Stand back, please, Dame Slap, is on the climate science case ...
The pond will get on to the latest in the war on China - it's all certain reptiles can think or talk or scribble about - but decided it would start off with the IPA chairman, demonstrating in the usual IPA way, a complete lack of regard for any duty of care for the planet ...
In the process the pond couldn't help but notice the latest reptile move. Anyone who thought it was weird to have "Ned" read his columns aloud lacked a suitable sense of the true weirdness of the reptiles. Go on Dame Slap, read yourself, and gather as much fluff from the navel as you like ...
Yes, yes, more dinkum clean innocent virginal Oz coal for the world, it's the Dame Slap lizard Oz Liberal way ...
What's that you say?
Yes, the pond woke up to sounds emanating from the radio that the world was fucked ... and what joy to know that Ley and Dame Slap and the IPA and its brave chairman were still assiduously at work helping with the fucking ... you see, it's just business as usual ...
Meanwhile, it's business as usual elsewhere, though a slightly different business...
Well you won't find any of that nonsense coming from the IPA chairman in her squeaky voice ... remember, you might as well entrust the IPA and its chairman Dame Slap to draw up the nation's climate change policy (forget policies). It's that scary ...
Yes, there's no responsibility here, and no control, and nothing to see except more dinkum clean Oz coal, innocent and virginal, wending its way into the world ... oh truly, suffer little children ...
Oh yes, let's have fun with the legalese, and let's have fun with fucking the planet, because that's what climate activists of the IPA kind love to do ...
Second thoughts, instead of just fucking with the planet, why not blow it up? And so to the reptile war on China ... and just look at this unholy trinity that confronted the pond early on a Saturday ...
Silly old Sharri, still carrying on with Mike Pompeo, as if he was still somehow in charge ... and more troops on the ground ... now there's a good omen ...
Meanwhile, came other news ...
The reptiles were a little slow on that one, and had previously featured Dan the man at the top of the page, as they had with the tree killer edition ...
We're rebooting China ties? The same way we re-booted ties with the French?
Well all that's necessary comedy background to truly appreciate today's comedy stylings, but now it's time to plunge into a surfeit of "Ned's" natter ... but the good news is that there's nary a sign of "Ned" reading his words aloud. The downside is that as a result, "Ned" in print goes on endlessly ...
Sorry, sorry, the pond couldn't help noticing. There's been much joshing about the three amigos of late - you surely know the movie. Were the lizard Oz reptiles in on the joke with that snap of the three amigos at the top of "Ned's" piece, with the most clueless amigo, the mug from down under, whatever his name is, front and centre?
Indeed, indeed ... talk about a triumph, and what a pity "Ned" was a little too early, and so not in a position to celebrate the full flavour of the triumph ..
Ah, the third amigo ... but which one is SloMo ...
Ay caramba donde esta la bibiloteca ... and so on with "Ned" and apologies for the pond's need for distractions on this long, boring as batshit journey ...
The pond couldn't help but notice that "Ned" talk of being involved in US wars ...
Indeed, indeed, and now back to Scotty from marketing ...sorry, sorry, "Ned" from the lizard Oz, he's just here to help Scotty ...
Ah yes, having poked the dragon to see if it might produce the odd flame, how handy to revert to domestic politics, because apparently that's all that matters ...
Before things go really bad? A pond correspondent recently muttered F-111 but why go that far back? Why not just celebrate with
Forbes?
Now at this point the pond should note that the reptiles inserted a click bait video featuring the onion muncher ...
The pond approached it cautiously - should it cut the red or the blue wire? - but in the end successfully disabled it ...
That left just two gobbets of "Ned" to go ...
Now the pond just wanted to highlight that truly surreal moment in "Ned's" meanderings ...
It's as if "Ned" himself didn't scribble for a rag dedicated to the populist right coalition fringe ...
Well those lines will come in handy when the pond turns to the dog botherer in due course - oh it's going to be a long weekend - but now it's time to finish up with "Ned" ...
A world of disruption? What does the man from marketing care? He's speaking in tongues to the man upstairs and knows the rapture will arrive long before the first sub ...
And so to the bonus for the day, and of course it had to be the bromancer, because the bromancer knows what's watt ... and he doesn't want the war with China at some indeterminate future, he wants a high energy set to now ...
Unfortunately that snappy shot of a sub is about as engaging as the bromancer gets ... because he's just as long as "Ned" this day ... and the pond is running out of distractions ... but all the same you have to admire the way that the Catholic crusader manages to slip a reference to "Anglophone" amigos in his very first sentence ...
That talk of loving piece always brings Dr Strangelove to mind in the pond ... and it also brings back fond memories of the Betoota Advocate piece that set the pond off in the first place ...
Sure, they repeat some of their material, but so do the reptiles, and the bromancer wants his war with China right here, right now ...
Indeed, indeed, we can do the sort of tremendous good we've done in places such as Iraq, Vietnam and Afghanistan, and in sundry other minor skirmishes around the globe ... because oh how we love peace ... and a piece of that action and a piece of this action ...
Dear sweet long absent lord, the Catholic Belloc intrudes on a discussion of war and a piece of this and that action?
At this point, the pond began to wonder what had happened to the bromancer's talk of asymmetrical warfare. You know, drones, low-cost missiles, a citizen army ready to enact guerilla warfare, the shifting of News Corp to the front line at Cape York, each reptile ready for combat with basic weaponry as deployed by the Taliban, standing by, devoted to peace, but reay to enact a scorched earth policy until the invading horde can be halted at the Brisbane line ...
But no, it seems that's an idle fantasy. Somehow these days the armchair general keeps coming back to pissing money against the wall on expensive, handsome kit ...
Around this time, the pond felt the need to dig up an old Rowe, and luckily it could be found
here ... (at least until the land above the faraway tree moves on) ...
Well yes indeed ...
Did anyone ever notice that the U-boat strategy deployed in the second world war turned out to be an expensive failure? ... though it did produce a good show ...
Never mind, that left just one short bromancer gobbet to go ...
And so after all that, the triumphalism died in the throat of the bromancer, with the war in China still to be fought by tomorrow, and all we can offer by way of resistance and a decent kit out at the corner store is another Rowe cartoon ...
Sheridan: “Nuclear-powered subs will arrive much too late to help us in conflict.”
ReplyDeleteAw shucks - 2040? The Bromo will be in his mid 80s by then and hopefully too wretched to join in celebrations of its launch. That’s why he wants them very, very, very soon - to get his jollies off watching a huge metal tube shaped like a dick slip forcefully into the receptive waters of Port Adelaide. But I don’t think he’s praying hard enough or maybe the Catholic faction of God Inc isn’t really into nukes that much. There are some very, very, very, important Catholics that are dead-set against nuclear weapons - and I would classify a nuclear sub as a nuclear weapon, simply because if something goes wrong they are potentially a nuclear disaster.
Revised_Catholic Church_Nuclear Weapons2015.pub (paxchristi.org.uk)
But, fair suck of the ketchup bottle; it’s not really about subs but more a chance for the reptiles to spruik nuclear energy for Oz.
Dame Slap: "If allowed to stand, Bromberg's creative lawmaking would set a terrible precedent by allowing judges to overturn what parliament sets down as a decision-making process for ministers." But, bg, butt, I thought we were trying to become just like our patriarchal suzerain, the USA. Doesn't that mean we should want the courts to overturn the "democratic decisions" of presidents, governors and secretaries ?
ReplyDeleteSo, continuing: "The submission reveals the natural frustration of elected lawmakers when an unelected court up-ends a clear policy set down by parliament." But surely just that is mandated by requiring that 'elected lawmakers' follow the Constitution and that it was entirely the business of the 'unelected court' to up-end them if they didn't ?
But no, our Dame Slap would have us believe in the absolute power of the non-elected ministers: "Parliament entrusts and empowers environment ministers to balance important policy considerations ...". And that's an end to it, no further correspondence will be entered into because, of course, non-elected "ministers" are simply omniscient and omnipotent: mistakes, misjudgements and misappropriations never, ever occur.
Therefore ministers perform inerrantly in their job: "...protecting the environment, energy needs, jobs, the benefits of trade, the whole caboodle of interests that drive this country's prosperity and future." The thought that, perhaps, unless the "environment" is given a clear priority, and that kids are protected, then fairly soon there may not be a lot of "energy needs, jobs, the benefits of trade" to protect.
Let's consider some Bromancer wisdom: "...we will struggle to consistently deploy two ancient Collins-class subs at any one time ... If submarines are important to our security, and this decade is as dangerous as the 1930s, then our national policy is a joke." Ha ha ha. So, onwards ever onwards: "After eight years of Liberal government [and six years of Labor] we have done absolutely nothing on subs ..."
ReplyDeleteAnd how many times in these last 14 years have we actually needed subs ? Any advance on zero ? Because we haven't really had any that we could use, anyway.
As Clancy Overell has pointed out: "the idea that our country of 25 million people, with a military of 43,000 personnel wouldn't stand a chance in a war against 1.4 billion Chinese, looks to be a myth that Scotty From Marketing is keen to bust."
Right, it's really simple: if China wants to 'destroy' Australia, then it can just hit our major cities with a few thousand ICBMs (without even bothering with nuke warheads) in which case our entire military will gain us absolutely nothing. Only a massive retaliation by the USA would have any effect, and would they ?
So only if China wants to engage in some very old-fashioned soldier-to-soldier combat would the subs offer us anything at all. And after they'd fired their few rockets and shot off a few torpedoes and then gotten sunk by Chinese drones and intelligent torpedoes and the thousands of troop transport ships that the unfazed Chinese send continue to land their soldiers on Australian soil ... Well, what could/would the Yanks and Poms do for us then ?
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteYesterday ‘Our Henry’ set out that;
“Indeed, for most accidental harms, the law of torts – which towering libertarians, such as Friedrich Hayek, have not only endorsed but eulogised – serves precisely that purpose, entitling the victim of a negligent act to rely on the coercive powers of the state to secure compensation from the act’s perpetrator.”
Shouldn’t Tort Law therefore also apply exactly to the case of the extension of the Whitehaven Coal’s Vickery Mine which would cause “catastrophic harm to the health of all children”.
Albrechtsen appears in this case to disagree with the rule of law and that governments should not be inhibited by the legal process, something I think a libertarian like Hayek would find abhorrent.
Strange stuff from the Chairman of the IPA but maybe libertarian purity is less important than pleasing the IPA’s funders.
It’s a Topsy-Turvy World.
DiddyWrote
Postscript
DeleteNo sooner had I written about Dame Slap and the IPA’s hypocrisy I happened upon this piece;
https://johnmenadue.com/thanks-to-think-tanks-british-democracy-is-at-risk/
So called “Individual Freedom” has quickly metamorphosed into an authoritarian concept that tolerates no opposition.
DW
Lucy Hamilton tells us, DW, that: "It was clear during the campaign in 2016 that the work of private funders, shady internet forces such as Cambridge Analytica and the might of the radicalising tabloids was working to distort Britons’ ability to vote on the facts."
DeleteNow if only Britons, and Australians, and Americans and ... had ever, IMHO, voted "on the facts", I might think that we had indeed lost some aspects of our "democracy". But I have to note that throughout my entire life I've never observed the majority of electors (myself included) even being vaguely aware of what are "the facts".
Like everything else that humans do, we vote on 'emotions' and we edit our grasp of "facts" to support them.
Dorothy and Befuddled - yes, almost any new aircraft will gain equipment, weight and service time as its design progresses. Much of what the F111s were supposed to do in Vietnam was actually done by Canberras, using human flying skills in place of terrain tracking radar, and suchlike. I have been trying to find comparative ratios for service time to flight time, but cannot trace the reference. Memory tells me that a Canberra needed one hour servicing for one hour of flight, and F111 15 hours of servicing for one hour up there.
ReplyDeleteIt is also interesting to recall that, when the 'Cold War' was at its hottest, and both sides were accumulating ICBMs, had there been an actual shooting war, the first serious armament to hit the then USSR would have come from V-bombers.
Not sure what any of that proves, because it requires a belief that having an actual shooting war is likely to resolve something for benefit of the world.
Now that's a real blast from the past, Chad: Canberra bombers in Vietnam. We'll be getting on to Wirraways next and reviving all those wonderful days of the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation and the GAF Nomad. :-)
DeleteBack in those good old days when Australia had two (yes two !) aircraft carriers (built in the UK, BOC), though when Sydney's flight deck unfixably warped it became our very first troop carrier and because aircraft don't breathe but people do, nearly asphyxiated several thousand troops on their way to Vietnam.
And to put it all in perspective -
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg-jvHynP9Y
Neat, Chad. So Ike thought that the "military-industrial complex' shouldn't be in the hands of profit (and rent) seekers, but it's hard to see how it can be done otherwise in the USA - though the Russians managed it for quite a while.
DeleteSo, in the 2019 US budget (Oct 2018 - Sep 2019) US Dept of Defence spending was US$716 billion out of a budget total of US$4.448 trillion (including US$984 billion deficit) - ie about 16%. For comparison, in 2019 the entire Australian GDP was US$1.392 trillion.
https://www.thebalance.com/fy-2019-federal-budget-summary-of-revenue-and-spending-4589082#:
Interesting historical perspective on Ike though, so thanks for that.