In which the pond gets into the Caterist saithing and joins the Major in celebrating the Opium Wars ...

 

Passing the corner of Bourke and Swanston, the pond heard the preacher saith "no drug taker shall enter the kingdom of heaven ... read the bible."

The pond had the resistible urge to brave passing trams, cross the road and shout "what about tea drinkers?", followed by "what about coffee drinkers?" 

The pond might cede that smokers and the majority of beer-drinking Australian men should be promptly consigned to hell, but what was that talk of a miraculous transformation of water into wine? Was it non-alcoholic wine, or was Jesus himself unable to enter the kingdom of heaven, what with sounding like a pandering lush?

And so on, and the pond's partner conceded the resulting video might have scored some hits on YouTube but was still glad that the pond had walked on by ...

Unfortunately the pond can't seem to walk by the reptiles ... but it did manage to avoid this tiresome EXCLUSIVE ...

Secretly? The angry Sydney Anglicans have always been a cult, always in desperate search of complimentary women, while worried about their masculinity, a bunch of Siegfried Sassoon's in search of their Benediction ... can a conversion to the full high church be far away? The pond has had enough of their narcissist attention seeking ...

Okay, that's just a cheap way of noting that as soon as Tom Cruise Scientological Maverick hit the torrents, the pond was up for it, despite the Korean subs. 

The pond had tremendous fun tormenting a member of the RAAF by asking whether there was anything you couldn't do with an F-14 and a bit of chaff ... and as for don't think, just do it, the pond immediately decided to run out the door screaming at the sight of this teaser ...

Oh Ellie, don't you realise that nobody gives a flying fuck what the reptiles think about social media influencers? The lizard Oz is about as relevant as a tired old blog about Murdochian nutters ...and as for The Oz, is that still a thing?

Speaking of which, early this day came this memorable story ...

It was front and centre in the tree killer edition too ... (though if they can kill the comics how soon before they kill the tree killer?)

Memorable ...though perhaps only memorable because the pond knew it would trigger a howl of anguish from Dame Groaning and might well produce a splendid groan on the morrow ...

Who was wanting to get on with business and with migrants? It was the keen Kean, apparently unaware that the NSW government was at this moment completely dysfunctional ... a wretched thing of tattered rags and patches and not even worth a Dolly Parton song ...

And with that, the pond knew that finally it had to get down to business, only to discover a problem. 

Both the Caterist and the Oreo were out and about, but which to choose? The Oreo could be quickly despatched, having gone back to full paternalist colonialist, enthusiastically in favour of government intervention ...

The former Coalition government bears significant responsibility for the problems with the CDC scheme. However, Labor and the Greens have politicised the issue by claiming income management is paternalistic and violates the principle of self-determination. They might consider that nothing quite dims the hope of self-determination like a fist in the face. Anyone or anything that stands between an addict and his victim is a welcome interruption. If governments have to intervene, so be it.

So be it? So bloody be it? Is this where reformed, recovering feminists end up? If governments have to intervene, so be it?!

The pond knew it had to correct this error immediately with a dose of Caterism, with the Caterist fuming and flailing at government intervention (and never mind that observation in the pond's comments section about the ongoing deaths from Covid) ...

A contrarian seeker of truth? So that's what old Nick was on about with his curious, brave and bold study of the movement of flood waters in quarries?

Not to worry, the real point of this exercise is going to be distraction. Remember that in the splash the Caterist had promised that SloMo's misjudgement would be likely to appear as a footnote ...

Of course the real story, as noted by the venerable Meade, is the conflict of interest for simplistic Simon and the duo sitting on the story, either for nefarious reasons, or being without the first clue ...

There's also yarns about redundant reptiles and redundant comics (as noted by a pond correspondent), but perforce the pond must get back to the Caterist for more yowling ...

Ah indeed, hit the quarry water panic button, and blame everybody, the premiers and  their dogs, anybody but the footnote known as the liar from the Shire, the speaker in tongues to imaginary friends ... but it's a saga that keeps on giving, and will keep on giving until they evict the culprit, even if it means wearing a by election loss ... 

Even poor old Barners got caught up in it on the weekend, a blustering rabbit in the headlights ...

But it was diminished, you pathetic goose, you couldn't even get up a gas project of the kind that fills the reptiles with devotion and love, only exceeded by their devotion to coal. If you couldn't get on with fossil fuels, what's the bloody point?

Never mind a final desperate gobbet about the "footnote", and a yearning for the return of the killing fields, and pompous blather about pomposity and we'll be done ... but not before the pond could smell the fear exuding from the Caterist's nostrils and getting the hounds excited...

Speaking of disastrous tyranny, roll on comrade Bill's Royal Commission into robodebt ... and let's see if the Caterist can attempt to make the premiers wear the blame for that monumental can of worms ...

Of course the pond had to ditch the Oreo because it could never miss Top Gun reptile Major Mitchell, showing young pups how it's done - it's amazing what an aging ace can do with an F-14 and a bit of chaff ...

There you go ... the Major is so dumb, he can't even understand that mixing up talk of barbarians with the barbaric Opium Wars is monstrously stupid ... especially as it's followed by talk of international law and democracy, as if wars designed to force a country into addled drug addiction so imperial poms could make a quick pound or three might make the Major's lion-hearted stand that China only understands force, money and power go over the mountains and deep into the valley of irony ...

Never mind, the Major is on a roll ...

By golly, you tell 'em Major, shove it down their gullets in style, as if to the manor born ...

And at the end of the next gobbet, the pond was ready to fall out of its chair. The Major was quoting approvingly someone scribbling in the Graudian. What next? The Major approvingly quoting the ABC if they were onside with him? Especially if they can manage to reconcile the Major blathering about private property developers in China and the dangers of economic control, and never mind the worst aspects of rampant out of control capitalism ...

And so to the Major putting to the sword all that the hysterical bromancer has scribbled in the past year, with the bromancer apparently filled by a mistaken belief in the imminent Chinese economic and military hegemony ....

Across strategic circles in the West there is great debate about how to wage strategic competition against Beijing, but to do so, in a phrase the Prime Minister has borrowed but is making his own, in a way that produces “competition without catastrophe”.

Writing in The National Interest, Seth Kaplan, a professorial lecturer at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, argues that the US and its allies should wage a sustained information campaign aimed at the Chinese people, just as they did for the Russian and east European people in the Cold War.

Beijing and its allies have bought up most Chinese language media in the West. They spend enormous amounts of money on propaganda and information campaigns of their own in the West. And they are very active on anonymous social-media campaigns.

But at the moment the Western powers are not making a similar effort to convince the Chinese people that communist rule and international aggression are not in their interests.

In recent years Beijing has explicitly internationalised its ideology. It exports coercive social-control technology and offers political, technical and financial support to authoritarian regimes, arguing the case for their legitimacy, as with Russia.

In all this, Australia has to protect its own interests first, provide its own national deterrent military capabilities, then provide military capabilities that can work effectively in coalition with the US and draw ever closer to like-minded countries, so that association can be a force multiplier for deterrence.

Albanese has inherited these demands. Green gives him very high marks so far, and comments that Labor’s journey on China has been similar to that taken by the US Democrats. Both are dealing with the inescapable reality of contemporary China. Albanese, Marles, Wong and the whole Australian nation face a demanding and dangerous road ahead.

Sorry, the pond can't link to the full piece, rampantly paranoid and full of hysteria about the long and winding road,  but the pond does love the sight of reptiles feuding and fussing between themselves ...

Ah yes, everybody's right, so why did the pond waste its time back on 19th June 2022 reading the bromancer in full featherless flight? Please permit the pond to return to that well to help out the Major one more time ...

...Still, there is a sense that we don’t fully get Beijing’s purposes altogether. Consider that Marles rightly called Beijing’s military build-up the greatest since World War II.

Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst at ASPI who has studied the Chinese military closely, agrees with Marles: “It is certainly the biggest and quickest military build-up since World War II. It’s faster and greater than anything the Soviet Union did. China now has the biggest navy in the world. It has a 4.5 or fifth-generation air force, which it’s developed since 2000. It has exceptional cyber capacity and there is the rapid growth of its nuclear forces.”

Bassi emphasises Beijing’s cyber capabilities: “They (China) are not the only malicious actor. But they are the top source of nation-state cyber threats facing Australia and they have been called out many times for their (cyber) activities, including by Australia.”

For many years China’s military budget grew by more than 10 per cent a year. More recently, it has been growing in the 7 to 9 per cent annual range. And much of Beijing’s military expenditure is kept off book.

Xi has often told his troops they need to be able to fight and win for China. But what does Beijing want this vast military for, in both the short and long term?

“They’re doing it for a reason,” Davis says, “because they want to take Taiwan. I think there’s a possibility the Chinese will move against Taiwan in the second half of this decade. There’s also a possibility the US won’t be ready. It doesn’t have enough ships or long-range missiles and the like. It has global responsibilities, whereas the Chinese can focus their force on Taiwan. The US, I think, would struggle against massed Chinese power.

“But if you add Japan and Australia it evens up a bit. You could have a protracted war in which neither side achieves victory. The balance of forces is actually getting better for Beijing. The US has to balance needed force modernisation in areas like hypersonics and autonomous systems against the maintenance of its legacy systems. I think that’s why Biden got out of Afghanistan so quickly. Now you’ve got inflation and a possible US recession, and that won’t help the US military budget.”

Ah yes, if you add Australia, it evens up a bit, though it did occur to the pond that the bromancer and the Major couldn't both be right.

That's when the pond was reminded that the Koreans had been on hand to help the pond understand Top Gun Major.

It's amazing what you can do with a bit of barbed wire, a stocking, a piece of chewing gum to lock in crossed wires and get the motor running (always worked with the FX), not to mention an ancient F-14 and a bit of chaff ... 

Why that'll knock a fifth generation fighter silly, or at least knock the pond so silly it might want to get into a shouting match with a preacher about tea drinkers not getting into heaven ...

And so to a Rowe for a little final relief ...

Was it only in 2019 that we were being told that EVs would ruin the Australian weekend?

Ah yes, no matter how the reptiles try to distract, it's been a great time for cartoonists, with the likes of Golding and Moir joining in the fun ...