At last, as the pond fades out like the Cheshire cat, a chance to drop another red card on Dame Slap.
The pond has no idea what deeply personal, weirdly obsessional motivation lies behind Dame Slap's sick devotion to the Lehrmann matter, but it was on display again today at the top of the lizard Oz edition...
The floods in Queensland already gone and forgotten?
Never mind, the pond has refused throughout to get into the grubby, one-eyed Lehrmann matter reptile coverage, dominated by reptile feelings about MeToo and such like reptile hot button culture war items, though the red card isn't a really a relief, because the other news is that there hasn't been a war that the armchair generals of the lizard Oz haven't wanted to be a part of ...
You'd think they'd have learned a few lessons from the disaster of Iraq and the wretched abandonment of women and allies in Afghanistan - doomed to live under the Taliban, a lifestyle to which only weirdos like the Texas Taliban aspire - but they were at it again today, with "Ned" at the head of the mid-week pack ...
Yes, there's also the deeply weird obsession with Aboriginal art, and Ted is around and about, but the pond is long over abusing Malware's Snowy 2.0, so it's off to the war with "Neddy" and the bro (why bother with Cameron playing armchair general when you've got the bro?)
First up is the bromancer explaining why he's shattered he can't indulge in the ancient imperial art of sending a warship ...
This armchair general is gung ho for gunboats ...
Oh dear sweet absent lord, we've gone mute on China, and there are just a few days until Xmas, and it looks like the bromancer will have to put his war on Xmas on hold at least until 2024 ...
Perhaps we could do that fake July Xmas thing and have a war with China by then (the pond was led to believe that it was the bloody Irish that started the fake Xmas thing: In Australia, Christmas in July is often attributed to a group of Irish tourists that travelled to Sydney’s Blue Mountains in 1980. Delighted to see snow on their summer trip, they convinced a local hotel owner to hold a “Yulefest” party. (here)
Never mind, the pond doesn't mind linking to cunning marketing ... but if the mango Mussolini gets in at the end of 2024, the noticing Americans will have plenty to worry about, and notice, when it comes to a devotion to dictators, and a desire to diss Europe, not to mention the world ...
And so on to "Ned", though the pond might interrupt occasionally ...
Heck, why not interrupt before he begins.
Little England has been having a great time thanks to the splendidly named Michelle Mone, as in show me the Money, Lady, and so she's up for a good Hydeing in A PPE farrago, a car crash interview and a fight with the PM: Lady Mone has her foot on the gas, hasn't she?
The pond develops fixations outside reptile la la land, and the show me the money Lady Mone saga has been a ripper ...
And now on with the armchair general ...
Talk about a great set of headlines ...
Meanwhile, "Ned" was wrapping up operations for the day, after a busy tour of the killing fields from his armchair ...
Never mind all the crocs in the water, there'll always be reptiles in the world and in the lizard Oz, mind the road sign detail ...
Speaking of the Lehrmann matter ... well ok, some post-red-card analysis ... one of many jaw-droppers from the current defamation trial was the prosecution's attempt to prevent Fiona Brown from testifying, on the basis of her poor (mental) health. Defence pointed out that Brown had been fit enough to endure a six hour interview with Albrechtsen and Rice a few months ago, and so the Judge decided a stint on the witness stand could hardly be more stressful, so testify she would. There is a footy panel worth of post-match questions about that interview, but I will leave it to the panel. AG.
ReplyDeleteWhoa, what's this bold assertion by Christopher Allen: "Aboriginal artist Sally Scales seems to believe in a post-truth version of reality where if you assert something often enough it must be right." A reptile "columnist" asserted that ? And having stated it but once, I'd be quite sure he absolutely believes it to be "right".
ReplyDeletePoor Allen must have been unaware that The Australian was going to put an Editorial along the same lines as his opinion piece right beside his article, just to show that saying something often enough proved one was right!
DeleteNed '... government is losing its way on principles ...'
ReplyDeleteSeriously? After 9 years of Coalition inactivity, hypocrisy and criminality, with Ned's support. Hill's article on Arendt is a way above anything Ned at al could handle. Thanks for posting it. AG.
It’s difficult not to feel sympathy for the Bro. Here it is, just before Xmas, and not only isn’t he going to get a war with China, he’s also going to miss out on the second item on his Santa List. What’s the world coming to when we’re no longer capable of acting as a second-rate Outpost of Empire and sending in a gunboat or two to frighten the natives in some dispute that has nothing to do with us? No wonder the Bromancer is outraged - Menzies would have doubtless sent in the entire fleet and then offered to stuff things up even more by mediating (which reminds me - why do Ming fanbois never mention his sterling work in the Suez Canal crisis?). Why would the Bro be content to unleash drones though - surely the thing to do is send in the troops and unleash cold steel on the local fuzzy-wuzzies? They don’t like it up ‘em, sir…….
ReplyDeleteStill, at least there’s some entertainment to be had from Greg’s hyperventilating self-abuse. Whereas Ned’s latest turgid Sermon on the Mount - and it is indeed a very high, steep mount - is just more of the same. Are we sure that there isn’t just an office in Holt Street housing several monkeys engaged in endlessly retyping Ned’s old contributions?
The Bro: "As former army chief Peter Leahy recently argued, we are now substantially weaker in defence than we were when Labor was elected..." I guess the Bro means this piece:
ReplyDeleteFormer army chief blasts Albanese government over military spending, defence readiness
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-07/former-army-chief-blasts-albanese-government/103069582
in which Leahy opined that: "The army will be smaller, it will be less capable, it will be less protected, and by that I mean we need tanks and we need armoured vehicles because the days of tin and canvas on the battlefield are gone," he said.
And we know from history and recent experience — tanks save lives."
Right, so we'd better get our few remaining tanks and armoured vehicles out into the Red Sea likety-split so that they can protect our soldiers 'on the ground' there.
But anyway: "It [Albanese government] has deserted Israel, opposed the US and contradicted Britain by supporting a notoriously one-sided resolution at the UN..." Well, maybe that's just because a lot of us seriously object to Israel's one-sided slaughtering of Palestinians by way of 'collective retribution' against the Gaza Palestinian noncombatants - women and children mainly, of course - and some Israelis agree:
Hopes for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and Israel
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/22/hopes-for-a-permanent-ceasefire-in-gaza-and-israel
Excellent research GB, but clearly this Leahy chap, wot wot, has not been paying attention to the bromancer, wot wot ...
DeleteDefence review to park tanks in history
By Greg Sheridan
12:00AM November 22, 202
The good news is, it seems the tank is gone. The interim report of the Defence Strategic Review, being conducted by Stephen Smith and Angus Houston, has been delivered to the government, which will get the final report early in February and respond to it fully by March. I hear the tank is gone.
In national security and international affairs, the Albanese government has had a whirlwind first six months. But there will hardly be anything more important than the decisions it makes next March.
The DSR will rightly recommend reduced investment in armour – tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and similar beasts – in order to focus on far more relevant and important priorities. There is no plausible scenario in which tanks, or even IFVs, could be important to Australian security. This means no more than 300 of the gargantuan-sized and largely unusable IFVs.
This is not a negative decision. It’s a reality decision. The DSR gives the government a chance to focus defence effort on capabilities relevant to our dangerous environment, in which the challenges are maritime, missile and drone.
The pond didn't think it would ever have another chance to revisit the bro's obsession with tanks, as weird as Killer's fear of masks ...
hanks but no tanks for our defence, please
By Greg Sheridan
12:00AM May 13, 2021
The most depressing item of expenditure in the federal budget was not even specifically mentioned. But it was there in the weeds, the money carefully tucked away. We are going to spend $2.5bn on buying 75 main battle tanks and some associated kit from the US. And that is just part of more billions of dollars we’re spending on other, hugely heavy (and therefore largely unusable) tracked, manned combat vehicles for the army as part of the Land 400 program.
We know about this purchase partly because, in the vaguest, most generic terms, it was in the defence force structure plan. We know about it more specifically because, as my colleague Ben Packham revealed, the US Defence Security Co-operation Agency announced its approval for the sale. The US has laws which oblige its agencies to announce when such foreign sales have been approved, even if they haven’t been finalised.
Why do I find the tank purchase so utterly depressing? It’s not that they are instruments of war. All civilised human beings hate war. But if you value peace, prepare for war.
It’s not the martial aspect of tanks that is depressing. It is instead the sheer idiocy and the anachronistic frivolity of Australia acquiring tanks and similar heavy, tracked vehicles which can never be of the slightest military use to us. And our doing this at a time of acute strategic challenge in our own region, when our maritime assets are woefully inadequate to the need, reflects the kind of high-minded strategic blindness, the paradigm paralysis and inertia of the defence organisation. Australia has not used a tank in anger since the Vietnam War. Our combat troops were mainly gone by late 1971, so that’s 50 years in which we have had no use for tanks. But we’ve had them all that time.
I was one of those commentators the army convinced of the utility of tanks the last time the tank debate came round 20-odd years ago. We were all sold a pup. We have just come to the end of 20 years of near continuous deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq. In all that time army was the lead service deployed. Yet not for a single moment did we ever seriously consider deploying a tank, despite their alleged relevance to counterinsurgency. Nor did we use them in East Timor. Nor will we ever use them anywhere.
And so on and on and on and on ... part 2 to follow ...
No tanks, part 2
DeleteIf 20 years of military activity in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t once furnish a moment when tanks were useful, how on earth can the maritime challenges of the Indo-Pacific today, made so dangerous by China’s huge military build-up, do so now? If the tank purchase is not finalised, we should pull out of it.
Will we use tanks to defend shipping in the South China Sea? Can tanks take out enemy submarines? Can tanks deliver attack missiles over hundreds of kilometres? How could we construct a scenario in which our tanks could be used? Perhaps if a polite, well-behaved enemy would, in an orderly fashion, establish a lengthy air convoy and land a few dozen of its tanks say 50km north of Alice Springs, in the dry season of course, we could, provided we had plenty of notice, laboriously transport our own 75 tanks up to Alice Springs. There we could meet them on a discreet battlefield of medieval neatness and win a decisive victory – the tanks that saved the Alice!
To put the opportunity cost at its simplest, for the cost of the tanks we could buy another squadron or two of Super Hornets and put long-range missiles on them. This would increase our local air superiority while also giving us greater ability to hit enemies further away from us. But this would need new doctrine!
And so on and on and on ...
"In which it's off to the killing fields with the lizard Oz armchair generals ..."
ReplyDeleteNext xmas no one will turn up. At newscorpse. I hope
"How are we going to indulge in gunboat diplomacy without boats?"
By listening to The Monkees - Zor and Zam
... "None upon none.
The war it was over before it begun."
(- Micky Dolenz attempts lilting)
(- Kez, The Monkees beat you to it.)
Via Kottke...
“Suppose They Gave a War and No One Came.” (McCall's, October 1966)
https://www.genekeyes.com/CHET/Chet-1.html#Suppose
Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppose_They_Gave_a_War_and_Nobody_Came
A war policy?! I understand a defence policy, but surely a war policy is only required when one has declared war on another country. With which country are we at war?
ReplyDeletePerhaps it's just the mind-set of reptiles - attack anything that moves if it is not a reptile. One wonders what side the partisan Kelly would be on if it were a left-wing government in Israel.
Has Netanyahu ever heard of Yitzhak Rabin ?
Delete:)³ The reptiles are always at war. What are they warring? What have you got?
DeleteSo now, getting on to Numb Neddy: "Labor is now openly agonising over a US request to commit a warship to support maritime security in the Red Sea." Butt, BG, but the Bromancer has already fully explained that: drones, Ned, drones, and how our "warships" have no defence at all against Houthi drones. Can't you understand your fellow reptiles, especially even when they make sense ?
ReplyDeleteSo "Labor's once-strong support for Israel has eroded..." Yeah, there's been just a bit of erosion of support for Israel, especially facilitated by "...the extreme stance of the Netanyahu government and its current military tactics."
However, it has been said that: "The Australian government cannot have it both ways." Yeah, well, thinking that maybe nobody is perfectly right or perfectly wrong, and not wanting a slaughter to continue:
"Golda Meir is reputed to have said: 'We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us'."
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/golda-meir-quotes-on-israel-and-judaism
Others think a little differently though, don't they. Take that great humanist, Simon Birmingham: "...the only sustainable ceasefire was where Hamas released all hostages and agreed to 'surrender' its terrorist leadership." So, how long might this take ?
"At least 5,000 Hamas militants have been killed, according to three Israeli security officials, leaving the majority of the group’s estimated 30,000-strong military wing intact.
.
'This is going to be a long haul,' said Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, a spokesman for the Israeli military. 'We need the time,' he added, acknowledging the diplomatic clock was ticking."
But: “I think we have reached a moment when the Israeli authorities will have to define more clearly what their final objective is,” French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday. “The total destruction of Hamas? Does anybody think that’s possible? If it’s that, the war will last 10 years.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/12/05/israel-military-offensive-hamas-destruction-gaza/
Only 10 years ? Not the nearly 80 years that Arab-Israeli hostilities have already run for ?
Ok, so how many more Gazan women and children will be killed until Israel succeeds ?
Have any Reptiles commented on Benji’s focus in this conflict on shoring up his own political support and apportioning blame to everyone bar himself? No, I thought not - I suppose that would be seen as weakening the “100% support for Israel” approach.
ReplyDeleteXenophibia & War hold hands.
ReplyDeleteEditorial "White hands on black art not fine"
Newscorpse - Fear & loathings best mask(arade). See below for listings of News corpse Netherlands xenophbia factories. DP, this study & SEC listing may come in handy.
Dog whistle xenophibia - outed in study by Sociologist Mathew Creighton below.
15yrs known in Netherlands. Where was News? Ireland troubling. Australia next up for xenophibia unmasking. Great study design.
Xenophobia. What DP didn't say "the grubby, one-eyed islam and refugee matter reptile coverage, dominated by reptile feelings about MeToo and such like reptile hot button culture war items, though the red card isn't a really a relief, because the other news is that there hasn't been a war that the armchair generals of the lizard Oz haven't wanted to be a part of ...".
Sociologist Mathew Creighton: "What surprises me more is how much the media characterized it as shocking. People haven’t been paying attention. But the Netherlands was clearly on that trajectory for 15 years.
...
"In Ireland, it was more like: well, we all have a cousin who is a migrant.
"So what has changed? First, there is the rhetoric of elite actors such as politicians. They normalize the narrative. You can signal it, you can dog-whistle it, which is more common today. The level of exposure to migration over time also has implications. In the Netherlands, it goes back a long way. In [Australia] Ireland, it’s relatively recent. This includes migration after the 2015 European refugee crisis, which is high profile, but small. And then another layer is [Australia's] Ireland’s housing crisis, which made housing of refugees come to the foreground. There’s always a unique constellation of [bkack art] circumstances."
From:
"Why hidden xenophobia is surging into the open
"Sociologist Mathew Creighton discusses how events in Europe in the past month are fed by people’s covert prejudices.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03973-9
!!! News corpse Netherlands xenophbia or omission factories.
"NetherlandsChannel [V] Netherlands No 1 B.V. NetherlandsChannel [V] Netherlands No 2 B.V. NetherlandsCreative Networks International ( the Netherlands) B. V. NetherlandsF.I.M. International B.V. NetherlandsFox Dutch Mobile B.V. NetherlandsFox Dutch Mobile Holdings C. V. NetherlandsInternational Global Networks B.V. NetherlandsMultimedia Holdings B.V. NetherlandsNews Netherlands B.V. NetherlandsNews Outdoor Middle East and Africa B.V. Netherlands
News Securitie B.V. NetherlandsNews Television B.V. NetherlandsSatellite Television Asian Region B.V. NetherlandsTV Romania B.V. Netherlands
...
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1308161/000119312507220428/dex211.htm