The pond prides itself on being something of a record of certain reptile scribes, the bromancer, his hysteria and his war mongering ways being one of them ...
The stupidity and the vanity of this pride always escapes the pond, but then the pond always regarded sliding down the big snake in Snakes and Ladders as great fun ...
The Pride snake would get you right back to the start, and that's a sensation the pond always feels when reading the bromancer.
Never mind, the point of this late arvo special edition is simply to keep up with the bro, because the pond missed the chance on the weekend to celebrate the latest bout of epic bro FUD ...
It's designed for specialists and like the lands above the faraway tree, it will be swept away by morning
This will be relatively pure and undiluted bromancer fare, though that title is deceptive. The bro in his original splash had the world at the bring of world war ...
World war or world chaos? In the end, it's all one to the bro in full hysterical flight ...
Whether world war or world chaos, it means the call for the bro to be dragooned in as Generalfeldmarschall grows more urgent by the day ...
You see? We need a Generalfeldmarschall to whip the country into shape, and it can't be this useless dogbody ...
Give the bro full rein and we can have a decent, dinkum war by Xmas ... and for those who wonder what good we did in places such as Iraq or Afghanistan, for shame, armchair generals of the bro kind had much fodder to scribble about from the safety of their armchairs ...
At this point the reptiles helped out with a snap ...
Anything to break the monotony of the screeching and the caterwauling ...
Ah the Ruskis, and a snap followed ...
Pause for a moment and reflect. What's happened to the US Ukraine package? Blocked by the GOP. And who runs Faux Noise, which routinely issues running orders to the GOP on behalf of the tangerine tyrant?
As for Israel, it was this reading that originally set the pond off, Simon Tisdall in the Graudian ...At war both within and without, Israel is experiencing a brutal coming of age.
What follows is a listicle, though the pond did wonder if the bro might ever want to recant on behalf of himself, News Corp, the Emeritus Chairman, and all trapped in that monstrous machine.
Meanwhile, the genocide continues, but the bro has never worried too much about war crimes and collective punishment and genocide ... because here we go again.
At this point the reptiles slipped in a meaningless snap ....
And the pond could relax with a final short gobbet knowing it had done, belatedly, its bro surveillance duties ...
Whether world war or world chaos, it means the call for the bro to be dragooned in as Generalfeldmarschall grows more urgent by the day ...
Why it's the Emeritus Chairman and his spawn, and haven't they spawned some doozies ...
...Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene defended the prospect of Tucker Carlson interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin amid rumors that the former Fox News host is in Moscow.
Carlson was spotted in Moscow in the audience at the world-famous Bolshoi Theater, according to Russian Telegram channel Mash.
The report that Carlson is in Russia sparked speculation that he might interview Putin while there, who has been largely isolated from the world stage following his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
"Democrats and their propagandists in the media are spasming at the prospect of Tucker Carlson interviewing Putin," Greene wrote on X.
The Georgia Rep. added: "They HATE when someone like Tucker goes 'off script.' We have a free press in this country and its people like Tucker Carlson who we depend on to speak the truth!"
Carlson, who has defended Putin and echoed Kremlin talking points, said last year that he had previously tried to interview the Russian leader but that the US government had stopped him.
He has been one of the strongest voices of opposition to US support for Ukraine and implied that the West is to blame for the invasion after admitting Ukraine into NATO.
Carlson is often mentioned on Russian TV by propagandists. Leaked memos from the Kremlin to Russian state media in the week after the invasion instructed them to use "as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson."
Back to the bro, still ranting on, apparently unaware that his bosses have done much to help Vlad the Impaler ...
The pond will allow a mention of "democracy", because Israel has been democratic in the way that the southern states were before the civil war ...
...Fears for Israel’s democracy have deepened since the Gaza war began. Netanyahu has refused to resign, allow fresh elections or take personal responsibility for 7 October security failings. Recent polling suggests most Israelis are unhappy with him and his war cabinet’s diktats – and want an immediate 7 October inquiry. A majority also opposes releasing large numbers of Palestinians to secure the hostages’ freedom.
Polarisation within Israeli society plumbed new depths last weekend. At a Jerusalem rally, thousands of rightwingers, including Ben-Gvir, finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, government MPs, rabbis and soldiers, called for Jewish resettlement of Gaza and expulsion of Palestinian residents.
“If we don’t want another 7 October, we need to go back home and control [Gaza]. We need to find a legal way to voluntarily emigrate [Palestinians] and impose death sentences on terrorists,” Ben-Gvir said. “We are rising, we have a nation of lions,” said Smotrich.
Haim Katz, a minister from Netanyahu’s Likud party, was in messianic mood: “Today, we have the opportunity to rebuild and expand the land of Israel. This is our final opportunity.”
Condemnation from the left was fierce. The government had shown its “true colours”, wrote analyst Alon Pinkas in Haaretz. “This was the coalition in an orgy of anti-state and anti-democratic euphoria... What you saw was not merely a theocratic-fascist strain in Israeli society and politics but [in] almost half of Netanyahu’s coalition... Religious-nationalistic Jewish supremacy has been normalised, legitimised, mainstreamed and encouraged by Netanyahu,” he claimed.
It’s plain the state of Israel, as a modern-day entity, is experiencing a brutal, illusion-shattering coming of age
Netanyahu’s thwarting of US president Joe Biden’s efforts to reduce civilian casualties and increase aid to Gaza, and his stark rejection of Washington’s preferred two-state solution, reinforces the sense of a turning point being reached. Defying an American president at such a juncture is a desperate strategy. Sensible Israelis know that, for them at least, the US really is what Madeleine Albright called the “indispensable nation”.
Likewise, all but the most idiotic headbangers realise the international court of justice’s careful warning about the perils of genocide in Gaza cannot simply be dismissed.
The ruling reflects how world opinion has been repelled by the Gaza carnage. The percentage of people globally who view Israel positively dropped by an average of 18.5% between September and December, decreasing in 42 out of 43 countries, a recent survey found.
Israel’s internal divisions and international isolation are real and growing. To the delight of Iran and like-minded foes, Netanyahu’s perpetual war promises deeper rifts and greater ostracism. Commentators warn gloomily of street battles between rightwing zealots and hostage families, of a democratic breakdown.
None of this sort of talk ever penetrates the thick hide of the bro ...
Even Ann Coulter could manage it, while still remaining a prize loon ...
Would Dame Slap, famous wearer of a MAGA cap in a celebratory New York night, ever join the bro in an apology?
That came from behind a paywall, but don't expect the bromancer to admit he's a very stupid boy, and so on we go ... because now we've reached the listicle stage ...
Despite all the evidence to hand, he seems to think a pack of fundamentalist theocrats are in the democracy business ... (there being Jewish as well as Islamic death cults devoted to ethnic cleansing) ...
Meanwhile, in the United States, conservatives are consumed with matters of world-shattering importance ...
"Give the bro full rein and we can have a decent, dinkum war by Xmas" provided by "The Psychopolitics Of Trauma"
ReplyDelete"... everyday political debate crosses lines that would qualify as emotional abuse in any other sphere of life", Bro.
"...but the way some people think about them actively plotting to dismantle everything good in the world shades into paranoia ". Bro
"... you can think of it as a condemnation of the media for irresponsibly fanning fear", Bro.
Bro, "... Suppose that outrage addiction is, in fact, trauma addiction. That means the media ecosystem is a giant machine trying to traumatize as many people as possible in order to create repeat customers, ie trauma addicts. Combine that with the explicit, confessed desire on both sides to “trigger” the other as much as possible, and you have a lot of very clever people all trying to maximize one another’s trauma levels. On the external level, that looks like weaving as strong a narrative of threat and persecution as possible and trying to hit people in their psychological weak points. On the internal level, it means making sure they replace their normal ability to update with a series of triggers that make them replace reality with pre-packaged stories about how the other side is innately evil and everything they do is for specific threatening and evil reasons. Once you have a machine like that running, I’m not sure that identifying it will make things too much worse.
"But thinking of things this way has made me less interested in consuming this kind of media, and I hope it does the same for you.", Bro.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-psychopolitics-of-trauma
Ah, the Bro - as old Willie Butler Yeats put it -
ReplyDelete“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
The Bro is certain full as a goog when it comes to passionate intensity, and it’s almost certain that if put in charge of any aspect of Australian policy - defence, foreign affairs, fire ant eradication - he would comprehensively fuck it up. But that’s part of the fun of reading the Bromancer’s thoughts; regardless of how meagre our own expertise in these areas may be, we can be confident that, despite his bravado, the Bro knows even less.
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteAccording to Sheridan, Ehud Yaar is “authoritative” and “insightful” as a strategic analyst.
Maybe not so insightful about his wife.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehud_Yaari
Don't we just love the way they get early release for 'good behaviour' - as if any other kind is possible in jail.
DeletePerhaps the Bro is secretly hoping that the present Pope might, er - need to be replaced soon, and the cardinals will select a suitably militant one, who will set off actual crusades, that all good catholics will be able to join. In that case, we would expect to see Bro signing on with the private army of some Italian industrialist, and on to the 'end of history'.
ReplyDeleteOk, so the Bro tells us: "NATO figure Dutch admiral Rob Bauer warned allied nation to build their industrial capacity to produce weapons to sustain a long war." And will that "industrial capacity" be constructed far underground in order to escape constant bombardment by drones ?
ReplyDeleteAnd just where will this "long war" be fought ? In Taiwan ? In Iran ? In Syria ? In the "Middle East" - and if so how long will Israel - which is also a nuclear power - hold back. Is anybody suggesting it might be fought in the Chinese, Russian or American mainlands ? In Europe, especially eastern Europe ? Where ? One thing though is likely: little or none of it will be fought on the Australian mainland, or Indonesia, or India (also a nuclear power). So where ? And will it be fought with "conscripts" firing AR15s or tank cannons at each other ? Or by bomb laden drones flying everyday raids and being replaced by more drones built in those underground "industrial capacity" factories indefinitely ?
But then: "Far from building deterrence, as every US ally should be doing urgently..." "Should be" ? Does that mean that all these other "US ally" mobs aren't doing anything either ? If it really comes down to actual 'worldwide' conflict that they're as much 'done ducks' as we are ?
And "We can't put all, or even most, of our old age pensioner ANZAC frigates to sea because we don't have crews to man them." But we'll have 'conscripts'', Bro, plenty of 'conscripts'. Though apparently we won't have either drones or anti-drone capabilities: "which may be why we decided not to send a ship to help secure freedom of navigation and commerce in the Red Sea." Of course it was, Bro, of course it was. That and the fact that all those US and UK ships and planes with their fine modern weapons haven't been able to secure "freedom of navigation and commerce" either.
But there is one thing to say about all this: just how effectively it is diverting attention from that dreadful 'climate change' conspiracy. Won't get much done about that for some time to come, especially if there is a real shooting war.
Surely it’s time to change the Bro’s title from Foreign Editor to “War Correspondent”?
ReplyDelete