the “co-development, co-production and co-sustainment” of PrSM, but the government appears averse to deviating from the established plan: PrSM is simply not the priority it should now be.
Australia should learn the right lessons from Operation Epic Fury, and do so quickly. Billy Hughes often stated “the price of vigilance is readiness”. In the late-1930s, Essington Lewis urged government to partner with Australian industry to prepare and stockpile for war. The true strength of a nation is its ability to sustain an industrial base in days of war.
Progress might be under way to move us from missile assemblers to missile producers, but it simply must accelerate. The Albanese government should be positioning Australia to strike, ready for the next war.
Elizabeth Buchanan is a senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. She is the author of So You Want to Own Greenland: Lessons from the Vikings to Trump (Hurst, 2025).

No doubt the bromancer shed a little tear of joy after reading all that.

Excellent work Liz, bomb 'em all, the long, the short and the tall, and only with complete destruction may the citizenry come to enjoy the pleasures of freedumb and democracy. 

It's the King Donald way, and it's great to have you on board.

And so to a tragic miss. 

Thanks to a correspondent's reminder, the pond had hoped to be able to draw attention to Dame Groan celebrating the Adam Smith anniversary, notes on which could be found in assorted places, including Reuters, From 1776 to 2026: Adam Smith's lessons for the global economy (The pond would have referenced others but the intermittent archive is currently down, and the pond does like to avoid paywalls).

Sadly the old biddy went MIA.

Instead the pond hopes that turning to a vintage, day-old, microwave reheated serve of  Mein Gott will do as a celebration of the dismal science. He can usually manage a groan with the best of the old chooks.

But first the pond would like to suggest a little reading bonus.

Who cleverly designed a back-up in case things went wrong? Per the ABC ...

Federal Government to spend $94 million stockpiling fuel in the US

Yes, it was the beefy boofhead from down Goulburn way, at the height of the speaking in tongues, liar from the shire's government...

How he chortled with glee at his cleverness ...

"I signed an agreement with the United States to access their reserves, simply because we don't have the storage space here in Australia right now," Mr Taylor said.
He said moving the storage reserve to Australia was a "priority" and that work to begin expanding domestic capacity would be done as soon as possible.
The Government began talks with the United States to access its reserve last year to increase supplies to meet the 90-day minimum required under international agreements.
At the time, before the coronavirus pandemic saw prices plummet, Mr Taylor said building a storage facility in Australia would be too high a cost.
"The opportunity to buy and establish a fuel reserve is an extraordinary one now with these historically low fuel prices," he said.
"The storage costs are small compared to the fuel cost."

In the original story at the ABC, Albo noted the immense stupidity of this, and what a relief to discover that we have more than enough fuel to last until early April if completely cut off from the world (thanks Graudian).

She'll be right mate.

Mein Gott was on the job, in a way only Mein Gott can be ...

The header: Is the US-Israel attack on Iran a bid to stop China controlling world oil?; China has stockpiled one billion barrels of oil while Australia faces potential fuel shortages following the US-Israel attacks which could reshape Middle East energy control.

The caption for the snap: Fire breaks out at the Shahran oil depot in Tehran after US and Israeli attacks. Picture: Getty Images

Mein Gott attributed the basest motives to corrupt Benji and King Donald. It wasn't about freeing the Iranian people, it was all about the oils, because thanks to the reptiles, everybody had refused to go renewables and EVs and such like ...

The attack on Iran’s oil storage highlights what the US-Israel attack on Iran was arguably really about – the control of the Western world’s oil.
Clearly, Israel’s main motive was its own protection, but the United States’ role was also part of a global oil strategy, when considering the dangers created by China and Iran, which were combining to gain great power over half of world oil supplies.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see the importance of a series of events that took place in the past three months.
First, the year 2026 opened with US forces conducting a large-scale strike on Venezuelan infrastructure, and a pre-dawn raid to capture Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores. It soon became clear that access to Venezuelan oil was a vital part of this strategy. It was a first step in a potential Iran strategy.

The reptiles flung in a bit of war porn ... Missiles have been hitting Iran for more than a week now. Picture: AFP

It was only a three minute read, but Mein Gott knew all about supply and demand ...

Second, a month later, China, Iran and Russia conducted joint naval exercises in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. These exercises highlighted the growing military co-operation between the three nations in what is a global energy chokepoint.
The Gulf region holds 50 per cent of the world’s oil reserves, and about 20 per cent of the entire world supply of oil is shipped through the Strait of Hormuz.
Then, the US Navy began its major military build-up in the Middle East, with two aircraft carrier strike groups deploying or already present in the region to prepare for a potential conflict with Iran.
China buys about 90 per cent of Iran’s oil exports. This accounts for roughly 15 per cent of China’s total crude imports. Accordingly, Iran is a critical energy source for China, but it also provides a lifeline for the Iranian economy, given the international sanctions. The Chinese oil purchases also assist in funding Hezbollah and Hamas.
Iran announced it was switching to the Chinese global positioning system, which would have resulted in China gaining a major communication role in key global oil supply operations.
More seriously, Reuters reported in the weeks before the attack by the US and Israel that Iran was close to a deal with China to purchase supersonic missiles. The missiles have a range of about 290km and are designed to evade ship-borne defences by flying low and fast. Their deployment would significantly enhance Iran’s strike capabilities and pose a threat to US naval forces.
China and Iran were about to control a significant proportion of world oil supplies. Unconfirmed reports say delivery of the missiles was days away when the US decided to attack.
If the reports are correct, then the US had to act swiftly or China and Iran would be dominant powers in world oil supplies. Iran’s stalling tactics in the negotiations were designed to delay any US strike until after the missiles were in place. The US moved just in time and took the risk that China would aid Iran’s defence.
China did not help Iran. Many believe China has been humiliated in the region. Russia has already been greatly diminished. Their combined power is greatly reduced, but not eliminated.

Who better to talk about sovereign capability than a representative of the mob who thought it would be a good idea to put Australia's oil reserves in the USA? Opposition spokesman on industry and sovereign capability Andrew Hastie. Picture: Martin Ollman

Inspired by the pastie Hastie, Mein Gott entirely overlooked that little matter of the Oz oil reserve in the USA ...

The US and Israel have become in effect the two great oil powers in the Middle East. Iran appears to be alone and the enormous oil fires in Tehran illustrate the story.
But Iran clearly intends to fight for as long as it can. Those nations which understood and prepared for oil shortages will be fine. Foolish nations will not.
For example, China is prepared for an oil crisis and has stockpiled a reported one billion barrels – enough for 100 days in a Pacific naval war or a Middle East crisis.
Australian politicians have badly let the nation down and must take full responsibility for our shortages.
After my earlier comment last week, Andrew Hastie reminded me via a text that in 2018 he and former senator Jim Molan commissioned a review into our liquid fuel security, and Hastie criticised refinery closures. (Molan served in the army for 40 years and Hastie served as a troop commander in the SAS, and was deployed to Afghanistan.)
If fuel shortages hit Australia – and cutbacks have already started – then politicians who did nothing back then and are doing nothing currently should hang their heads in shame.
Like China, we should have storage of at least 100 days’ supply and the refineries to process it. If we have shortages, an angry nation will demand our politicians do their job to act in the national interest.

Splendid stuff, and even weirder was this note in Axios, Scoop: U.S. dismayed by Israel's Iran fuel strikes, sources say (sorry, possible paywall)

Israel's strikes on 30 Iranian fuel depots Saturday went far beyond what the U.S. expected when Israel notified it in advance, sparking the first significant disagreement between the allies since the war began eight days ago, according to a U.S. official, Israeli official and a source with knowledge.
Why it matters: The U.S. is concerned Israeli strikes on infrastructure that serves ordinary Iranians could backfire strategically, rallying Iranian society to support the regime and driving up oil prices.
Driving the news: The Israeli air force's Saturday strikes created large fires in Tehran, igniting flames visible for miles and blanketing the capital in heavy smoke.

• The IDF claimed in a statement that the fuel depots "are used by the Iranian regime to supply fuel to different consumers including its military organs."
• An Israeli military official said the strikes were intended in part to tell Iran to stop targeting Israeli civilian infrastructure.

Behind the scenes: Israeli and U.S. officials said the IDF notified the U.S. military ahead of the strikes.

• But a U.S. official said that the U.S. military was surprised by how wide-ranging they were.
• "We don't think it was a good idea," a senior U.S. official said.
• An Israeli official said the U.S. message to Israel was "WTF".

WTF indeed, what with King Donald lusting after all that oil, but credit where credit is due, what an astonishing scheme to plunge the world into chaos and confusion.

Finally the final question. 

Could Killer manage to get through an entire outing without mentioning Covid? 

It seemed easiest to screen cap Killer, who to be fair was outside the war zone, fighting a different kind of fight.

But the pond refuses to let Killer drift silently into the night, lost in the fog of war. 

If Killer turns up, the pond will always turn up ...

Yes, dammit, if you're naughty, AI will get you, and soon enough you'll be reading Killer AI (*IPA patented).

Sadly it was nowhere near the fun that a tribute to Adam Smith by Dame Groan would have been, but to answer that question about Covid.

Killer did avoid mentioning masks and vaccines, but he finally did wish a pox on those who did it easy in the pandemic:

Finally, there’s more competition for jobs than the official unemployment figures would suggest too. In addition to the 636,000 workers who were formally counted as being unemployed in January, an additional 1.2 million people aged between 18 and 75 say they would like a job but don’t meet the strict definition of unemployment.
The government will seek to couch what is likely an industrial relations matter as an issue of discrimination, by amending the Equal Opportunities Act. Victoria handed its industrial relations powers to the federal government decades ago, so the policy probably won’t survive constitutional challenge in any case.
Modern economies had the technology to work from home before the Covid pandemic, yet the practice was rare. Perhaps it will be again if AI wipes out jobs that can easily be done at home. The laptop class, who benefited the most from WFH policies during the pandemic, while most other workers suffered, should be careful what they wish for.

Admirable, and yet again no mention of Killer's day job at the IPA, though when thinking about that, the pond imagined it would be an immense pleasure to be able to WFH if there was the slightest chance of being trapped in an office with Killer and the rest of the IPA loons...

And so to the immortal Rowe to wrap up proceedings with a Kingly hole in one in the blood and oil tournament.

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.